I've raised many an eyebrow in my time

I hate it when he's right

My dad once gave me some advice...

I hope to one day pass these gems of knowledge on to the next generation...

There's always room...

Every time...

Everything's better in 3D

My dad is 81 today. Bask in his greatness...

I love this man

A tale of two trams

Among the many attractions Dublin has to offer is one of the worlds most expensive transport systems – the Luas. When I first heard of an alternative to my arch nemesis Dublin Bus, I was pretty excited. Especially when I read that €1 billion was spent on 34 kilometres of track, I was expecting an awesome lightspeed space rocket-style thing, with comfy beanbag seats, gentle classical music provided by an orchestra and a Willy Wonka-esque conductor to keep your champagne topped up. I was a little disappointed, I must admit - until I realised that the bulk of the money must surely have been spent importing the worlds most cheerful people to hand out free newspapers every morning - no mean feat in 6am drizzle.

Fantasy Luas - Twice as decadent as the Titanic, half the chance of drowning

Actual Luas, gauntlet of weird people, weird smells and hepatitis

 

For those unfamiliar with contemporary Dublin transport, there are two Luas tramlines, the green line (aka the Daniel Day) and the red line (aka the Jerry Lee or the bread line). The red line runs from the north city centre to Tallaght (turbo deadly), while the green line services Dublin’s more affluent south – currently from St. Stephens Green to Cherrywood (via, loike Dundrum ya?). The two couldn’t be more different, particularly in terms of clientele. A friend of mine once summed it up by saying that on a journey on the green line, there was a guy next to him eating sushi, while on the red line, the guy next to him was dealing heroin.

The red line is my, well, local I suppose you’d call it. The red line is largely populated by persons of various stages of inebriation and (at night) burly Dolph Lundgren-esque security guys. Its main exports are drunken pre-teens and wide-eyed country folk attending sports matches where people beat each other with sticks (as is my understanding). Journeys on the red line often result in police investigation, so much so that I reckon An Garda Siochana (aka the fuzz, 5-0, bobbies, depending on where you’re from) would do well to set up a dedicated police station carriage to save time.  On my daily commute I’ve witnessed everything from child abuse (who calls a child Talita?), domestic violence (woman shoving a guy, shouting in his face “I told ye I can’t ride ye, I’m HAVIN’ ME FLOWERS!”), sexual harassment (13 year old girl not letting an older teenage guy off the tram until he gave his phone number to either her or her friend, “’Cos I tink you’re real sexy”). I’ve also been reacquainted with such Dublinese idioms as “diddies” (referring to breasts, in that particular case, those of a gentleman), “in a jock” (in reference to state of the aforementioned diddies), “in flitters”, “scarlet for your ma for having ya” and the lesser heard ultimate burn “scarlet for your granny for having your ma”, terms that were at risk of dying out.

Some of these journeys can be hilarious, many tragically depressing, but they’re always eventful. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who first observed “Anyone who has not witnessed two inebriated men pretend to slap each other in the face while holding a normal conversation, truly hasn’t lived”. I like to think of it as avant-garde theatre, each Luas journey as a snapshot of modern day Dublin. I do feel sorry for tourists and people unused to the ways of us Dublinfolk though, as we can be a brash lot. Indeed I’m often bewildered by Luas events myself, particularly the content of overheard phone conversations. There was the girl discussing loudly whether or not she still had to get her dad a Father’s Day gift since she recently found out he wasn’t her biological dad. Then the guy having a proper heartfelt phone discussion about the state of his relationship “Ah I was mad about you I was, then you did the dirt on me with Anto and I still took ye back. And then you were riding Stee, he’s me best mate and I took ye back in anyways. They told me you were a dirtbird but I didn’t listen. Even your ma said it to me, about getting DNA tests on the baba and all. Ah but I still love ye.” This went on for 40 minutes in the presence of his child/very younger brother.

FORTY MINUTES.

A recent adventure took place during a routine stop while we waited for the Gardai to sort out some messing. The guy next to me started to make small talk. I answered him politely, but didn’t say much as I was engrossed in the book I was reading. But he persevered, asking me “Why don’t people talk to each other on the Luas?”  (He was Indian and evidently hadn’t been in Dublin very long). I felt a little guilty so I took my headphones out for a minute, closed over my book slightly, set my pepper spray can on standby, and decided to humour him. He asked me where I lived and worked, and though I was as vague as a night in McGowan’s, it still came out that we worked in the same place.

