Chocolate makes some cough it seems

In 1968, living then in Christchurch, and two years into a 50 year programming career, I went alone to a performance of Claudio Arrau, then a world-famous Chilean pianist. I remember him, more than 50 years later, as a slight, small man, of dark moustache and hair, looking perhaps older than he was. Early in the first half I ate a piece of chocolate and shortly began uncontrollable coughing so that I had to leave the concert hall in a hurry.
The remainder of the concert (on my return) was flawed, many mistakes and I wondered whether he had my cough too!

That was perhaps the first time I noted the coughing-chocolate connection, confirmed subsequently on many occasions. If I go to a play or concert, chocolate is forbidden! Online search shows many have this reaction, and there are various explanations.
Post Comment

Comments (24)

That's an interesting thing. May I ask you a mathematical riddle (you may have heard it)?
How do you make a polar bear?
You start off with a Cartesian Bear, and then give it polar coordinates

professor

cool
That mathematical witticism, I read somewhere
Hm. I'm more into biology. Math was never my thing.
You could make a bear in that fashion, however, so your answer is also correct

wave
Wouldn't the "natural method" be a better approach? No-one wants to be wrangling with one of those things, surely?

confused
I don't think so actually. Animals in captivity are under stress and that kills the feeling. Basically, it apparently is hard to breed animals the natural way in captivity. It's probably why horses, cattle and even pigs are artificially inseminated. There might be other reasons. We need the input of a farmer here I suppose.
They need to make chocolate polar bears, to raise funds for the preservation of polar bears!
As you say, AI is probably the go, with these bears, in captivity.

teddybear
They would be white chocolate bears, obviously...
The best cheese for coaxing a bear out of the words is camembert.

(Say it out loud, in a coaxing voice)
So if I lean over and place a big smack on the mouth of the nonogenarian turkey sitting beside me, relishing the Mahler, she at least won't slap me and say 'you've got smoking hippo whisky breath!'. Instead she'll say 'you've got peppermint smoking hippo whisky breath!'
Phew, no-one's ever said either of those to me, but who knows!
Maybe an antitussive cough mixture, taken prior to the event, would help?

dunno
@lcbr so do you think there's a market for Chocolates with cough mixture filling? Pure marketing genius! Antitussive dark choco delights!
You could fill small white chocolate polar bears, with recommended doses of cough medicine, and then they would be medicinal, antitussive bears, so to speak...
@CA great question Chum. ever tried reading instructions in a concert hall? Twit, don't bother visiting my threads, I suggest...
Generalised equation for a polar bear:

PB(r, theta) =|f(r)|cis(theta)

Where PB is the outline of the bear on the Argand Plane (join the dots).....


wave
This is a thing: apparently, there are "grolar bears" around nowadays. As a result of climate change, grizzly bears have bred with polar bears, creating, you guessed it, - "grolar bears"


professor
There are such bears, I believe...
Scratches ever-balding head and wonders, ponders, what confluence of atoms and electromagnetic waves made that bloody @lcbr drop that piece of (groan) un-bearable tripe here tonight? What happens if you mate a koala with a polar bear or a grizzly for that matter - I think you'd be bearking up the wrong tree.
Well, that would be more than I could bear; but I think you'll find that there's a bear in there...
Here for your enjoyment, are a selection of grolar bears.....





grin
Post Comment - Let others know what you think about this Blog.
Meet the Author of this Blog
FargoFanonline today!

FargoFan

sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Retired but teaching and studying every day, travelling whenever I can and at home wherever I happen to be. From a small family but wishing I were part of a larger one. My students are scattered all over the world, as is my family. Language is a part [read more]