The Gadders Guide to Surviving a Cold

I thought I'd avoided it - my usual tactic of drinking more red wine, taking a couple of all-in-one capsules and a spray of First Defence up the hooter had seemed to be enough to stave off the usual post-work lurgy. However, a combination of a drop in temperature and more free time spent in the company of a cute but contagious three year old niece has conspired against me, and I've had a stinking Bank holiday cold to contend with.

Bad Points: There is nothing good about being ill during your holidays.
Reasons to be Cheerful: I don't have to set any cover or feel any guilt about missing classes. I'm on holiday!

In the spirit of focusing on the positive, here are my ten things that make rhinovirus hosting more bearable:

The first items should go straight on your shopping list if you feel that tell-tale tickle and you start sneezing all the time.

1. Tissues

Obviously. You will hugely regret it if you run out of these. Buy a shedload. Make sure they're decent quality too - nasty little flimsy ones or ones that are scratchy will drive you to violence.

2. Olbas oil 

Some people like Vicks, but I prefer to stick a few drops of this in some hot water and inhale the steam. There is a good chance that it does very little to actually heal you, but it feels nice. All the gungey backed-up sinus passages in your mucus-filled head are like windows in a Parisian apartment being thrown open on the first day of spring. (Until the water cools down and you start feeling a bit cold in your world-beneath-a-towel - then it's time to get out of there.)

3. Lip salve or Vaseline.

Because it's inevitably going to happen. All that mouthbreathing and nosewiping is going to make you into a crusty-faced space monkey. Head off the worst of the damage if you can (rather than doing what I do and chewing your dried out lips as though it isn't going to make them really sore).

4. Fruit juice

So you'd stopped buying it because did you know, people think it's good for them but it's actually really high in sugar, there's like less sugar in a bottle of Coke, a Lion bar and a massive stick of rock than there is in one of those tiny cartons you used to have in your lunchbox. Probably.

But you're ill. All diet bets are off when your immune system is at war! Get some vitamin C in your corner!

5. Soup

Some people specifically like chicken soup when they're ill. I tend to lean more towards tomato. But basically if it's hot and wet it's going to go down amazingly well. As it were.

6. Tinned Peaches

This one might just be me...when I had measles as a kid and couldn't keep much of anything down, this was the one thing that I requested. It's a bit of a family joke now that this is my ill-food. Even as an adult, I find it quite a comforting thing to eat. Sweet, really easy on a sore throat, and they contain plenty of vitamins. Peachy. As it were.

7. Hot chocolate

I can keep this in the kitchen cupboard and not touch it for months at a time, but out of the blue, when I have a cold, I get a bit obsessed with it. It's hot, it's sweet, and all of a sudden I'm not bothered by the calorie content because who needs to watch their weight when they're already a dead-eyed crusty-faced snot-zombie anyway?

8. Ginger wine and whisky

Again, this one might be just me. In fact, I'm not convinced anyone outside my family actually buys, drinks or enjoys ginger wine. Still, as far as I'm concerned, nothing helps with that flagging feeling late in the evening like a sup of Whisky Mac.

How to enjoy a Whisky Mac experience

1. Get a glass.

2. Put a shot of whisky in it.

3. Put a shot of ginger wine in it.
4. Drink it.

5. Enjoy the exciting sensations of the ginger & whisky vapour combo blowing through your sinuses and into your poor ravaged throat. Feel all warm and nice.              6. Pretend you're a dragon or something. (Note: if you have more than three, you may start to actually believe this.)                                   

One note of caution - for some reason if I drink this I like to turn my music up loud. I don't know if it has some kind of temporary ear unblocking effect, but it can upset neighbours. Forewarned is forearmed.

The last two things on the list don't involve shopping, so can be enjoyed by germ-incubators on a tight budget.

9. Hot baths

.... Jo Brand?

Usually I prefer a shower. However, when I have a cold, I can't wait to get in the bath. I like some nice bubbly stuff (that I can't smell properly) and plenty of water.

I usually find it very hard to judge the temperature when I have the lurgy. Often I'll get in and only then realise that it's nuclear. But soon it's fine...it's warm...the steam's rising, clearing my head, heating my circulation...and relax!

Sooner or later I mess it up by forgetting that, tempting as it is to splash warm water on my face, I gets cold when it starts evaporating and then the snuffling starts all over again. Then it's just a matter of time before I abandon tub. Won't be long before I want to get back in though.

10. Hibernation and Nest Management

The instinct to hunker in my bunker when I have a cold is a strong one. This makes good evolutionary sense - I want to stay away from people I could potentially infect and in a place where I can easily manage my symptoms efficiently and therefore survive. 

Also, if I'm ill my tolerance level for any kind of noise or nonsense from other humans drops through the floor. In addition I go all grey in hue and I make deeply unsexy noises when I attempt basics like respiration. 

So hibernation suddenly is a very appealing option (I prefer the term "hibernation" to alarmist terms such as "quarantine", or "infection control", for example). But it's not enough just to stay in - no no! I like to make a nest!

