A Manly illness
As you should be aware I’m a bloke, and we don’t do being ill very well. A slight cough or snuffle, and we are at deaths door. Its fact! For the last two weeks I have been at said door, and I’m pleased to say I’ve come back from it, well almost all the way. What started out as a runny nose turned into a blocked nose, turned into a sore throat, turned into a dry cough, and then a productive cough, and now I have a cough.

I don’t mind that, I can put up with a cough, just apologies to those around who happen to hear me coughing, as I’m sure it does get annoying. However about a week and a half ago when I had the runny nose, I was most annoyed. It always, and i mean always gets worse at night and laying down its like a tap. Nee Niagara falls, and inevitably awake until the small hours and then miracles happen and one falls asleep.

With colds, and excessive nostril blowing comes a sore nose and upper lip. Tissue companies have cottoned onto this and a few years back they brought out their new tissue. Lets face it, a tissue is a tissue, its for wiping and blowing ones nose on. Even though, you can now get double ply, triple ply extra strength squared triple ply, and then it happened. The Tissue with the balm, Kleenex (tm) Balsam tissue.

As we can see on the right, there is a nice little nose, for "imagery" purposes, and there is even the silver "lining of protection" that their protective balsam offers. WHO? oh who finds that the top of their nose hurts and the skin on the top of their nose is sore when they have a cold? I certainly don’t, yes the little line goes down the under our manikins nose, but the majority of the "protection" is sitting above the nose.

Maybe its me, but I think that there is a nice little hole in the tissued product range for these companies to make a better solution to this problem, which inevitably will be found, and these will look like the regular tissue off the toilet roll, which to some people just isn’t what is used for a nose. And yes, im sure that when these come out I will bash them too, and then be hailing this product as the "tissue for the common cold" and asking why we need a new product for colds, but until that day happens, I’m sticking with good old toilet roll.

• Its cheaper
• It comes in a longer packet
• Its more versatile
• and finally it isn’t trying to persuade me that its done something to make me feel better when quite frankly I feel like crap!