Nearly three weeks on and my cold is still hanging around. I don’t usually get ill so to have two relatively bad colds in the space of a few months is a little worrying; I’ve started feeling distinctly uncomfortable if someone so much as clears their throat, lest I catch yet another cold and end up ill again. I’m going to end up a Howard Hughes-esque recluse at this rate, I tell you.

Of course, the sterotypical male response on catching a sniffle is to loudly proclaim that it’s the ‘flu, not a cold, although of course if it was the ‘flu one would be barely able to proclaim anything, loudly or otherwise. Not being one to rely on such clichés, I am happy to admit that it’s just a bad cold, and — despite my whinging — I’ll be over it in another week or so. It’s only a cold. It’s nothing more serious than that. Just a cold.

Still, that avian influenza, eh?