In the same building.

On the same floor.

At this point the guy realised the years of awkward small talk situations he’d just condemned himself to, and began to see the error of his friendly ways. THIS, I told him, was why no one makes small talk on the Luas. It’s also why Ireland could never do a Big Brother style show - put 12 random Irish people in a room, odds are at least half will be related or otherwise know each other. I can tell you it makes the dating scene more than a little disconcerting.

But favourite ever Luas journey happened most recently, when the Luas went renegade and took on the 5-0. My friend and I had just made the last tram after a night out, but shortly after we got on, the Luas was stopped by a barricade of various police vehicles. In true Irish style, everyone immediately bonded through incessant grumbling at the delay. Eventually the cars moved just enough to let the Luas out - or so we thought. As we eased past the last squad car, there was a hideous scraping noise, then crunching as the wing mirror snapped backwards. This was the cue for the entire Luas to erupt in whoops and cheers, the likes of which haven’t been heard since Italia ’90. We were again united, this time in malicious glee, we were renegades, we were part of sticking it to the man, we were invincible, we were… screwed. As a Garda approached the driver and asked him to step outside, we all went quiet and held our collective breaths like naughty children as the doors slid open and the driver stepped out to be reprimanded by a grim-faced Garda. Suddenly the floor/adverts/distant objects seemed fascinating as we all tried to look away. From where I was standing I could catch snatches of the conversation, which comprised mostly of the Garda saying “Ah now…” in the tone of a disappointed parent, and finished with him saying “Do you have the time on ye? My watch is broken.” The driver finally got back on board, and as the doors closed and we eased off, he received one last resounding cheer from the whole tram, a hero’s welcome, a true céad míle fáilte.

 

The difference between Dublin and Hollywood

Once, I was early for something.  Wouldn’t happen these days, I have learned the error of my ways, and now go to great lengths to be perfectly on time. I fail a lot. Anyway, I was meant to be going to the cinema with a friend, who was also early, so we decided to hang out in the café/bar/garish nightclub bit common to many cinemas. Where we found this.

The holy grail - a free bar

 

A bar filled with glasses of free (we assumed) wine.

Being students at the time, we were both poor yet had a penchant for what we perceived to be the finer things in life (read: booze).  There weren’t many people around, but a couple had sauntered over and helped themselves so, in a moment of uncharacteristic brazenness, we decided to do the same.  

 

We found a dim corner and nonchalantly sat, covertly sipping our spoils, when a guy wearing an ID badge appeared and made a beeline for our table. I was suddenly gripped with the feeling I usually get every time I pass through airport security checks – sheer and utter panic. Seriously, I’ve never attempted to even smuggle so much as a tweezers, or carry on a single millilitre over the 100ml allowed, but every time I hear a metal detector beep, I break into a cold sweat. This is a direct result of an overactive imagination fuelled by a childhood of “inspirational” movies about people who somehow overcome gross injustices, like being inexplicably framed for crimes they didn’t commit. Unfortunately, I ain’t no Hurricane. (Though I do hope to one day become Champion of the World).

Anyway, the guy introduces himself as a reporter for a well-known newspaper and proceeds to ask us what we thought of the movie. The movie we’d just seen. The movie we’d evidently crashed the after-party for. We looked about. The only people there were a handful of 40-somethings and their under-5 kids. This didn’t look like any kind of movie premiere I could ever have imagined (have I mentioned it was about 6pm on a rainy Tuesday? And that I’m a twotime silver medallist in the Imagination Olympics? True story.) Though sure enough there, standing in the corner, was the star of the movie, trying to convince his kids to stop swinging out of the plastic chairs.

My friend and I, having known each other sufficient years to hone such skills, quickly had a telepathic conversation. Both realising what a tough job this reporter guy would have in making this movie "premiere" seem like a sufficiently trendy social event that might convince the public to go see the movie, we agreed to play along with the “interview” as it were, charitably lending the considerable weight of our collective coolness (read: marketable target youth demographic). To anyone who may interpret our charity as a blatant soul-for-booze exchange, please don’t pretend like you haven’t done the same thing at one time or another.  At least we gave the guy our real names.

The interview went something like this:

Reporter: “So, what did you think of the movie?”

Me: “Eh, great. Really, eh…”

Friend: “Gripping”

Me: “Yeah, gripping. You’d have to say it was gripping alright”

Reporter: “Great. What parts did you find particularly gripping?”

