Friday, October 13, 2006

It serves me right

I had drinks with a friend I hadn't seen for ages in town last night. For reasons I don't completely understand, we ended up in the roof garden of the Hilton on Trafalgar Square.

Fantastic views, good (albeit expensive) drinks and now I have a cold :-(

I've never accepted the link between "going out in the cold" and "catching a cold". It's like saying you can catch TB from conspicuous extravagance but coincidence makes for a good anecdote and admitting that I probably just caught it from all the people around me who also have colds isn't as interesting an explanation.

It still sucks, though. I was supposed to go out in Clapham this evening. Instead, I'm inhaling Olbas Oil.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

What serves you right is going out every night. Some nights, with more than one group of people to more than one party or nightspot. Such a social life.

I'm only jealous...

get well soon.

Anonymous said...

Incidentally, you'll immediately be able to guess where I spent 10 hours working today (plus a 3 hour commute each way).

Linux filesystems and kernels are fun.

Anonymous said...

I've often wondered the same. Wikipedia has the lowdown:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold#.22Cold.22_as_misnomer

Richard Brown said...

Thanks for the link, Andrew. Interesting to read about the cold institute. I remember the BBC running a story in the 80s about how the evil government had shut it down just when it was "on the brink" of discovering a cure. They didn't mention they were a bunch of incompetents. Strange that....

Richard Brown said...

What serves you right is going out every night. Some nights, with more than one group of people to more than one party or nightspot. Such a social life.

I'm only jealous...

get well soon.


:-) Places to go... people to see. You know how it is.

Incidentally, you'll immediately be able to guess where I spent 10 hours working today (plus a 3 hour commute each way).

Ouch. They're getting a *lot* of goodness from us right now. Hope things are improving there!

Anonymous said...

I know it sounds a bit insane, but the page Andrew mentioned has a hydrogen peroxide cure. It should at least be safe if you are careful: use the right concentration, don't get it in your eyes and don't bleach your hair or skin! I've tried it a few times recently (prompted by feeling so awful I looked up different cures on the web; it was certainly more pleasant than eating raw garlic!) and it did actually seem to help, though that's clearly not very scientific.

Has anyone else tried it? Do you know of any experiments, rather than just anecdotal cases? Searching the internet I can only find the latter.

Richard Brown said...

Hydrogen Peroxide as a cold cure?! Presumably not in the sense that a stake through the heart is also a cold "cure"?

Anonymous said...

No, I don't think it will be unduly harmful as the article I linked to above suggests peroxide for removing earwax, so at worst you'll have cleaner ears.

I've never heard of Olbas Oil, but it sounds yummy so I'll have to try that next time I get a cold.

Richard Brown said...

Olbas Oil is a miracle of medical science.