How to define the cold that’s ruining your day? There’s a hierarchy. We start with the sniffle, the mere runny nose, scratchy throat or just feeling a little off. This is the slight cold. The nose becoming more blocked than runny, and a cough coming into play, entitles you to call it a heavy cold. Any of the aforementioned symptoms worsening, accompanied by hotness, shiveriness, aching and general misery, gives you the right to call it a stinking cold. There’s also a malady known as man-flu, but I have no truck with such a lazy, gender-specific categorisation.
The only good thing about the stinking cold is that you have the green light to do sod all and repair to bed. This was me for three days this week, and it has firmed up a theory I have long held that you’re better off getting a stinker because it tends to come and go and be done with more quickly than the other varieties. This theory, I should point out, is based on my lived experience rather than any clinical expertise or any kind of research. Sorry – I felt too ill to bother with anything of the kind.