Realising that we knew neither the plotline nor even the title of the movie in question, we decided to come clean and admit to the guy that we had no idea what was going on, we hadn’t seen any movie, we meant no disrespect to its venerable star or the Irish film industry at large, that we could probably scrape together the cash to pay for our ill-gotten gains but if not it was ok because we could wash dishes, work the tills or definitely give popcorn-slinging a go, and I could possibly even clean their milkshake machine, if they had a Phillips-head screwdriver handy.

As a policy, honesty has seldom worked in my favour, but this time, inexplicably, it did. The dude just chuckled, took our picture and the following week we were featured in the What’s Hot section.

This is how I always look in photos. My face is allergic to cameras.

Sometimes the world makes very little sense to me.

The Dad archives

Due to popular demand, I've been attempting to construct some sort of blog about my dad. But properly construing his many hilariously brilliant foibles is proving difficult. He's the human equivalent of a "you had to be there" joke - you just have to know him. And getting to know him isn't an easy task as my dad is a man of few words. Not including rants. In fact my whole family has a tendancy towards pointless ranting that leaves little time or energy to talk about anything real or important. Aha, our veil of waffles. Delicious waffles...

Anyway, I decided to do an ongoing series cartoon shorts on actual conversations I've had with my dad (often verbatim - his comments really need no exaggeration or filler), entitled 'The Dad archive'.
Enjoy.

Yes, this actually happened

My secret life as a zombie

At night, the tiny hamsters in my head come out to gnaw on the wires in my brain. Sometimes this will manifest itself as faint garbled mutterings, sometimes full-on shouting matches with imaginary enemies (usually David Bowie – a la Labyrinth). Occasionally I’ll attempt to pick a nice bouquet from the flowers on the wallpaper, or be found sleeping peacefully in the bath. None of these nighttime perambulations ever wakes me up though, so I didn’t really believe my mother when she’d tell me about my various exploits next morning. She has a tendency towards exaggeration, my momma.

Apparently it used to snow in Dublin a lot...

The first I really knew of my problem was when I reached sleepover age. Fuelled by the finest sugary treats the corner shop had to offer, sleep was successfully avoided for most part. Eventually though, we all succumbed and I woke to this:

Now I know what a tv playing a scary movie feels like

 

Apparently I’d sat up, zombie-like glazed eyes open and started talking angrily about “the letters”.  What this meant I had no idea, but explanations were demanded. The thing is though – there is no explanation. Probably the worst feature of this affliction is not knowing when it will strike, or what form it’ll take. I could be furiously angry, laughing my head off or sometimes even crying, and it’ll usually have nothing to do with anything that’s happened to me during the day. Last year I managed to convince myself I had numerous terrible illnesses (Yellow Ebola Dengue fever anyone?) because I’d had a sore throat consistently for about a year. Until I realised that a sore throat probably isn’t that unusual for someone who literally cannot shut up.

Another problem is I rarely know if I’ve been talking - unless someone tells me, which can be rare as the talkings usually scare people, sometimes enough to leave. On a couple of occasions, (usually while travelling), I’ve woken to an empty room and a friend/scared witness telling me that I’d freaked people out so much they'd decided to scarper. 

There were the Canadian guys in Austria who witnessed my “WOW! The Great Wall of China IS AWESOME!!!” dream and decided they would get the early train out of there after all. 

There were the two Spanish girls who left in the middle of their 1^st night sharing a dorm with me – one Russian girl remained who told me that, although I had been talking in tongues, “don’t worry, they probably just wanted to change rooms”. In the dead of night.

Most of the time though, there’s no one around to tell me what I’ve been getting up to, so I’m usually none the wiser about my night time exploits, except for the odd clue – like half a tube of toothpaste finding its way into my hair or scratches on my face (some mornings I bear an uncanny resemblance to that chick from The Exorcist).

Zombiness seems to run in my family too, to varying degrees. Both my sisters sleeptalk, a funny thing to witness since, when one starts, the other will pipe up too, as if replying to her incoherent blabberings. Sister 2 is usually arguing with her boyfriend, a past time she also enjoys while awake. She sleepwalks too, which is scary since her brain hamsters seem to always tell her to climb something. I woke one night to see her climbing out of our bedroom window. I had to throw myself at her in a spectacularly clumsy tackle to stop her in time, which woke everyone in the house, except Sister 2, who refused to believe us the next day. I can tell you, saving someone's life is only fun when that person knows about it, and can make you a lifetime supply of sandwiches (they pretty much have to). Still, I suppose it's good to have a few spare kidneys still out there...

