A Cold

Fantasy Bob is suffering from a cold.  He is of course not alone.  Some clever clogs has worked out that on any one day over 230 million cricketers worldwide have a cold.  Also, there is a probability of 1 in 26 that any cricketer you meet at any time will have a cold.  This law does not apply on the Lothian Transport buses on which FB travels, where the probability of the cricketer sitting next to FB having a cold, is at all times and under any circumstances is 1 in 1.

There are over 200 viruses which can cause cold like symptoms.  Fantasy Bob may well have them all.  Still, miserable as he feels now, he will recover in a few days, such is the usual progress of the condition.  He will have passed the germ on to some other soul on a Lothian Transport bus.  And so it goes round.

Colds also happen during the cricket season and it may be that a summer cold is worse than a winter cold.  This is hard to determine - for FB the cold that he has is always worse than any cold he ever had or is likely to have.  It is absolute.

Yet whenever FB has had a summer cold he has invariably found a game of cricket can help him get over it. Moderate exercise and fresh air are often suggested as a therapy.  But this is where other cricketers need to take care - it is reckoned that most germs are spread by hands - so whenever a cold-ridden FB handles the ball he turns it into a time-bomb and other players would be well advised to avoid touching it.  But for a batsman to call at a fielder lining himself up for a simple catch 'Watch out the ball's got FB's germs on it.' could be interpreted as obstructing the field and the catch would be deemed invalid.  FB has found that a monster sneeze can have the same impact on the fielder, but will rarely be penalised.

There are many traditional remedies for colds which have been handed down from grandmother to grandmother. Some of them may even work.  But FB's guaranteed remedy is biscuits.  A couple of biscuits will banish the ague.  Just about any biscuit has magical healing properties, but chocolate digestives may have  the greatest potency.   FB takes his faith in the efficacy of this treatment from the old phrase taught to him by his mother and his grandmother - Feed a cold; starve a fever. Or is it the other way round? Starve a cold feed a fever. They both sound right to FB - so FB prescribes biscuits in both circumstances.