How to make a nest

1. Select an appropriate site. This might be a bed, or a sofa. (Clue - if you're having trouble deciding, it's a toss-up between which is most comfortable and which has the best TV).

2. Dress appropriately for the occasion. Acceptable items of clothing are dressing gowns, PJs, massive jumpers, jogging bottoms, leggings. Basically, if it doesn't allow you to effortlessly make the transition between wakefulness and dozing, it's no good to you now. Cut it loose.

3. Bring the following items to the nesting site: a) tissues; b) water; c) snacks; d) all remote controls that might feasibly be required at any point; e) DVDs that you've been waiting to watch/ laptop computer in the event that all channels are showing unwatchable daytime tat instead of Frasier as they rightfully should; f) phone; g) good book; h) duvet.

4. Arrange items within reaching distance. Sit/lie down. Cover yourself with duvet.

5. Promise yourself that you never need move again. Sigh and feel all satisfied that your hardships are over.

6. Get up 5 mins later and go to the toilet due to all the fluids you've been drinking. Put some socks on because your feet are chilly.

7. Go back to the nest. Stick on the DVD of that important and worthwhile film you've been meaning to watch for months.

8. Snooze through most of it, because ultimately, what you need more than anything else on this list to get better is some proper rest.

9. Wake up suffocating because you're too congested to sleep properly. Drink a lot of water.

10. Repeat from 4 until 9 doesn't happen, you actually get some sleep and you start feeling like a human again.

11. Reach the point where you're all like "Yeah, had a bit of a cold last week. Feel fine now though! Let's go white water rafting this weekend!"

12. Totally forget what the whole experience was like...until the next time...

Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein

In this novel, the universe's oldest man tries to kill himself. He is prevented from doing this and coaxed into telling his life story by people who realise that his vast age might make him worth talking to. So far, so sci-fi.

His life story is told in several distinct episodes, purporting to show his rugged, adventurous, exploratory nature. Certain themes emerge however that make all the stories somehow the same.

Firstly, all the characters sound like exactly like the narrator. At first this seems a little weird. After a while you accept that this is one of the limitations of the writer. Perhaps you can even explain it away as being a result of him having so many descendants. Perhaps.

Secondly, and alarmingly, it emerges that each story is based around some kind of incest which you're invited to find acceptable. Early on he frees a brother and sister slave, only to then find that they are having sex. He ponders this for a while, then decides it's fine and helps them bring up their family. Oh, and she wants him, too.

Then he rescues a child from a fire and brings her up as his daughter. When she grows up she demands that he gets her pregnant. He is quickly talked into it. Then they go off pioneering for several hundred pages together.

By the time two women have begged to bear his cloned daughters, who as they grow get included in a strange menage a huit that he's created, you think nothing could surprise you any more. Then he decides he wants to go back in time and meet his own mother...

In short, this is a complete incest-fest masquerading as a rumination on the deeper purposes of life, the universe and everything. Everyone falls in love with the main character (for reasons that totally escape me, given his rather dodgy views and attitudes) and the whole text has a loose, unfinished feel. You get the sense that Heinlein had an even bigger story in mind, so certain hints and threads remain unexplored allowing him to go into other episodes in his life in sometimes painfully slow detail. This does become part of the style of the novel (the tale is dressed up as though it's fragments of historical records) but for me this didn't quite work or convince.

Not for the squeamish, or for those who like remotely believable female characters in their fiction. 

The Men Who Stare At Goats

This film has a great cast but a massive problem - it can't decide if it believes in this stuff or not.

The premise is that Ewen McGregor, an emotionally unstable journalist, has caught on to the idea that there's a New Age psychic division of the army that operate as "Non-Lethal Weapons" and try to resolve conflict by developing their hippie sides.

So...we have Clooney (check), Bridges (check), McGregor (check), Spacey (check)...and yet some kind of a mess. The film spends half the time sending up psychic phenomena, pretending the main protagonists are burned out PTSD hippies, and the other half trying to subtlety suggest that maybe they do have all the answers. 

Bets are hedged the whole way through the film, and that leaves you with a sense of detachment...have they got powers? Are they deluded hippie soldiers? Do I care? 

Watchable (I don't think these actors could avoid being watchable) . But not as funny as it thinks it is, or as clever as it thinks it is, or as satirical as it thinks it is. Or much of anything.

Meh.

Tyrannosaur

I watched this because I'd heard it was harrowing but a great film, and also because I really like Olivia Colman, who has recently started getting the attention she deserves as an actress who brings a warmth and likeability to all her roles. Once it arrived I then avoided watching it for a week or two. Mainly because of the harrowing part.

Peter Mullan plays Joseph. Joseph is a seriously angry man spiralling out of control after the death of his wife. In the aftermath of one of his outbursts he ends up in a charity shop run by Hannah (Colman), who handles the situation by praying for him. Joseph returns the favour by an abusive outburst which upsets Hannah given the severely abusive nature of her marriage. Joseph is remorseful, Hannah needs to matter to someone, and so develops a strange friendship between the two, plausible only because of their mutual isolation and vulnerability.

