"There's plenty of it about," people say, which is little comfort when you've got two children off school with 'flu and you feel you may also be coming down with it.

Being as much a part of life in Britain as the changeable weather, colds and 'flu are subjects upon which people are always ready to give advice. Whether it's some miracle remedy they bought over the counter in Boots or a strange concoction born out of an old wives' tale originating in 1621.

"Drink plenty of water," is usually the first thing people say when you're flu-ridden. So you do, then you find yourself in the middle of Tesco with a three-quarter-full trolley and a full-to-bursting bladder.

This happened to me recently and, after asking for help, an assistant kindly watched over my purchases while I visited the ladies.

Still, it's better than the salt-water gargle many people recommend for sore throats. I remember going to bed feeling like my tonsils had been rubbed down with coarse-grain sandpaper. Or maybe that was because I'd been chewing on a chilli pepper for an hour - a supposedly tried and tested anti-flu remedy recommended by an old school friend whose boyfriend I once stole.

Adding sugar to the juice of an onion is supposed to cure coughs - well it is according to an elderly neighbour of my parents (an old wife if ever I saw one). I tried this on my children - who have both been off school with hacking coughs and high temperatures - and they haven't looked me in the eye since.

I had a sip myself and it was as palatable as a kick in the teeth. You will try anything when you've got, or believe your're getting, a cold. Colds and 'flu are so incapacitating. I'm on holiday this week and, because my children have been struck down and have filled the house with hideous flu germs, I just know I'll get it. I just know that when I'm supposed to be visiting my sister in London and having a fantastic time Christmas shopping at Camden Market I will be holed up in our front room under a duvet watching re-runs of Can't Cook, Won't Cook.

Still, I should be able to fight anything off. Our medicine cabinet is better stocked than Boots' pharmacy. I have plied my children with every cough and cold remedy known to man to keep them at school. It sounds callous but I've got too much to do to be playing Florence Nightingale around the clock. They've had Benylin, Nurofen, Calpol. You name it they've had it. Yet still they succumbed to the cold affecting virtually every family in the neighbourhood. For the past fortnight our home has looked like a set from Holby City with blankets, pillows, bottles of medication and jugs of water in every room

My belief is that, try as you may, when you catch a cold nothing really works. Fair enough, you can subdue the symptoms - a hot toddy (whisky mixed with hot milk) is in my opinion the best for that but I can't really dish that out to a seven and five year old. You have to let it ride - cough, splutter - and go around wheezing "There's a lot of it about."

Updated: 10:00 Tuesday, December 09, 2003