I am referring to my cold, of course. Things have got worse rather than better and I have spent the whole day sneezing with incredible force, so much so that I was forced to stay in and refrain from doing any helpful things…like cooking. At one point, when the others were all in the kitchen and I offered  to help cook lunch, four pairs of eyes looked aghast at me in the doorway.

“Certainly not,” said three of them together.

“We don’t want your germs,” added our friend  Alan with a laugh.

“Okay,” I said from my safe distance and they all looked relieved.

I sneezed my way throughout whilst reading “The Midwich Cuckoos” (the chosen book for discussion at our next bookworm meeting); I sneezed my way through a long and particularly unsatisfying game of Scrabble; and I sneezed, snivelled and cried through the brilliant film, “Death of a Salesman”, written by Arthur Miller, and starring Dustin Hoffman (still keep crying every time I think about it, even now as I write). In fact, even at this very moment I am writing my blog in between bouts of sneezes and it is taking an age to complete… and I am so tired from all the sneezing all day long… and the late night last night.

I am sat here in bed all on my own. Where is Chris? Well, luckily for him we have two spare bedrooms in our beautiful Spanish villa we are renting; before retiring to one of them Chris was about to give me a kiss goodnight when, observing a gigantic sneeze welling up in me, he thought better it and blew me a kiss instead. I didn’t blame him – the force of the ensuing sneeze would have surely sent him flying backwards out through the bedroom door!