Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...

"Get some day nurse & night nurse"- was the request from karen, just entering the early stages of a cold that I am beginning to shake off. "Tell them we both have colds so we can buy some to have in- Chemists can be a bit funny these days..." she added.

Indeed.

You can now buy a number of headache-type medicines down at the Supermarket but what may not be quite so obvious is that (certainly at ASDA) you are only allowed to buy a maximum of two packs in one transaction, for your own good, of course. Indeed, I ran foul of this a year or two back at ASDA when I worked out that three packs of something unbranded Ibuprofen-based (packed in 8s) was better value than two of a larger size Nurofen brand (packed in 16s). When I got to the till, "Computer says No...".The idiocy of the rule is that it is a nonsense anyway, apparently 25 Paracetamol is enough to top yourself and someone determined enough to do so is not going to be put off by having to queue up again at another till. Apparently the maximum non-pharmacy size is a pack of 16, at a chemist a pack of 32.

Anyway, down to Morley Boots, and a request for Day Nurse/Night Nurse. The assistant asked me to describe a number of symptoms in tedious detail and then went through what medication I was on. She then consulted with the pharmacist and returned with recommendations. I then had to repeat the whole rigmarole for Karen, despite not being able to accurately describe the symptoms, me not being Karen, of course. Eventually I get exasperated, saying "I can't believe that I can't just buy what I asked for, I can't be arsed, goodbye.", walking out leaving a bemused assistant behind.

I then popped round to the Co-Op pharmacy round the corner, where the inquisition was simply "have you taken this before?" which was much more straight-forward to answer, yes of course, and Karen has as well.

I did ask what the difference was between seperate and combined Day/Night Nurse and it boils down to packaging and price, so now you know.

(When checking out the rules, i came across an interesting article on headaches here. (Its from the Grauniad, but don't let that put you off...)