Man up

Dave Barry, the straight man’s David Sedaris, once wrote about the ‘Martian Death Flu’*.  A funny column I seem to recall, and an excellent example of the gender that does not have to give birth hugely over-reacting to minor health inconveniences.

Documentation of illness has, naturally enough, evolved over the years, like germs developing a resistance to Lucozade, a bubbling coppery liquid guzzled by wan tots in my youth and, if my colleague who told me this the other day is to be believed, loaded with caffeine, which would explain its restorative effect on the metabolism of a seven year old in 1970, if nothing else.

Dickens wrote movingly of poxes and ailments.  Operas trade in consumptive maids, oddly able to sing about their condition for three hours at a stretch.  In the 1970s there were a lot of films like ‘Love Story’, where a happy, handsome couple started a new life together, until he or she got something cinematic.  Luckily this trend ended with a bang in the 80’s when family members were killed not by a virus but by terrorists, enabling 110 minutes of bloody retribution by the Slow One, the Austrian One or the Balding One.

Journalism has cultivated a reputation for sensitively chronicling illness, and anyone that does so is to be applauded and rewarded, by getting better.  This is because when you feel under the weather, the last thing you feel like being is creative.  I’ve had a cold for the last two days and the only thing I have crated is a mound of crumpled tissues next to my bed that would put the floor of a bedroom of a teenager in a house with no parental controls on the internet to shame.

In the age of social media, people are able to share their experiences of being ill in the short, medium and long term and get support and sympathy.  A word of warning though, if you start reading any post titled ‘does this look normal?’ think twice before scrolling down.  Then don’t.

One of the worst things about being ill is that one cannot enjoy it.  Normally if somebody were to suggest to you that you should spend a few days in bed watching TV† and being brought sustaining broths, you might show an interest.  However, if the quid pro quo is a tickly cough that really gets going a few minutes after you want to get to sleep, you might be wondering if finally getting to see every season of ‘Will & Grace’ is actually worth the cost.

It’s not.  When you have a cold you suffer the double whammy of feeling ill, but not having the flu, the one everyone takes seriously.  Even the name ‘Common’, means that it’s undistinguished.  Best thing to do is hunker down and plot vile revenge upon all those bastards who still insist on soldiering on into work, on public transport, your public transport, instead of taking a couple of days to get better.

And frankly, anyone with the fortitude to successfully write about, photograph, paint, draw, etch, stain glass window or otherwise document their ailment deserves plaudits for being able to condense a cohesive thought in a medicated mind, even if that medication is simply caffeine and about 800% of the RDA of sugar for an adult, courtesy of ‘Lockets’.  This on top of the disturbance to the mental processes brought about by the constant consideration you are giving to spraying your hands with sanitiser, and the face of anyone who sneezes near you with CS gas, the next time you leave the house.

Having learned never to Google symptoms, the internet is, I suppose, a decent place for the snotty and the coughy to exchange supportive messages and a sure sign of mankinds’ advancement to a point beyond issuing anyone afflicted with anything with a pot of paint to mark their door and a bell to ring to advise others of their condition.  Insert topical joke about underfunding of NHS here.

Ironically, it marks a healthy relationship with illness that is very British, such as is not exhibited by tourists you see wearing surgical masks on London’s streets.  Not many haiku about snot.

* Don’t know where he wrote this originally** and for those who have not read the rest of the blog post before skipping to this footnote, can’t be arsed to research it.  However, I can tell you that it’s collected in the Pan paperback ‘Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits’.  This was published in 1988 when the only way to access transatlantic written humour was to go to the US or to buy collections such as this one, lovingly put together by an editor.  This was before the internet, and meant there was a lot of quality control.  The two conditions may not be entirely unrelated.

** Miami Herald most likely, just looked at the introduction to the book.

† Or as it’s known these days, ‘Netflix’.  Being in bed for a couple of days offered an excellent opportunity to catch up on all those documentaries that I have taped‡ and had hoped to catch up on when I had the time.  However, I have discovered that the perfect sickbed viewing is actually horror, specifically anything with a zombie in it.  I love a gory special effect as much as the next man, but nothing I’ve seen on screen compares to the contents of my tissue bin when it comes to biohazard.

‡ Should this be recorded?  Fuck it, I’m going to carry on using ‘taped’ until everyone stops using ‘dialled’.