Worst of us all though, is my dad. My dad is older than most dads, and therefore has a larger back catalogue of murky past deeds and experiences. It’s not at all odd for him to start a sentence with “Met this fella in an opium den in Hong Kong, he’s dead now”. (I’ll bet not many other kids had that kind of anti-drugs talk).  I’ve often thought of doing a blog about my dad’s exploits, but not only would it takes me years to catalogue all his various tales (and a lifetime to try verify if any of them actually happened), I don't fancy attempting the blog equivalent of War and Peace just yet. 

But to give you an idea, imagine if you will, the dad from the movie Big Fish had travelled the world, lived in many far-flung places, became a devout racist and had about a million different jobs before he met that girl from Tucker. Well, that’s pretty much my dad. ‘Cept with more war stories. (Though as far as I can tell, he wasn’t actually in any wars himself, he did live through a couple. Plus he’s seen every episode of M*A*S*H).

An infuriating thing about my dad (another unfortunate family trait) is that he will (and DOES) waffle your ears off about any old thing that pops into his head, but if you ever ask him anything specific, or appear interested in his stories, he’ll immediately clam up. The way to extract information from him I’ve learned is to act as if you’re arguing with him, or presenting an incorrect fact. Loves an argument my dad, loves correcting things even more. Should have been a teacher. (At some stage in his life he probably was).

This is the only thing I know about men

 

Aaanyway, the point is, he’s done some stuff. Including watching every movie/tv show/advertisement ever made involving World War II. So it’s not really surprising he has night terrors. When I was growing up, most kids were afraid of Freddy Krueger (or Screddy Screwger as Lil Bro called him) or Worzel Gummage. I was scared of Nazis, thanks to my dad’s recurring night terrors about them coming to get us “And we don’t have enough goddamn furniture to barricade the doors and windows! We’re bloody done for!!!” I even started an Anne Frank-style diary, for posterity. Though my life in a 1980’s Dublin suburb was markedly less quaint and romantic and never really evolved into a moving narrative.

My diary at 17. Not much has changed.

 I suppose the moral of this blog is - don't judge a person by anything they do at night.

I rock (just not with yo' momma)

I love a good music gig I do. Though recently any bands I want to see appear to be avoiding my hometown as if it’d fallen off the map. Bizarre really, that the buzzing metropolis of Dublin should be so thoroughly snubbed when it’s full of people who routinely shell out 50 quid a ticket without blinking.

So, in an unprecedented surge of pro-activity, I’ve taken a few trips to see how things are run abroad. The first thing I noticed was the surprising amount of parents there chaperoning unembarrassed-looking teens. I think it’s great that a parent would care enough about the welfare of their child to make the effort to go along and torture their eardrums for a few hours/days, it was actually quite touching. That said, I’m all kinds of grateful that Irish parents don’t do this, I can only IMAGINE the hell of mortification my mother and/or father would have wreaked.

The mother option - less swearing and racism, but more pointing, talking and general attention-drawing

 

Not to mention the fact that having a parent around would definitely affect my whole look. Shunning the passé practice of chemical alteration, I prefer to dabble in what I like to call “wardrobe alchemy”, creating outfits that wouldn’t usually see the light of day (often for good reason). At festivals in particular I do tend to go over the top, perhaps, slightly. Really, I’ll admit it gives me a chance to give an airing to clothes I, like some sort of magpie, bought on the basis of “Ooh, shiny”, thus justifying spending rent money on a scarf. In retrospect I generally end up looking like a child who’s raided her mothers wardrobe, albeit the mother in question would have to be a 1970’s Miss America drag queen with a penchant for glitter. Any excuse to wear a tiara/bikini/wellies combo really. Though my ensembles have earned me attention from the press (2001 Indo fashion column, I’m FAMOUS people!) I do tend to get asked if I’m selling drugs. A lot. But I digress.

I'm ready for my close-up! What do you mean, "too much glare"?

