Have you noticed how when you travel, especially in one of those airborne sardine-can-torture-chamber things otherwise known as planes, you have a tendency to get sick?  My dearly beloved has a serious propensity for this.  I dose both of us up with echinaacea for 3 days before we travel.  And I maintain the dosage for 3 days after travel too.

We sit side-by-side, eat the same food, drink the same drinks for the duration of the trip.  Why is it that Graham develops a cold (that generally goes to his chest) within 48 hours of landing and I never do?  Maybe it’s because I watch “chick flicks” and he doesn’t???

Anyway, this year’s departure from Les Terraces was worse then ever before.  Graham has been SICK.  Not just plain old man-flu (sorry, darling), but  really sick.  There are things rattling around in his chest that I’m sure ought not to be there.  You know that he’s tom and dick when a) he’s still asleep at 11AM and, b) he doesn’t go and join the old farts for a sundowner.

At Tanya’s recommendation I added Kyolic Garlic to the regimen of home remedies (Jewish penicillin, AKA chicken soup, and echinacea), plus commercial cough/cold suppressants.  No change, other than being $17 poorer.  Princess told me that bush was the answer, so I tended bar for her while she went up the hill and picked bush for us.  She returned with Neem and Rainfall (I think).  A bag full of it.  She sat at the table and tore off stems of both plants and described exactly how I ought to steep the leaves to make a tea for Graham.

I did as I was told (bush tea is a fabulous remedy).  Graham took one sip and went (as only Snoopy can) bleuch!  I asked if some honey would help?  I can’t repeat the reply!  I tasted the offending brew – it is truly disgusting.  Really, really nasty.  But if it works, who are we to complain?  Graham doesn’t know, but there’s another dose steeping as we speak.  He WILL get better.  Or perhaps I’d be better off just taking him back to France?