After my good long rant the other day about colds, I have made some decisions. Usually I don't take the view that we can really control things. But this thing needs some extra attention and I am going to make some extra effort. So I'm going to ask people for advice, and I'm going to follow it. I'm going to follow all of it (within reason). There is a hilarious segment on a This American Life episode of years ago where Sarah Vowell gets advice about insomnia and tries to follow it all; it includes dreadful things like not having caffeine (!) or alcohol (!). 
 So, here is what I have collected so far, from myself and others: 
- handwashing: aggressive, regular, vigorous, proper handwashing
- washing of other people's hands, particularly those people under 4' tall who are likely to insert their hands in my mouth/nose/ears/eyes
- hand sanitising/sterilising (especially the small infectious vector-creatures as above)
- multivitamin
- zinc
- echinacea (particularly when getting a cold)
- vitamin C
- oil of oregano (thought to induce mild fever, thus assisting to 'burn' rhinovirus out of the nose, as it prefers a 33C environment)
- on a similar note, using a blow dryer, make the inside of the nose both hot and dry
(what is the half-life of the viral particles, though? Do I need to do this for 3 hours or something? happy to try it for a few minutes - after all, it's unlikely to hurt me unless my hair gets pulled in or something)
- ??? 
If anyone has any more tips, keep them coming. I am (gasp) going to ask on (dreaded) facebook too. That is just how desperate we are here ... 

In other news, took the bike today after Wednesday's tube tantrum in which Annika spat out bits of a rather nice pain au chocolat I'd bought (after she whined relentlessly), and flicked one of the spat-out bits on some poor sucker sitting next to us. It was pretty bad. We biked, yesterday and today, and got wet today. It was drizzling hard. We were fine though. 

Tantrum on the tube