As Summer slips away from us here in the Southern Hemisphere and the trees are losing the will to leaf, we have started to hit that transitional phase in which we're still wearing our summer clothes in defiance of the chill that is coming. The downside of this act of defiance is that we're all starting to get sick again. Flu shots are being loaded into both barrels and supplements are carefully being suppled from the tender teats of the great big medicine companies to keep us all smiling. That said, I do remember somebody once told me that by taking flu shots en masse we were only perpetuating a new super flu that would be so resilient to our regular defences that it would walk tall like mortal men and pull a knife on us as we walk out of the chemist. As a result of this I spent many years just dealing with the sniffles in an attempt to single-handedly save mankind from such a freakishly absurd fate. No need to thank me, I gave up on that whole business when I caught pneumonia a few years back – now I take whatever I can and learnt how to handle myself in a knife fight. After all, if the germs are willing to become more versatile to new situations, so should we. I'm not sure if many of you would remember “George's Marvellous Medicine” by Roald Dahl but when I was younger I really liked the idea of just going into the kitchen and creating a perfectly balanced 100% cure for what ails you from whatever was lying around. I still like to think this can be achieved well, but one thing that cannot be included in the recipe is common sense. You have to think with a bit of magic for it to work, but it always made me feel better so it can't be all that not right. So for example, if you're fighting a cold, you just have to go find things that are hot like tabasco sauce and pepper. To bring the colour back into your life, you add something like tomatoes and different varieties of capsicum. There's no great art to it – you have to go by gut, but by the time you've added the contents of a tin of chicken soup, a great deal of garlic, lemon and lime and ground up a few cold and flu tablets for garnish, the effects are startlingly positive. If a more pharmaceutical method is how you'd prefer to roll this Winter, I can give you a bit of help with that too. For every comic I draw, I insist on doing a lot of research into them because I know that to my loyal readers, they are more than just silly little pictures but an insight into the human condition, so it's important I step up and know what I'm talking about. Recently I infiltrated an Embassy to get into the mindset of a foreign dignitary and back even further, for the rent-boy comic I...perhaps that is a story for another occasion. So here's the scoop on the major players in the comic to help you all out... Vitamin C has not been clearly proven to help reduce the effects of the common cold. Cutting down on your sugar intake will do more good for you whilst suffering from a cold. So even though a spoonful of sugar will help the medicine go down, once it is down – you're pretty much screwed. Echinacea alone has been proven to reduce the length and severity of the common cold, and when combined with Vitamin C will achieve even more. They are the Voltron of the medicine cabinet along with the mighty Zinc (He was not mentioned in this weeks comic because I am an artist – not a doctor). Cod Liver Oil does improve the immune system. A colleague asked me what makes cod livers so much better than ours? Well for one, they spend a lot of time in cold water and I have never seen a fish with a cold, so the livers are clearly doing something right. It is however, scientifically proven that cod liver oil is a douchebag and should be avoided on any social level. You can thank Doctor Internet for those startling facts – although it is difficult to take medical advice from a website that does not have degrees stuck to the background. There's something re-assuring about those things even if they were achieved online... The upside of that advice being false is that I will have ensured more people will be staying at home looking at my webcomic. The downside is that my fanbase may have one of the highest mortality rates of all the online comics! So do be careful this year, and take all advice with a grain of salt. (next week we'll find out if that will help). Yours sincerely, Dave

So since I have nothing to write about as such, I thought I'd tell you all a harrowing tale from my own neurotic back-catalogue. My day as an Altar boy. When I was a young boy, I lived in a fairly religious family, in a fairly religious neighbourhood in a fairly religious town. At school we learnt Religious Education and at church we learnt Religious Education. I don't remember there being much else on at the time. In the area I was in, it was not uncommon to be an altar boy so that's what I did. I'm not sure if it was out of an inner desire to be closer to God or whether my mum made me do it, but I do remember it was a chance to see behind the scenes of a weekly production. For me it was like having a backstage pass to the hottest venue on a Sunday morning. There was a magic to it, but the problem with magic is that it only lasts as long as you're able to believe in it. Once you break the illusion and see the strings and blu-tack, the magic is gone and you're left feeling a little bit silly. To the left of the Altar was a door that lead into the bit I was interested in; where I assumed they kept the angels and that direct line to God but when I entered, all I saw was a fairly unimpressive store-room. There were boxes of the Body of Christ (the manufacturers return address was a big disappointment), piles of spare bibles, crosses, incense etc... All of that wonderous parephenalia from Mass was suddenly reduced to nothing more than stock sitting in a props room. It certainly took the edge off my religious fervour; not the epiphany mum was hoping for maybe, but I guess God works in mysterious ways... So the magic had gone but there was still enough pomp and ceremony to soldier on as an altar boy. For my first morning mass I was willing to give it my all. This was to be my premiere performance; I'd never been in front of a crowd before so I knew I had to make it count. It started smoothly, we all knew our places and worked the crowd well, but halfway through mass the priest called me to the altar and handed me a key, asking me to put it on the table (pointing to the left door from earlier). I accepted this holy mission with great vigour and walked over to the left door as all eyes turned to me and my triumph over evil. This was my moment - I was a star...and their eyes were glued to me. But as I walked towards the door, another table came into view - it had been obscured from view at the altar area. Now I was in a conundrum - a crisis of faith, if you will. Did the priest mean the table by the door or the table behind the door? There was no time to think, this was a defining moment and I had to act fast. I placed the keys on the table by the door and returned to my spot on the far right. All eyes were back on the priest as he looked over at the table then back to me and called me back over. The Priest then told me he meant the other table through the door and would I go move the keys to where he asked them to be moved. What a prima donna! It was a cold walk of shame as I crossed the altar again and walked offstage to correct my mistake. Then I started hearing laughter. That's right, laughter. They all had a good old chuckle at my expense, and this crowd were supposed to be the good guys. I looked over to the priest for support and he was having a laugh too (because I might add, of his unprofessionalism, lack of showmanship and poor key placement in the first place). So then, the walk of double shame back to the right of the altar past the fickle, laughing crowd, no longer the hero of the piece but as the comic relief. Long story short, I threw in my shawl and badge that afternoon; I'd let it get personal and I needed to cool off. But I will say that to this day I still don't know if it was the priests way of showing me who the crowd was really there to see. Whatever his agenda was, I lost a little of the magic that day. The curtain was pulled back and I saw the Wizard for what he truly was. Now I will admit that a little magic can go a long way and I could not live without it, but it's only magic if you don't stare too long. (oh and it doesn't blow up in your face). Yours Sincerely, Dave