Having a cold is the absolute worst.

It makes you realise how much you take your health and fully functioning nasal passages for granted. If, like me, you find yourself with a cold roughly every 12 days, a pattern will start to emerge in your Mam's disparaging phrases. As we all know, the best way to get over a cold is to be inundated with an outpouring of sympathy. Would a call from the President be too much? Unlikely. Instead, we get a lecture series on the importance of wearing a jacket, from Mammy dearest. Here's 21 things anyone that's suffered a life-threatening cold has undoubtedly heard from their Mam...

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1. This is what you get for going out without a coat on 12th December 2013. Didn't I tell you you'd get sick? 2. I threw out 6 oranges last week, gone mouldy. Maybe if you'd eaten them you wouldn't be in this state. 3. Instead of moping around the house, you could make yourself useful and help out with the hoovering. 4. You better not pass your germs onto me, I've a busy week coming up. 5. That'll go down into your chest now if you're not careful. 6. A night out? When you're here dying sick with a cold? More the fool you. 7. Didn't I warn you it wasn't warm enough to be wearing that skimpy jumper. 8. I won't be putting on the heating just because you're cold. Have you any idea how much it's costing us? 9. Your father rang, said you should listen to Coldplay, haha! 10. Have you taken anything? Have another Lemsip. 11. Don't use all them tissues, we'll have none left. 12. There's flat 7 Up in the kitchen, you may go down and get it yourself. 13. This is what you get for going to bed with a wet head last week. 14. I'm not buying those Actimels anymore because they're obviously a load of shite. 15. Get plenty of fluids into you now. 16. I'm going getting this house checked for draughts because this is why you're always sniffling. 17. Maybe if you weren't going out with bare legs in APRIL you wouldn't have this problem. 18. A cup of tea? And specifically WHAT did your last slave die of? 19. Put that Vicks on your feet now before you go to bed. 20. I have no sympathy for you, so you can stop feeling sorry for yourself. 21. Hang on a second. You'd wonder, if you can get a cold, why can't you get a WARM?