One day I felt so fed up of it all that I decided to take every kind of vitamin pill in the house, and bloody well Get Better. For some reason, this worked. I started feeling better within half an hour. I don’t know whether it was the vitamins, the resolve, or that I just happened to be getting better anyway, but I did.

And then a rather strange thing happened. I didn’t get another cold or sore throat for three whole years. It was either through taking more care with hand-washing and not touching my face, or that my immune system, having recuperated, said, “Right! not going through that again” and went into germ-destroying overdrive, or simply that every time I felt a slight tickle in my throat or nose, I would eat a Fisherman’s Friend, and it would stop.

I finally got a sore throat again in February 2012 (not that I was waiting and hoping for one, you understand). It came on when I was lying in bed, felt a tickle in my throat, but couldn’t be bothered to get up and get a Fisherman’s Friend. The Fisherman’s Friend could wait until morning, I thought. By morning, unfortunately, my throat was hurting like the Sore Throats of Olde (i.e. 2008). (Moral of the story: eat Fisherman’s Friend.)

Having not been ill for ages gave me a new perspective. What is actually happening to make the throat hurt, I wondered? So I Googled “the science of sore throats”. Previously I’d made the assumption that the pain was caused by little beasties sitting on the lining of the throat and, like, chomping on it, or something. Strangely enough, this isn’t the case. The pain is caused by the lining of the throat swelling up as it fills with fluids which are combating the infection, and pressing on the nerves. Therefore, the best way to stop it hurting, if we are to apply science to it, is to reduce the swelling. This means that the simplest thing to do is gargling with salt water, as the high concentration draws fluids out of the swollen throat lining by osmosis. So this time, rather than eating stronger throat sweets full of unknown chemicals with weird names, I mainly gargled salt water. I ate Fisherman’s Friends, too, although I do get sick of the taste of them when I eat too many (and I’ve never been sure whether it’s possible to overdose on Fisherman’s Friends – they may be mainly made from natural ingredients, but many “natural ingredients” are still chemicals – for example, eucalyptus is pretty toxic in large amounts).

The other thing that I found soothing was to drink licorice tea. This leaves a coating on the throat which soothes it for a while. It doesn’t cure the sore throat faster (only time can do that) but it does ease the pain. I did research whether a licorice tea overdose is possible, to be on the safe side. Apparently it’s possible to damage the body by eating too much licorice, although less likely by just drinking the tea. However, some websites recommend not drinking more than three cups of licorice tea per day (and not giving it to children at all, incidentally) so I set that as my limit.

One of the things licorice does which is undesirable is stripping the body of potassium. My remedy for this is to eat bananas – they contain potassium and are also said to soothe sore throats.

The result of trying to treat a sore throat in the most natural and science-based way that I could find was that it did not last as long as previous sore throats have done for me. There were only two days when the pain was bad enough for me to complain about it to annoying level (yes, I know this isn’t the most scientific was of measuring…). On the third day it was nearly gone. I sometimes wonder whether all the strange-sounding chemical in commercial throat sweets such as Strepsils might be toxic and harmful enough to outweigh the benefits. (The colourings and flavourings are bad enough – things with synthetic “fruit” flavours usually make me feel a bit queasy these days.) I’m not tempted to test this licorice tea and saltwater theory again by deliberately trying to get a sore throat (I know.. I should increase my sample size really, but…) – but if I do get another one by accident, that’s the treatment I’ll be opting for.

So I looked them up on Wikipedia. To save me typing all that information out in slightly re-worded form, you can too.

So parabens are preservatives, which are currently legal in the UK but somewhat frowned upon because they contain xeno-estrogens, which are thought to have linkswith breast cancer. These are also found naturally in soy, so when I was searching for paraben-free lotions and potions I was amazed to find a face-cream which was supposed to be paraben-free, but made out of soy. That, in my opinion, is just silly.

However, there are plenty of more sensible-sounding shampoos, soaps, cosmetics and other products which aim to be free from the nastier chemicals which are usually found in them.

A lot of cosmetic ingredients are predominantly used because they are cheap, so some of these alternatives are quite expensive. However, Naked Body Care products are very reasonably priced, smell amazing and work very well too. They’d be my top recommendation.

For make-up, check out the products on lovelula.com, particularly Bella Pierre, which is made from minerals and rocks (hence the excellent name). I’m also fond of a range of tinted lip balms from Lanolips, which are all made with medical grade lanolin, a product derived from sheep’s wool.

I’ve found that the more expensive of these “natural” cosmetics are usually very high quality – so you’re not just paying a premium for less toxic ingredients – they’re superior in other ways as well.

Available in bright colours to cheer you through the winter months as well as add a little extra layer of snuggliness around your neck or your wrist, these chunky-but-light creations are available from handmade jewellery shop The Unexpected Boutique.

Anyway, the absolute coolest thing made from yarn at the moment is this Nyan Cat Scarf:

It’s made by masterplanner on DeviantArt, and they are available to buy!

There are loads of different green gems – here are few favourites:

Malachite - a copper-based gem

Peridot, which always occurs in olive green, no other colours

Green Tourmaline - here it has a bit of pink in it. This variation is called "watermelon" for obvious reasons

Emerald - the green gem that is usually the first to spring to most people's minds...

