From The Cold

From the cold came the catarrh. Thick and suffocating, it felt as though my head was twice the size, alien somehow, as though I had borrowed someone else’s. Sleep was sporadic, interspersed with fits of coughing. My nose blowing could have heralded a Royal birth; saved on the Bugler’s fees. Thank goodness for tissues. Imagine having to wash snot covered material, although I remember my Mother having a bucket by the outside loo which housed such things. My Mother was hot on germs and thought of many inventive ways of assassination. Germ warfare had different connotations in our house. When my sister’s fiancée came to live with us Mother would send him upstairs to wash his hands. Not only that, but she would smell his hands when he came back down to make sure he had used soap. She had long since failed to fall for the quick turning on of the bathroom tap. As he was training as a chef she thought it her personal responsibility to educate him about hygiene. It was one of her ways of saving the world.

We all had to undergo toilet training. This was way past the potty stage. It involved the safe use of a public loo. As we had spent a lot of our childhood holidays in France we had a lot of practice of hovering over holes in the ground. One always hovered, even for a poo which we were strongly encouraged to do at home where the seat was regularly sanitised. No part of one’s anatomy must come into contact with any aspect of the toilet, and simultaneously no item of clothing must touch any part of the cubicle. Even though one hovered, paper on the seat was obligatory; how high could those germs jump? Barriers were essential. When one had deposited whatever it was one needed to, then the real tricky sequencing began. Never use the first piece of toilet paper as someone else’s fingers had touched it before you. Always discard it. Once wiped and drawers in place, take a further piece of paper, double thickness, hold a foot to the cubicle door and unlock it with the paper. Then deftly flush the cistern with the paper, before, in one balletic movement, dropping it into the toilet. Once perfected it meant this bit of paper would catch the flush. It was so important to leave the area better than you found it. We’ve already covered hand washing.

It brings me back to my initial thought of where had I got the cold? I had remained a germ disciple, unlike my sister in law who, after two glasses of wine which seemed to have opened her primness like a hinge, had confessed to actually sitting on public toilet seats and with no paper barrier. Of all the bare cheeked arse. If my Mother had known, it would have confirmed all her gut feelings that she wasn’t suitable for her only son.

I boiled some water, add Eucalyptus, tea tree and Cypress oils, slung a towel over my head and inhaled the steam until the kitchen timer pinged ten minutes. I emerged streaming from all my facial orifices. For a brief glorious moment I could breathe with my mouth closed before more snot moved in. Where does it all store I often wonder? Is there a receptacle somewhere in the brain which acts as a reservoir? And if it can slide into the sinuses at ease then why does it not then continue? It did for Harry. He was a child I’d taught who had the most awful snot issue. Once when he was swimming, his snot trails, which could stretch to an astonishing length and still remain attached to his nasal passages, were buoyantly swimming along in front of him. In the vein of 101 uses of a dead cat we would sit in the staffroom and invent 101 uses for his nasal deposits. He may have been the forerunner of super glue.

But all this wasn’t helping me think of what I had missed. If I could pinpoint the breach in hygiene then I could avoid this unpleasantness again. And then suddenly into my mind, which had surely been cleared by the eucalyptus, came an image of mistletoe. Damn!