Man Flu

March 9th, 2006 5

Today I are been mostly suffering with Man Flu. Yes, that most common of conditions where the merest sniffle leads us men folk to declare that we “feel like death”.

So as I sat at work, not really suffering whatsoever, I got to thinking about the common man cold (or to give it it’s full name “Homosniffus-Sciveaday“) and it’s place in the history of this great nation.

At first I drew a blank, it appeared that all mention of this disease had been wiped from the history books, erased by those ashamed to even speak it’s name. But a renewed determination yielded some surprising facts.

For instance, did you know that the first cases of plague in London were thought to be nothing more than a new strain of Man Flu? Of course they quickly realized that this wasn’t the case when people started exhibiting real symptoms rather than just complaining a lot because they had “a bit of a sniffle”.

The next recorded case of the dreaded affliction was in 1750, when on March 2nd there was a small earth quake in London. What most of these so called ‘History‘ sites wont tell you is that it was actually a young baker Frank Littlebottom sneezing to emphasize his flued-up-ness and making entirely too much of it.

So it would appear that Man Flu is nothing new, for hundreds of years men have been complaining about a case of the sniffles, I’m just proud to be able to keep up this fine tradition. *sniff*

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