A train full of wimps!

This morning I overheard a fellow commuter on the 6.35 train to London call a loved one on her mobile and say “...I'm dying...I've got a cold. If my company paid sick pay I'd have taken a few days to get over it! I'm not eating or anything....still smoking...but not eating.!”

Now, whilst it is clear that I am not medically trained (although this would presumably be a mere formality as I know all the medical terms from watching Casualty, Holby City, ER and House) I don't think that you can die from a cold. (That is unless you are a different type of bird and were one of the 160,000 chickens slaughtered seconds after being lulled into a false sense of security by hearing Bernard Matthews proclaiming over the tannoy that they were all “...bootiful”.)

Also, whilst the aforementioned dying woman sniffed a few times, she did not sneeze or blow her nose throughout the journey. Her symptoms were also not obvious to her “loved one” as she had to tell him/her therefore my advice to her would have been: -

1. Don't exaggerate your symptoms to get time off work,
2. Give up smoking,
3. Find someone new in your life who will notice when you are pretending to be ill,
4. Find somewhere else to sit on the train where your conversation won't be listened into