My first encounter with the parental chaperone was at a 3-day festival in France, where I was trying to sell a spare ticket. (Note – I was only looking for face value for the ticket, your intrepid blogger ain’t no two-bit tout. Though touting would stick it to a certain evil ticket company…). Anyhow, this guy approached me enquiring about the ticket for his son, a young bashful-looking teen who stood behind him. So there I was negotiating in my best formal Leaving Cert level French, thinking I was doing a great job, but the guy didn’t seem too convinced it wasn’t some kind of scam, or that the ticket was even real. Under normal circumstances I might have been annoyed, but I was aware that I was attempting to conduct a business transaction with someone’s dad while dressed as a 28-year-old Rainbow Brite LSD nightmare. I finally managed to reassure him and he turned to his son, gave him a pep-talk in rapid French which was universally understandable as “Have a good time, behave yourself. Here’s some money, don’t tell your mother”. I was so moved I knocked a tenner off the ticket price and jokingly told the dad not to worry, that I’d keep an eye on him. I’ll never know if it was my outlandish attire or dire grasp of the French language, but neither the man nor his son seemed too happy with that idea…

Je suis Le Cool

At a recent gig, I ended up standing beside a lady who was holding coats for two younger versions of herself, either her daughters or clones. Assumed offspring were seemingly oblivious to her very presence, not talking and choosing to stand as we were, a distance of two people-deep away from the stage. The lady reminded me of a little Irish mammy in her hairstyle and clothes, and she obviously didn’t do this kind of thing too often, or she’d know that a nice woolly cardigan is generally a bad idea for an indoor rock gig. In Spain.

I was instantly struck with a desire to protect this Lil Mam from any kind of harm should a bit of moshing break out, as well as sudden self-consciousness that my top was too low and I looked stupid dancing. Now the thing about that is, I ALWAYS look stupid dancing, limbs flailing about aimlessly, hair flying. In fact, stupid dancing and debob hairdo is kinda my thing – which made me outraged to see it emulated by a terrible band recently, with a debob-haired woman thrashing about to the sounds of sped-up videogame music. It’s been done. But not in front of someone’s mam. So needless to say, Lil Mam had me on guard. Soon, I’m not only reducing my jumping about to folk-band levels, (gentle sway, potential for lighter action) I’m also acting as a human shield around her, and failing to be nonchalant about it.

What? I always dance like this...

And then, the unimaginable happened.

Swearing.

Raised as I was to have a mortal fear of the vague notion of “disrespecting my elders” swearing ranks right up there with calling an adult by their first name (still can’t manage that). It was the worst kind of swearing too. The lead singer suddenly introduced the next song with “This song is all about… F*****G!” I turned in wide-eyed horror to see Lil Mam’s reaction – nothing. Either she was one of those extremely progressive mothers you might see on Skins or some such (who I’m assured actually exist) or, more likely, her comprehension of the English language was zero – i.e. cannot even identify swears.

I relaxed a bit after this, and Lil Mam seemed to too. At one point I saw her tapping away on the pile of coats in time to “Yes It’s F*****g Political” and another time (one of the high points of the gig for me) she seemed to actually be jumping along with the crowd. Though perhaps she was just trying to see the stage – since she was standing beside me, her view was also obstructed by the giant that follows me to gigs and stands directly in front of me.

Just as I started to really relax, thinking Lil Mam was getting into the spirit and enjoying herself, the lead singer crowdsurfed over our heads and, just like that, Lil Mam promptly disappeared, coats and all, never to be seen again. I’d like to think she burrowed out to freedom, or at the very least the coats stopped her getting impaled on the lead singer’s spiked boots, but I’ll never know for sure...

Going viral

Apologies for the lag on this latest post blogsters, but I’ve been engaged in an unpleasant, messy but most of all tiring battle with some kinda jerk illness. Hopefully not to the death. It’s been going on a while now, symptoms include:

-       Sudden feeling of being in a sauna, improperly dressed

-       Sudden feeling of being a snowman (carrot nose optional)

-       Hallucinatory dreams

-       Speaking in tongues (more so than usual)

-       Universe brain - brainium feels like it’s full of rocks and constantly expanding

-       Cactus throat. Breathing is spiky.

-       Hot coal eyeballs. They burn!

-       Impulsive righteous indignation at random inanimate objects for having transmitted illness to me

This is BEFORE delirium sets in

I’m guessing it’s some sort of stupid hybrid super-virus that’s currently mutating, overcoming all my immune barriers one by one until I’m a walking zombie incubator of contagion, and the whole human race as we know it depends on an ill-timed sneeze.

What’s that you say? Exaggerate, moi? I wouldn’t know how, you see, up until the last couple of years, I’ve only ever been ill a handful of times. As a kid I remember I couldn’t wait to get the chicken pox (for reasons I no longer remember, I thought it was cool. Like my desire for an arm cast, glasses or a Mr. Frosty, I was wrong). Had I known the evils, not to mention regrettable taste, of calamine lotion, I may not have wished for a pox upon my house. When I finally caught it though, the illness bit wasn’t that bad. No school, bit of scratching, a lot of boredom and daytime tv - little did I know this illness was preparing me for college.

