It was all going so well. We’d spent months rehearsing to play music at the local folk festival. We’d written songs, rehearsed them diligently and were ready to roll. And then I got a cold. Not just any cold, but the 2024 megasaurus-cold (to use the medical term) that has taken almost every nose, throat and chest in the state hostage so that it can work its evil magic. From the first sniffle, I knew I was in trouble. This, it seemed, would ruin everything.
Sometimes these things seem to come out of nowhere before mugging you senseless. But I knew exactly where my cold had come from. It wasn’t from public transport, a crowded restaurant or a trip to the cinema. No, sir. This was from a work meeting, at which I was seated next to someone who seemed quite unwell. Which, as it turns out, they were. Worse still, it was a meeting that could easily have been conducted online save that the party who was now so contagious he was giving the monkey from the film ‘Outbreak’ a serious run for his money had preferred to meet in person.
It started on a weekend, a slight scratch at the back of the throat that may or not be anything much, before graduating to an infestation of the nasal cavities that was utterly unambiguous. Clearly, I was now sick. But how sick would be the question.
It was Monday, but like an exceptionally short meteorologist, I was under the weather. In fact, it was as if the weather had fallen from a great height and I was trapped underneath, unable to move. I generally find with colds that there’s a period of denial, during which I convince myself that I can power on through and somehow rise above the illness. Likely brainwashed by advertising, I feel the need to ‘solider on’ until I am declared unfit for service and sent home.
I suspect the whole ‘soldier on’ thing is now out of fashion. Ever since Covid, turning up to the office with so much as a skin blemish is enough to send people scurrying for the exits, with co-workers hiding under their desks whilst flicking holy water in your general direction. But as a lifelong defender of skivvies and cords, I’ve always been out of fashion. That said, I didn’t want to cause trouble, so to avoid any awkwardness, I decided I could work from home, even though I had a brain fog such that if my head were an airport, all flights would be temporarily suspended.
On Tuesday, I was due to meet with the same people who gifted me a cold that I was now convinced was so big that, like the Chadstone Shopping Centre, it could be seen from space. Once again, the meeting was to be ‘in person’, but this time I put my foot down – partly because I reasoned that enough was enough and partly because I was dizzy and needed to plant my foot on some serious terra firma to keep my balance. I declared on Monday that I would only be available to attend in an on-line capacity.
Then I awoke on Tuesday and could not speak. At all. This pretty much ruled me out from meeting in any capacity as no-one wants to sit through someone trying to explain their ideas using the gift of mime. Soldiering on had failed and I was now totally mute. This is unsettling at the best of times but is especially unnerving when you’re supposed to be singing in four days.
I tried to do everything right. I rested, attempted to sleep, drank an unfathomable quantity of lemon juice and inhaled a lot of steam. It was now a race against time; a race in which the stewards had seen fit to saddle me with an enormous handicap and start me pointing the wrong way as the barrier gates opened. I was up against it.
Colds are tricky things. You think you know how they’ll behave and just when you think they’re about to leave, they kick a chair over and set the curtains on fire. But then, the slightest sliver of hope. By Wednesday, I could speak. Not very much and not especially well, but I was able to emit entire sentences, even if they sounded as though they were being mumbled through a plateful of gravel. But being able to mumble something vaguely intelligible is a long way short of singing. Hoping for the best, I tried to rehearse on Thursday, only to find that I couldn’t make my way from one end of a song to the other.
By Friday, things were looking grim. It was too late to cancel, so I gave serious consideration to performing our set either as instrumentals or having Katrina do all the singing. On Saturday, I went running. What running does – for me at least – is warm everything up, including my voice. As I trundled along, I found a few notes. Perhaps I’d be able to get through this thing after all. There was nothing more I could do.
We started on time. Something that sounded vaguely musical leapt from my throat. A couple of songs in and we tackled the most difficult tune in our repertoire – a country version of ‘It’s Raining Men’ – and emerged relatively unscathed. Then the most amazing thing happened; it started to get easier. We were going to make it. By the time we sang our last note, it took everything not to collapse under the weight of relief.
It was a triumph. So much so, that I didn’t really feel the need to confront the person who’d infected me in the first place by insisting that we meet in person despite him being radioactively infectious. Nor did I feel the need to ask why the organisers had decided to tempt fate by scheduling the event at the very height of cold and flu season. I just felt grateful. Not that I’m entirely over it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to lie down for a while.