On Saturday night I coughed and I coughed. As I went upstairs, the boys came rushing from their bedrooms to hug me and say, “Mama, are you alright?” Herself emerged to say, “I hope that this isn’t contagious.” Sometime later I went upstairs again. She emerged from her room and said, “Look, stay upstairs or stay downstairs but this ominous approaching coughing is really disturbing.”
On Sunday morning, I had to leave the church to cough in the porch. One of the neighbours came out and asked me was I alright and would she go to the shop and get me cough medicine. The mortification. Herself told me that all that could be heard in the quiet contemplation after communion was me hacking away in the porch.
So, you know, I’m improving.
I think these coughs become almost self-perpetuating after a while when the throat is so raw from days and days of coughing.
I have so far dodged the bullet but practically every winter I get stricken by a nasty virus somewhere around this time, so I am waiting for that shoe to drop. The older people in the village I come from were blaming the outbreak of nasty colds on the unseasonably warm weather – the folk wisdom has it that a cold snap kills off the germs whereas instead it was so balmy that daffodils were popping up.
My mother insisted I bring back a pot of blackcurrant jam in case I get a cold in the near future – she recommends making a hot drink with it. Her house is awash with jam and marmalade after the freezer died over Christmas and we had to triage the contents into – still frozen, go to kindly local grocer’s freezer; totally spoiled and must be thrown out; thawed but not spoiled and must be cooked pronto. Then I went off to the pub and she made jam from twelve pounds of fruit that night (raspberry, strawberry and gooseberry) and about three more (blackcurrant) the next day. We had our doubts about the still frozen marmalade oranges so we got those back the other day (seven pounds) and made marmalade. The recipe is an “easy” one but still way more work than jam.
Eimear, happily, I am finally recovered and even the cough is almost, though not entirely, vanquished. I am very impressed by your jam and marmalade making. Did your mother have a chest freezer by any chance? Do you remember when they were everywhere?