FLU POWDER

If by any chance, I happened to be called up by the Ministry of Defence and asked for ideas, I think... (once I’d gotten over the shock of it, and then they had gotten over the idea of asking a pacifist for advice) that I would have a frankly marvellous suggestion for them, which (if I'm right) would help prevent all their gadgets, guns and gizmos falling into the wrong hands.

Well, let’s say: ‘stop selling them and their allies our top-of-the-range military hardware, for a start!’ of course, but assuming that the thorny matter of international arms-dealing is out of the way, I think I have it - a pretty impenetrable, foolproof system for prevention of the loss of secure equipment and the critical data it contains...

Wrap it all in the same stuff they pack Beecham’s Flu Powders in.

Honestly. Half an hour I was, picking away at the cellophane-sealed box, trying to get one tiny bit of plastic loose at either end. My fingernails scratched at it, my keys couldn’t find a way in, I nearly sliced a finger off with the vegetable knife, and even the scissors only seemed to vaguely score the surface.

What is that stuff? How have they fashioned such unpierceable plastic? And to what end? Were they rehearsing drills for atomic bomb blasts at the Beecham’s factory in the 60s when someone said: ‘Well we’d obviously all be vapourised but surely we want our cough and cold medicines to survive long into the nuclear winter, eh lads...’?

I did get in. I used the tip of the bread knife to poke a hole, and after a bit of sawing, the wonder-stuff peeled away.

Then, ironically, I discovered that while Mister Beecham had clearly been keen on exo-protection for his patented flu powder box, his team clearly lacked the same attention for detail when it came to figuring out the design of the sachets inside.

They’re paper, rather like the sugar sachets you get in greasy spoon cafés. Only, unlike those saccharin-filled tubelets, which have a rippable perforation a quarter of an inch from the top... these guys are actually already open... at both ends.

Unaware of this extraordinary bit of origami engineering, I twisted open the cap of my water bottle, slid a paper sachet out of the box... and watched, as a teaspoon’s worth of fine white powder slipped gently and silently onto the kitchen floor. It looked like I had become a kind of drug dealer for local rodents.

I cleaned that up (the last thing anyone needs is a nest of tripping field mice), carefully extricated another sachet and poured it into my water bottle. Then I shook the whole thing up like a snow globe and took a swig.

I hope it’s doing me good. It tasted like drinking washing powder, which, by the way, I think I read, might actually be a thing now? Some kids started eating detergent apparently, and it turned into one of those mad crazes - like when teenagers started hiding in wardrobes in Stockholmhaven so they could party after it closed. It’s always been remarkable how as you get older, your eyesight deteriorates but you can somehow see further than a lot of much younger people. Someone should tell them to stop eating that stuff.

I do feel better. Either: time, toast, flu powder, sleep, or the little burst of fresh air I had had, seems to have reinvigorated my constitution somewhat. Of course, as the hymn writer forgot to mention, the Lord God (also) made them all, and so whichever it was of those things that did the trick, my thanks flow ever upwards.

I think next time though, I’ll stick with Lemsips.