I am feeling thoroughly sorry for myself this weekend. It started with headaches, fever and sore throat earning me some dodgy looks at the office as everybody tried not to mention ‘swine flu’ and it ended up with me longing for the kind of comfort cures my mother used when we were children like Vicks Vapo Rub and steaming mugs of Bovril.
Tesco, where every little helps, had the Bovril but now that I am ready, willing and able to fill a mug on that front, I find it is rather less enticing prospect than the alternatives which are hot port or hot whiskey. We always love the ones we shouldn’t want at all ,,,
But Tesco didn’t have the Vicks Vapo Rub though so I had a rummage around the shelves and reckoned the nearest equivalent was Deep Heat. They both contain eucalyptus – but a quick read of the list of other ingredients, which include turpentine and wool oil, was enough to convince me to try manufacturing my own version using a combination of olive oil (it is the only oil in the house), eucalyptus oil, a dash of lemon, and ground black pepper.
I reckon I need to heat these together to blend them and then I am going to try using the mixture as a rub. It can’t do any harm – it may help a bit with the breathing – and it sounds a lot safer than the turps and wool oil alternative.
If it works, I’ll be making the recipe available to the thousands of entrepreneurs out there in the twitterverse and hoping that they will get cracking on it a lot faster than they have on the other items on my menopause want list.
