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Well blow me!

By Elisabeth Lopez - posted Friday, 12 September 2008


I hate Melbourne in late winter. I know never to book a season ticket for the Melbourne Film Festival, because I’ll have come down with a bad cold that leaves my immune system in tatters for a couple of months. I can set my watch, and plant my veggie garden, by it.

If there were a Tuberculosis Idol, I’d have a hot chance of winning. I would cough all over Dicko (a fetish only starting to appear in the psychiatric literature). Then I would launch into a croaky rendition of “Ken Lee”. Please Google “Bulgarian Idol” if you haven’t come across that one.

It’s a time of year when I have more viruses than friends. They may all come under the rubric of the common cold, but these microbes are like people in all their infinite variety.

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I’ve just had the Mohammed Haneef. That’s the one where you sweat it out indefinitely. I don’t even know if I’m done yet.

It started as the Costello. I had a slight ticker in my throat, but wasn’t sure if it was real.

A few days later, when it was finally unmasked, I was shocked to find I had in fact been harbouring a whopping Karadzic. I couldn’t believe it. It had seemed so mild to start with.

Last winter, I was spluttering, coughing and sniffing very loudly, to the point where complete strangers would tell me to shut up already. Everything tasted like cardboard. With a sinking feeling, I realised I had come down with the Sam Newman.

Once I started going back to work on overcrowded trains, it had mutated into the Brendan Nelson, with a concomitant approval rating from my fellow passengers. I think the 9 per cent of dissenters who didn’t want to kill me just felt sorry for me.

One evening I found myself in the same carriage as someone else with a cold. I was fascinated. I stepped off the train when he did, trotted down cobbled laneways, dodging splashes from cars careening through gutterside puddles, and found myself outside a gentlemen’s establishment. The bouncer told me money had changed hands so this guy could have some Vicks rubbed on his chest. Well blow me! I thanked him, and apologised for my Ruddy nose.

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I was no sooner over that one than I got the Bishop Fisher - not much throat or nasal discomfort; just a vague crankiness which I tried to ignore as I went about my business.

This turned into the Garnaut. I blame all those years as a smoker. I’m paying for it now. I’m working on getting my emissions down to 1990 levels. There’s still some hope, I’m told.

Or maybe I’m being over-optimistic. Maybe I really have the Murray-Darling, and my whole system is beyond repair. Forever.

So as winter plods on, I’m not taking any chances. I don’t want to catch the sort of cold I’m really dreading. I have to be 100 per cent sure I’m over the Haneef, as it’s a cold so notorious the only known cure is exile to Queensland.

I believe it’s called the Wayne Carey.

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About the Author

Elisabeth Lopez is a Melbourne journalist.

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All articles by Elisabeth Lopez

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