Boil the kettle.                                                                                                                                   Place a spoon of honey into a mug.                                                                                                 Cut a lemon in half and squeeze out every drop of juice.                                                              (I recommend this for life too.)                                                                                                           Pour in the boiling water and stir briskly.                                                                                      Let it cool slightly before drinking.

This is lemon and honey. I can’t rave enough about its healing properties. I dose myself with this brew morning and evening whenever a cold appears on the horizon. The recipe was given to me by a colleague when I had bronchitis and I am very grateful for it.

I’ve since dosed entire casts of productions through flu infested runs in cold and draughty theatres. Winter is a hard time to be an actor. And it’s the worst season to produce theatre, except for every other season. It’s an acquired taste; art, remade each night, before your eyes, in a small black box.

So as well as killing a cold or flu, lemon and honey does wonders for morale, giving us the strength of character to face with equanimity both the empty seats of a cold Wednesday night and the full house on a lively Friday night.  I’ve found it’s particularly efficacious if someone makes it for you.  When a friend, lover, mother or stage manager, brings you a steaming mug of lemon and honey as you bravely prepare, despite being sick, to face the audience.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not usually an advocate of ‘soldiering on’. Absolutely not. I believe in rest, rest and more rest as the cure for almost anything. The power of sleep. The healing properties of a day in bed, especially if there’s nothing wrong with you. And the wonder of an afternoon nap.  But sometimes the show just must go on. And that’s when this potion works its restorative magic so you can keep squeezing every drop from the lemon.