Muse on Mucus

The snotty helmet

Do you remember when, as a young kid, all you needed to worry about when you had a snotty nose was whether to clear it with a sleeve, or your digits, or just to let it run so you could lick it up with your tongue and blow proper snot-bubbles? I mean, the eventual choice didn't really matter as your parents (or better, Auntie) would freak out anyway; perhaps while driving drunken arcs down the main road while multi-tasking the steering, hand grabbing for the Kleenex, and hard-staring your mucus-trail into telepathically stopping the dribble splodging on the upholstery of that nice third-hand Vauxhall Viva?



What makes you snotty now you're all grown up? Curry, or other chillied derivative; a cold, the cold? Perhaps a little free congestion around the time the trees make like the birds and bees? What makes me snotty? Well, all of the above to some extent. It's nature's KY; why worry? Well, rather like KY there are times you don't want people seeing it in your hands...

Of course we do worry. In the UK it's considered the height of embarrassment to be caught by a colleague with a dried booga hanging out a nare. A wet stringy thing is just going to cause trouble, isn't it? What about the ones that by-pass your nose; that unavoidably exit the body at 120mph through the mouth when you sneeze? Now, they can land you in trouble, too. Imagine "choo-ing" one of those out at the cinema (usually, "choo" No.3; the first was with your hand in front of your mouth (warned), but it got soggy so you reached for the tissues; the second was a shoulder-cum-wrist while still felting around for the snot-wipe; the third was where you let your guard down...and the lady in aisle 3 got it in the back of the neck. She looks round in horror. A number of elements bubble you. Firstly, everyone wants to be innocent and indicates who was to blame just by their look. Second, you're smothered in reflective residual snot bubble and third, sneeze number 5 is already due to land you in more trouble, "ah...ah...."

So what do we do in a full-face helmet? The weather is turning through Autumn now and my chill zone is below 10-degrees. At around 7-degrees, I've found, my nose runs on the bike. What the flick are you meant to do about it? Sniffing will work for a good old virus-led booga, but a cold-day clear and runny as pineapple juice booga is just not in the slucking mood. Sure, some stringers can be vacuumed back up like a nasal dose of spaghetti, but again I ask, what about those truly wet ones that just stream down and scream out for an absorbent (not "XX-tex"", or 600-d thread) forearm sleeve?

Picture it: the camera tracks me on Shadowfax through the countryside, cows and hedges flitting past in the background, and slowly catches up, pans over the Pan, and looks back from the front before zooming into the close-up of my dark inner visor framing my handsome nose.

It's cold, I'm running at about 70-mph through a series of sweeping bends that enter to a 50mph zone through East Tisted and I'm feeling good. Then, from the left nostril comes this warm to cold flow. I snuffle. I sniff. The effort inhales more cold air which acts within my olfactory systems and causes more protective snot to pour from the already wide-open tap. Double-barrelled!

I remember being told motorcycling would get my juices to flow. I just had others in mind.

It reaches my mouth (snot, not the juices I had had in mind, for Pete's sake! Concentrate on the story). It's fine for an under-6-yea-old to drink their own snot as they don't always drink enough fluids to compensate for a bit of the runs anyway, but at my age it's no longer normal to gulp nasal phlegm. It becomes distressing; distracting. I can feel the spreading ooze on my chin - mouth firmly shut. A drip makes it onto the buff and I feel it soak through all super-cooled by the flow of air.

What was that? A glove? What a silly idea. They're leather with NikWax all over them and Gore-Tex inner sleeves t'boot. What good would they be? I tried it. Bad idea. Now I have glistening contaminant all over my first and second fingers of my left hand and an opportunity to test the friction saving properties my own juice can provide on the clutch. 5th gear out of the village.

Looking for a safe place to stop and to sort myself out. Mature head is beginning to panic where kiddy head is laughing his socks off. No where safe. I miss the farm entrance and a white van guards the cross roads. Into Farringdon but it's too public. Onward - I know a bus-stop on the dual carriageway that may offer some privacy and shielding from inquisitive eyes.

The cold air snuffling irritates my inner nares across my sacrum. A twitch. A tickle.

Up to the roundabout - now I feel a sneeze threatening - bad enough on a roundabout where vision is occluded for sixty 1000s of a second, but my intelligent lobe informs me that with this much free mucus knocking around within, hanging from, and across my nose and mouth, things could get quite messy.

I pull back the throttle hard, fingers all a-slip off the clutch and round out the last curve. Dump the throttle and dive into the little lay-by - no room to stop; it's a bit of a fumble and feet-down steady. ("Neutral! Neutral, please!") I have visions of sneezing uncontrollably allowing my clutch to slip out and launch me across the road into the way of morning commuters winding up their aggression from the train of slow-bastards leaving no room to overtake up the A32. "Well, Officer..." The interview (in Hospital, no doubt, would close with a Rozzer assuring me the cause of the accident was speed, even though I hadn't actually snorted any.

Mercifully, neutral. Bursting, I grapple with my gauntlet to free my hand, release my helmet strap, remove my glasses, remover the helmet, and to explode in a spray of foam across the badger-carcass-strewn verge. Unfortunately...

So, sneezing in the helmet. It's not ideal under any circumstance really - whether from bright sunlight or accurate pollen particles. It's a risk to your vision through your visor and possibly a few neck muscles under the strain of kicking your head about at 120mph in 3-directions at once. You can imagine the scene. I don't think I need labour the point.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how to avoid the unpleasantness happening again.

Snot control for the biker?

Q. Is the smell of clean, fresh air actually the smell of snot?
Q. What is the difference between green snot and broccoli? Kids will eat snot.
Q. How do you get a tissue to dance? Put a little boogie in it.