Apparently, there are concerns about the long term effects of many cold remedies on the estimated 25 million persons who are haemochromatosis heterozygotes. I don't think I am a haemeochromatosis heterozygote, but I don't know, it's been a long while since I last checked to see if I was a heterozygote and if so what kind. A long while. Clearly, I have been neglecting my heterozygotosifications. You can hardly blame me though, as I have a cold.

And I have already eaten an unfeasibly large quantity of chicken soup, though there is room for more.

This cold has made me incapable of anything but eating. I can't sleep, I think, as each time I try I just lie there drowning in mucus until I get up and eat something else. The night before last I ate nearly a whole bag of carrot and broccoli together with an unreasonable amount of pasta, then couldn't sleep. Last night it was chicken soup, lasagne, the rest of the carrot and broccoli, a bunch of spinach, rocket and watercress and whatever else in the kitchen wasn't actually nailed down or marked 'Nana', followed by various hot lemon and honey and ginger and whiskey drinks which ought to be nice and taste of something, only don't, not with this kind of cold, until it was time to stop pretending I was able to sleep and make some coffee.

While waiting for the coffee to brew I had a glass of orange juice, a glass of tomato juice, and an avocado stuffed with supposedly 'hot' horseradish sauce.

I have looked it up on the internet and I believe have now cracked the whole 'hot horseradish sauce isn't actually hot' problem. Gernot Katzer explains it once and for all - you have about twenty minutes after the horseradish is grated before the active ingredient dissipates, and he could not state it more clearly: 'the tearful process of grating must be repeated several times during the meal'.

I must find and plant some horseradishes. Proper Khreyn will be mine.

Assuming I survive this cold of course. Later today I have to go play the piano, though I won't bother trying to sing. On the way back, I will purchase chicken soup ingredients. Even Wikipedia says that there is little to choose between chicken soup, zinc supplements, whisky and vitamin C when it comes to enduring a cold, and you can keep your zinc supplements to yourself, thanks.

Finally, I also learn from Sillipedia that "researchers at the Common Cold Centre at the University of Cardiff [9] recently demonstrated that cold temperatures can lead to a greater susceptibility to viral infection. They showed that a group of people who sat with their feet in cold water for 20 minutes a day for a week had a 1 in 3 chance of developing cold symptoms during that week", as against a control group who sat with their feet in an empty bowl, only one in ten of whom caught colds.

This is where I went wrong. I must stop sitting with my feet in cold water for 20 minutes a day. But it feels so good.

Why does everything that is fun turn out to be no good for you?