1) Olivia Colman is great in it.
2) It is harrowing.
3) Not recommended as a pleasant evening's viewing if you are bothered by animal abuse, random unprovoked violence, casual racism on its way to escalating to full-time committed racism, spousal abuse, emotional abuse, child neglect, rape.

Some people have said it's uplifting in the sense that there's a glimmer of hope in Joseph by the end. I think there's a tiny bit of truth in that...this film makes you dig deep to empathise, but empathise you can, though it does test you to the very limits. Joseph is under no illusions about who he is, which just about saved him for me as a lead character. Hannah's lot seems grotesquely unfair, yet it's hard to swallow the idea that the only person she can possibly turn to (or would possibly turn to) is Joseph. The story seems to be told from the point of view of the role she has in bringing some kind of redemption to Joseph - personally speaking, I wondered where the redemption was coming from for her. 

Ultimately there are no great lessons to be drawn from this movie, other than life's shit for a lot of people because men are taking out their anger on whoever they can. I'm not sorry I've seen it, but I can't see myself ever sitting down to watch it again.

The Town

Picked this one up unashamedly on the basis that it features Jon Hamm from Mad Men :) have to say, I don't think I'd ever have heard of it otherwise.

Now then, Ben Affleck...has a mixed reputation, shall we say, and the fact that he directs this as well as stars in it may be enough to put some people off. 

The film is set in Charlestown, Boston and the main premise is that Charlestown has a long tradition of Irish-American criminality. Affleck is a bank robber, and the film begins with a heist. So far, so low-budget Heat.

Things that get you interested:

a) The gang take the bank manager hostage and then release her. One of the gang is all for doing her in (witness and so forth) but Affleck instead takes it upon himself to "keep an eye on her"...with predictable romantic developments. The inevitable tension between Sweetheart Affleck and Criminal Affleck is no surprise, but despite this the scenes in question are cleverly handled and leave you wondering exactly how this is going to play out.

b) Pete Postlethwaite in his last-but-one screen role. He's the mastermind of the operations, but as you come to realise the hold he's had over the gang - and their fathers before them - he emerges as a truly sinister figure. Memorable last scene too - the guy could act.

c) Jon Hamm - plays an FBI agent, smartly enough to let you believe that he can always get there first, right to the final scenes.

More a worth-a-watch than a must-see, but not a bad evening's entertainment.

Confetti

I don't remember there being much fuss about this when it came out, but I was intrigued by the cast first off - Robert Webb, Olivia Colman, Jessica Stevenson, Martin Freeman, Stephen Mangan...how terrible could it possibly be?

The plot is simple enough - a wedding magazine sets a competition for the most interesting themed wedding, and the film follows the couples - the naturists, the obsessively competitive tennis pros and the tone-deaf musical fans.

Well worth a watch as long as you don't object to any of the following, in my opinion:

• Robert Webb spending most of his scenes with his gentleman's apparatus on full public display
• Olivia Colman spending almost as many of her scenes with her lady-regions on full public display
• A gay couple
• Lots of stuff about weddings & wedding politics
• Lots of stuff about how weddings and the "wedding industry" are all a bit daft
• Some cheesy romantic bits

It's quite funny - chuckle rather than spit out your tea - and rather sweet in parts. My favourite characters were the gay wedding planners who in many ways had the warmest relationship of all the couples portrayed. It won't change your life or have you wanting to watch it again and again to memorise the funny bits, but it's a pleasant way to spend an evening.

The Lives of Others

This one's in German. Subtitle haters beware.


It's set in the 80s. The main character is Wiesler, an interrogator in the East German Stasi - and a good one. He's clinical, he's efficient, and he sticks to the letter of the rulebook. 


Wiesler is given an assignment of running surveillance on a playwright. Officially the reason is that he may be subversive, but Wiesler can see through this -  the official that wants the surveillance is infatuated with the playwright's actress girlfriend. The more Wiesler listens, the more he finds his assignment challenged by a growing respect for the man he is supposed to be trying to destroy.


This movie is slow paced and very much character-driven, but the unfolding situation becomes at first intriguing and finally compelling. The sense of the quiet power and threat of the regime grows steadily; no violence is ever shown, just the dawning realisation that this is a state where an individual is given no choice other than to do exactly as they are told. The characters are complex - Wiesler is both the big man and the small man, Sieland (the actress) is being corrupted but always retains some integrity, Dreyman (the playwright) is talented and respected and yet his ignorance of the surveillance makes him vulnerable. This gives the film a crucial element of unpredictability - you are never sure whether the goodness in each character will be able to transcend or be destroyed. What struck me is how beautifully weighted the ending is - no emotional scenes, but a kind of quiet justice. 


If you have the patience, I think you'll find this one satisfying.