... if I just sit at my computer for the next two weeks watching Graham Norton videos.
If I move, if I talk, or if I laugh, I cough. Maybe Graham isn't such a good idea, after all.
A friend told me it takes a month to get over this cough - that's what his pharmacist said. And there is a fierce poster in our doctor's surgery telling us that antibiotics do not get rid of bronchitis. So I rely on hot lemon, ginger and honey (some recommend whisky as well) and lashings of Vicks on my chest at night and try not to sound like I'm smoking 50 a day.
We're into week three. So hopefully not much longer.
This could not have come at a worse time - but then when did a cold or flu come at a good time?
Knowing we would be into a round of doctors' appointments and check-ups, I thought how nice to take a week away and return refreshed, relaxed and fortified. So off we set to see friends in Trujillo in the middle of nowhere, in Spain. We set forth in the car, unfortunately already a moving petri dish, Bertie in the back and Tod keeping quiet about his newly started sore throat. As a result, our trip was subdued and we feared for infecting our friends and refused their welcoming supper, much to our mutual disappointment.
We have smugly avoided all the germs going round since Covid - we have friends who regularly get vaccinated and still have managed to get the lurgy four times - "ah, but we haven't had it badly", they crow. "We haven't had it at all, or flu, or a cold" we congratulate ourselves.
So now, we've both have had the cold to end all colds and a cough that refuses to go.
It's strange. I sit in our doctor's waiting room, being good and wearing a mask, for the sake of him and his other patients and I don't cough at all. I can watch an hour of Rogue Heroes and not cough at all. I can watch YouTube videos and not cough at all - except when I laugh at Graham Norton's guests.
We promise we will go back to see our friends when all of this is over. Their front door opens to a cosy cavern of a kitchen, stone walls, no windows, filled with shelves of gleaming pans, pots and jars of intriguing foodstuffs and glittering fairy lights and ornaments. Cool in the ferocious Spanish summer, and warm in a chilly winter, it will be a place of welcome, comfort and healing.
