# Tim Dowling: can a cold get me out of a busy weekend? Yes, but not mine

I have a cold, which has given me a fuzzy head, watering eyes and a determination to be very poor company. This is possibly why I find myself alone on a Friday morning, trying to remember why I came into the kitchen. Perhaps I wanted a coffee, I think. But I’m holding a coffee.

The front door opens. The dog runs in, leaps up and places two muddy paws on my chest.

“Ugh,” I say.

“Not very nice out there,” my wife says, coming in behind the dog, coat dripping with rain.

“Ugh,” I say again, because my wife missed the first one.

“Still no better, I take it,” she says.

“No,” I say.

“We’ve been invited to lunch on Sunday,” she says. “I said I would have to ask you.”

“Fine, say yes,” I say. “Who knows? I might be better by then.”

The next day, I feel worse. I wish to be excused from our regular Saturday morning double dog walk, but an opportunity does not present itself, and I end up in a wet field, with the big dog bounding ahead and the little dog getting stuck in the mud, while my wife runs through our schedule. The oldest one and his girlfriend are coming over for supper, she reminds me, and he is going to cook.

> I lie on the sofa with my coat on, imagining how a person conditioned to look on the bright side might view the weekend

“If I have one regret,” I say, “it’s that I never learned to chop really fast, like a chef.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Then you could chop things as you needed them. I have to prepare everything in advance.”

He leans over to consult a bound notebook bearing the logo of Chelsea Football Club.

“What’s that?” I say.

“The recipes,” he says.

“I write out my recipes in longhand?” I say.

“I suppose,” I say.

“If you screenshot recipes, you spend ages trying to find them again,” he says.

“I think,” she says, pausing to sneeze. “I think I’ll ring up and explain, as a courtesy. But I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I mean, it’s only a cold,” I say.

“Exactly,” she says. I go downstairs to make coffee, with the dog at my heels. When I return my wife is sitting up in bed, looking perplexed.

“What happened?” I say.

“She said, ‘Oh well, best not risk it,’ and hung up.”

“So we’re not going?” I say.

“I wasn’t prepared for this,” she says.

“What are we going to do instead?” I say.

“You’re going to walk the dog,” she says. “And I’m going back to bed.”
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