'TIS the season to be… well, in my case, certainly NOT merry. And it's not a merry season for Mr H either. While the days and nights have been crisping up nicely temperature-wise in a wintery seasonal kind of way, ours (in a bodily kind of not very well way) have been soaring.

'TIS the season to be… well, in my case, certainly NOT merry. And it's not a merry season for Mr H either. While the days and nights have been crisping up nicely temperature-wise in a wintery seasonal kind of way, ours (in a bodily kind of not very well way) have been soaring.

And while we should have been toiling away for our masters during the daytime last week instead on one of them you'd have found the both of us bunking off to bed together. Sadly there were no wild moments of torrid passion involved here, this in-bed tryst was purely the Hawkins in Winter 2006 Bad Cold and Flu-like Virus Meltdown.

Admittedly there may have been the odd bit of groaning, writhing about and duvet tossing. However this was only in a muck sweat, seriously heat of the moment kind of scenario, which was due to the fact that the last lot of paracetamol had worn off and your temperature had gone up again.

There was quite a lot of “pass the Vic inhaler, Vic,” cries for water, Benylin imbibing and bronchial coughing fits from my left, which did cause quite a lot of mattress movement; but I spent a whole two nights and one day with my jammies firmly buttoned up, trying not to move a millimetre, eyes clamped shut and a regularly re-filled hot water bottle jammed across my right temple.

Okay so maybe that's not my most attractive look but the heat of the hottie seemed to cancel out the worst of the vice-like pain that gripped that side of my chops (the pain-killers, simply, didn't) - and if you've never had bad sinus pain, suffice to say you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy.

I'd rank it worse than childbirth or toothache and way up there in the driller-killer pain bracket of a bad migraine. In fact it's the sort of pain where if someone offered you a quick, clean machete blade to the neck, it would seem like a perfectly reasonable alternative.

Anyway so he and I are presently on about Cold Day Six and feeling heaps better and much happier now the spectre of possible bronchitis for him (oh his weak chest!!) seems to have passed and my Sinus Beast has slunk off back to its lair. We might be moaning and groaning a bit but are both back to being stalwart walking woundeds. But feeling anything like merry? Certainly not, that's a long way off yet.