Things change, yet somehow remain the same

 

So this week, I thought I’d turn this lengthy illness into a handy guide of illness do’s and do-not-do’s.

Do - drink lots of fluids. No, more than that. (And let’s hope whiskey counts, because if it don’t, I ain’t gonna make it).

Do - rest up. Remember the time that guy/girl left you, and you made a perfect duvet cocoon on the sofa? Like that. And wait it out. Vandalisation of photographic mementoes and sappy music optional.

Do – build a time machine, go back in time to earlier this year when you were offered a ‘flu vaccine in work, but this time do NOT get distracted by cats on the internet. You don’t even like cats.

Do NOT – picture all the fun everyone you know is having right now, in their carefree, unappreciated state of blissful health.

I imagine this is what goes on...

Do NOT - give in to desperation and fall into the trap of “anything on sale in a chemist’s HAS TO WORK, why else would they sell it?!?" It doesn’t. Here’s why…

Hand sanitiser

Kills 99% of “germs”? What about the 1% that survive and you have now chosen to thrive? What’s next, BLOWTORCHES? Ever thought about just washing your goddamn hands? No? Oh, well, do – it’s a much more straightforward solution.

Virus-killing tissues

I suppose these may come in handy if you’re worried about catching something the next time you’re rubbing your mucosal orifices with someone’s discarded snot rags. Partial credit.

Face masks

Have yet to catch on in this country, but given the current disregard for sneezing etiquette on public transport, I’ve actually considered these myself, as an alternative to my current, admittedly poor, defence of fashioning my scarf into a homemade burqa. Turns out surgical-style masks (as popularised by the late Michael Jackson) don’t trap virus-carrying aerosol particles very well, therefore the only function they serve is to make you look stupid, paranoid and slightly scary. The way to go here is full-head respirators, like those worn by astronauts. Mine is on its way, being custom-designed and shipped from the furthest reaches of planet earth. I shall never remove it from my face, lest some wily pathogen gets in and the mask acts as a containment chamber. Take one last look at me world.

Throat lozenges

Apart from the stupid name, there’s nothing medicinal about these glorified SWEETS. There, I said it. They do offer some relief from cactus throat however, so they can stay. 

Antibiotics

Have NO effect on viruses people! You know viruses, the things that cause colds/'flu? Anti-biotics kill off bacteria, and if yoghurt ads have taught us nothing else, it's that some bacteria can be helpful to the immune system, so now you’ve that to deal with too, as well as side-effects. And then there's the million blips you’ve just given a doctor to tell your stupid ass these facts (you can mail your cheques to me directly, thank you). Or (probably more likely) he's just automatically prescribed you antibiotics he KNOWS won't work to shut you the hell up. Pharmacy - 1, Science - 0.

Ok, for fear of turning into a Clarksonesque blog, I’ll stop my ranting right there. Suffice to say I’m suffering. At levels not previously encountered. In recent years, my immune system seems to have taken a somewhat more lax approach to unwanted visitors. In short, it’s just not racist enough. (To my more pedantic readers and parts of my own brain, yes, I do mean xenophobic. Now shut up and go back to watching QI reruns and pretending you knew the interesting bits).

A successful immune system recognises and attacks anything it deems foreign, just like my dad. This may be annoying when it’s freaking out over a molecule of pollen, but it’s the price you pay so that nothing deadly moves in and starts playing darts on your brain or turning your internal organs into smoothies. But my immune system seems to have gone all new age, preferring to allow bugs to linger about, probably having sleepovers and braiding their flagella rather than killing them like it’s supposed to. (Don't think I need to illustrate that one, pretty self-explanatory).

The worst part is realising your own impotence. Colds and ‘flu are caused by viruses, and particularly punk-ass ones at that, that modern medicine has yet to treat without causing side-effects even worse than the original illness.

Anti-virals. Side-effects may be worse than viral symptoms. But it's all we've got.

 

Our only defence is the ‘flu vaccine. You know, the one I meant to get back in September, when it might have stood a chance of working. Oh, well, it's not like I'm a high-risk person. I'm not decrepit, with child or longterm illnesses, or IN CONTACT WITH POULTRY. Oops.

I always suspected those chickens would be the death of me...

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