THE old wives were wrong. Rather than ‘feeding a cold and starving a fever’, the only surefire remedy against potentially life-threatening flu is an annual jab.

There is no questioning the danger posed by neglecting a bout of flu, especially for the more vulnerable such as the very young, those who suffer from heart disease, diabetes or asthma, and the elderly. These high-risk groups should, at this time of year, be visiting their GP to be inoculated.

A recent survey conducted in the UK — don’t you just love them? — revealed that one in 20 thought that carrying garlic could ward off flu. Add a cross, a wooden stake and a phial or two of holy water, and you’ll probably be okay against random attacks from vampires.

Lemon, honey, garlic and various other natural remedies may be good for warding off colds, but they don’t cure flu. Nor, apparently, does staying indoors after washing your hair until it is perfectly dry, or wearing a vest smeared with goose fat.

For decades the world has been poised on the brink of some flu-like pandemic on the scale of the influenza outbreak that killed millions immediately after the First World War. The threat of bird flu comes and goes, more often than not fanned by sensational media speculation. And what of all the diseases which have been supposed to wipe out the human race since the dawn of the 21st century?

Whatever happened to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and all the other soon forgotten diseases that have dominated tabloid headlines? My deepest fear in the lead-up to the selection process for the new inmates of Charlie Chuckle’s Laughter Factory was how to avoid contracting election fever. There is no inoculation, and the disease can be severe if not treated at the outset.

In less serious cases, which normally pass after a few glasses of fizz at a post-election party, sufferers exhibit the desire to wear rosettes, tie posters to trees and lamp-posts, deliver leaflets, attend a hustings or two and stand outside a polling station in the freezing cold.

In mild infections, the symptoms lie dormant for up to six years. More severe cases, however, can lead to periods of pointless political office in which the sufferer becomes an object of public derision. Symptoms begin with the victim signing a Senatorial nomination paper, attending all the hustings, campaigning on a daily basis, risking life and limb to erect huge posters and banners at road intersections and across highways, and taking polling day off work to dedicate 24 hours to getting the preferred candidate elected. The symptoms may then persist. There are the Deputies elections, and by-elections, and eventually the whole process begins all over again.

Fortunately, I have not exhibited any symptoms for ten years — and it appears that the majority of Islanders have been just as fortunate. The paltry 40 parishioners who attended the Grouville hustings were evidence of the prevailing apathy.

In my years as a JEP reporter covering hustings and assemblies in every parish, Grouville always boasted one of the best attendance records, with the parish hall packed to the rafters and the audience spilling into the porch. Such a poor turnout a fortnight ago is indicative of the electorate’s indifference to this election. I have, in the past, been an election campaigner myself. Apart from relying on a dose of common sense, taken three times a day with food, and a course of antihistamines, how did I manage to find a cure? It’s simple. I went on holiday.

This is a remedy I can recommend for a number of ills. In a cold winter, more moons ago than I care to recall, as Jersey was covered in snow, I developed chilblains on my right big toe. My GP, knowing that I was about to embark on a trip to Australia, cunningly advised heading south for warmer climes. A somewhat expensive cure, perhaps, but one that worked instantly.

And for four wonderful days over the weekend before last, I escaped. As the aircraft banked over Bonne Nuit and headed north-west, the thought of elections and all the angst of a two-month wait for a new part for the washing machine were left behind.

I was heading for my beloved Cornwall, for a sheltered little hamlet tucked away off the breathtakingly beautiful natural harbour of Falmouth and the Cornwall Food and Drink Festival in Truro. The weather was perfect, the people were polite and friendly — well, apart from the woman I cut up on a roundabout — and the food and drink was, at every tasting, proudly local, fresh and wonderful.

As a hot sun set over Falmouth on the last Saturday of September, and we sat on a seawall in Flushing, supping Cornish ale, I thought to myself what better way to say goodbye to the summer I had welcomed with hundreds of others at midnight on May Day in Padstow. ‘Unite, unite, let us all unite,’ we sang with gusto on that chill, clear night, ‘for summer is a-coming today.’

Best of all, there wasn’t an election poster in sight. Nothing from Launceston to Looe and from Malpas to Mousehole.
Then . . . back to election reality. The taxi purred down the Airport Road and there they were, the election candidates in their curious hues, smiling out from every vantage point. There are green ones, and a pink one, several blue ones and some yellow ones, and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
Just five days to go, folks, and it starts all over again. I can’t wait.