Born September 29
If they are not careful, people born on this day become the very worst kind of hypochondriac. You measure it by the amount of suffering inflicted on other people and boy, do they inflict. When it comes to worries about mortal contact with illness-inducing situations, nothing outstrips the male sex. Most girls fret about their bad backs, period pains, headaches, inability to conceive, overability to conceive, broken nails, lank hair and cellulite with more or less the same intensity. But with male September 29, it takes on cinematic proportions. They are the first to turn to the Daily Mail health pages. Just reading them makes them ill, hearts breaking in sympathy with obsessive reportage about others’ nonspecific syndromes. Thermometer in mouth, they wonder gloomily why their temperature is dropping. It’s because the profoundly bored thermometer has itself slipped into unconsciousness. Male September 29 is what he reads. The sun is dangerous. He can’t go out. Meat is dangerous. He doesn’t eat it. Water is contaminated. He can’t drink it, or swim. Ice lollies are a health danger. The humble chocolate bar lurks to eliminate his teeth. Worst professions for extreme male hypochondria include journalism, television, advertising, taxi driving, art history, telephone switchboard operator, teaching and social work. Anybody who marries them has to have a medicine cabinet which is so full of bottles it regularly falls off the wall. Wives must also be prepared for him to rise early and perform a series of warding-off-disease rituals, including gargling with salt water, running, cold showers, vitamin pills, standing on the head, cotton knickers hand washed in anti-allergenic soapflakes, specially constructed breakfast cereals and several minutes devoted to worrying about the cancer inducing properties of his portable telephone. Advice? Ignore the first lot and throw the telephone away. He’ll be grateful that you’ve saved his life! Although this may not be the first reaction.
Body
Since you’re so preoccupied with your problem fate, why not cheer yourself up and read the tea leaves? The ritual associated with this doesn’t include teabags. Make tea in a pot. Don’t strain it. Drink the tea, until a teaspoonful of liquid is left at the bottom. Hold the cup in left hand and move three times in a circular anticlockwise direction. Invert the cup in a saucer. Now read the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. If it’s a boot you see, take it as lucky. This gives protection from either physical or mental hurt. A cake means a feast, a camel means travel and a ladder means promotion.
Mind
Most of us have aches and pains, but they’re not so much a sign of illness as just the body tweaking itself. How sad to be morose when you are well. Put others’ sanity first.