So – pick your favourite colour and get searching! Jewellery in your favourite shade of green is just the other side of a Google search box…

Today I am taking fashion inspiration from the woman to our left, whose name was Judge Mary Margaret Bartelme. She lived between 1866 and 1954. It’s her neckpiece I’m after. It’s an Edwardian lace collar, featuring a cameo pin in the centre. A cameo is a carving usually made into a gemstone, to produce a relief image, often (but not always) in the image of a person’s head. There have been cameos discovered that date back as far as the 3rd century BC, so you’d be pretty hard pressed to find a style that could be considered more Vintage than that…

So where can we get a necklace like Mary’s without taking out a mortgage in order to obtain an original Edwardian one? I had a look on Etsy, and found quite a lot of gothy-looking ones such as this, as well as an elaborate lacey neckpiece made from vintage doilies which rather took my fancy. There’s also this one, which has the cameo pin up on the choker.

But lacey collars aren’t a very every-day accessory – so I’ve had an idea… For two looks in one, I’ve decided the most efficient thing to do would be to buy a cameo brooch on its own, which I can pin to my jacket, coat, cardigan or other regularly-worn item of clothing, and buy a plain lace collar such as this lovely green one. Then I can pin the cameo to the lace collar, and still be able to wear it on my coat for less glamorous occasions too.

In an attempt to obtain sporty-looking and gym-worthy clothes, I decided that the most obvious place to begin my search was the sports shop in the town centre.

I went into it. It had enormous escalators, and smelt of sportiness and new trainers. It was all a bit intimidating.

Most of the clothing appeared to be for men, but I found and extremely small women’s section in the corner furthest from the door. My means of locating it turned out to be the Looking for Stuff That is Pink method. Virtually all the women’s sportwear was either a pastel pink colour, or else black-with-bright-pink-bits of it. This alarmed me. According to shop’s stock, women doing sport appeared to be a minority, but does this really mean we have to advertise our XX chromosomes by putting pink on ourselves? Sadly, it appears to be so.

Eventually I found some plain black things without designer-sportiness-labels on, which greatly reduced their price tags compared to the other garments. I purchased a plain black fleece, which I think says “I am Active and Enjoy The Outdoors” rather that “I Am Slobbing Around The House and Look Like I’m Twelve” like my previous cardigan.

I had less success with legwear. Apparently everyone who does exercise and is female is shorter than I am. I mean, I suppose most women are shorter than I am, given that I am 5’10”, so this is to be expected. But no leggings in longer lengths whatsover? Sports soph, you are letting the side down.

Next shopping stop: The Internet.

I have never been a sporty person. Thus, I do not possess sporty clothing. However, when I decided a few months ago that I really ought to do some exercise and it should be a) not in my house, where there is clutter and a myriad of exercise-preventing distractions, and b) with a sensible person telling my how to do it so I wouldn’t injure myself, I found myself in the previously-unthinkable situation of setting off to go to an exercise class at the gym.

I had absolutely never been near a gym before. I had only the faintest clue what people were supposed to wear in them. I thought that to be on the safe side I would wear:

• A small black t shirt
• Trainers
• Some velour flared trousers which I mainly use for slobbing around the house, and which kind of looked like pyjamas, but might just pass for jogging bottoms if people didn’t look too closely.

The problem was, it was cold. I needed some kind of extra layer to wear on the way to keep me warm, which said “I Am Going To The Gym, Not Walking Through Town in my Pyjamas”. The only thing I could find (not being, as I said, a sporty person) was a button up knitted cardigan in sage green, from the “sportswear” section of Mango. I have long suspected the “sportswear” section of Mango is actually referring to the pleasant and therapeutic “sport” that is more popularly described as “slobbing around the house”. Putting on the cardigan confirmed this. Not only did I look as if was quite definitely about to go to bed, but I also looked roughly twelve years old.

There wasn’t exactly time to go shopping and buy more gym-appropriate garments before the gym class started. I was running late as it was. So I just decided to go through the middle of town very fast, hoping I didn’t see anybody I knew, and hopefully I’d warm up and be able to take off the cardigan by the time I got to the gym, and then the gym people wouldn’t look at me too strangely. I didn’t even know whether I was going to like the gym, even, so there was no point buying clothes for it beforeI’d tried it out. So I set off.

In the middle of town, of course, I immediately saw a man on whom I have an enormous crush. Typical. Of all the people I know in the world, it had to be him. He passed me in the street, talking on his mobile phone, which made it even worse. Not only had he fully acknowledged my apparently-pyjama-clad presence, but I was also unable to explain the going to the gym / no proper gym-clothes as yet scenario. Or possibly, he saw me from a distance, decided I looked completely bonkers and that he was going to pretend to be on the phone so he didn’t have to talk to me.

And so paranoia set in. Proper, appropriate gym clothes must be obtained. I will keep you informed.

Team a black dress with white or black and white accessories for this striking and rather retro, quirky look – we’ve picked out the stunning black and white painted jigsaw piece necklace from the Unexpected Boutique to add an element of surprise to the neckline.

Add another piece from the Unexpected Boutique, the elastic black and white dice bracelet, and black button stud earrings from Button Jewellery. Complete the look with a pair of white opaque tights – we love the Gennefer merino wool tights from Tranzparenze.

For colder occasions, keep your shoulders warm with a white cashmere shrug – we found this one on Etsy, made by WearableArtz.