Although I do try to be healthy and look after myself, if left to my own devices I can be pretty cavalier about my health: this is usually demonstrated by the fact that I’ll randomly go through 2-3 month phases of eating cereal all the time, by throwing caution to the wind during deadline time and subsisting on lucozade and 4 hours’ sleep, and taking 2 ibuprofen and 2 paracetamol together if I feel a migraine coming my way (not to mention I went through a phase of taking Ibuprofen every 4 hours (instead of every 6 hours) because I hadn’t bothered to read the instructions at any point before then).

I always wondered where I got this ridiculous streak from; today I realised.

I called up my Dad a bit ago to ask him to pick up some max-strength cold and flu capsules (I’ve only got one dose left - eek!) and some tickly cough medicine (as my throat is now taking on the brunt of the cold’s anger). He said he would, and he as well asked whether he’d also like me to fetch round “The Cure”. Assuming he didn’t mean the band, I asked him what the cure was. This was his reply:

You need four raw garlics. Chuck them down you. Then you need 4 teaspoons of coffee in a very strong coffee, get that down you. Right, now, you’re allowed up to 6 pro-plus a day, but you take 10 of them. And this is the important bit; you need this next bit or else you won’t get any sleep, you’ll just want to go for a run. You’ll need a quarter bottle of Southern Comfort. Drink it as fast as you can. Then you go to bed in all your clothes and coat. Then sleep, you’ll sweat it out of you. The next morning you’ll feel tired and hungry, but you’ll be cold-free.
See, our kid*, I’m not just a dentist!

If you were wondering (or considering contacting the NHS to voice your concerns), my dad isn’t a dentist, but he calls himself one because of his escapades from last year when - driven to distraction for weeks because of a seriously fucked up tooth which was causing him absolute agony with no let up, and unable to get an NHS dentist any time soon - he decided to perform his own extraction.

So he drank 12 cans of Fosters, 2 large glasses of wine, and half a bottle of Southern Comfort (that features a lot in his medical procedures…) and extracted the tooth… with some plyers.

So I reckon that this might be where I get my casual indifference to my health from…

Oh, and if anyone was wondering: I told Dad just to fetch the medicines I’d asked for. Though if I’m no better by Monday, then I might have to have a crack at (a lower-risk version of) The Cure.

;)