Snuffling like a piggy

I have some sort of throat infection, and after two and half days of struggling to work, I gave up and came home at lunch time. My throat feels like it is lined with sand paper, and there is a dry, raspy cough going on, which intermittedly results in expulsion of unspeakable goo.

This is not good. I don't know why I am surprised- this happens almost every year during the so-called Scottish summer. It's the direct result of weather that changes so fast it can make your head spin. One minute it will be bright and sunny and almost warm, the next torrential rain. It's very very difficult to know what to wear every day. Inevitably you will be caught as I was over the weekend, in a downpour, wearing only a cotton t-shirt and thin combats (not shorts- I don't even own a pair of shorts- there is no need here).

Half the people at work must have been similarly drenched, because there are a lot of sore throats going around. Of course, this is a vastly unhealthy nation. Exposure to disgusting hacking and coughing by those around you is the norm. Take the bus to the town centre and you'll see what I mean- old men with smoker's cough gagging next to you, children with loose phlegmy gurgles.

E. is usually very kind to me when I am sick, but he has a real aversion to the sound of someone coughing, or blowing their nose- it drives him insane. If he hears someone spluttering away, he turns to me and says under his breath,

"That's totally unnecessary".

We have had arguments about this, because I take the view that when I am sick, it is necessary. And completely involuntary. Plus, E. being mortal is occasionally prone to the same colds and flus that we all get from time to time, with the same side effects, so he's not exempted from emitting the odd death rattle of his own.

But I agree with him that it can be unpleasant to listen to the sounds of someone else's cold. There was one occasion we were on a transatlantic flight, and for six hours we had to hear the woman seated behind us as she gurgled and snottered the length of the Atlantic ocean. E.'s description was "snuffling like a piggy". He'd rather not be in a ten mile radius of that sound.

Since I am presently snuffling away myself in a similar swine-like fashion, I wonder therefore how the hell I am going to entice him to engage in the necessary baby making activities, which must occur this week.

Assuming I can even bring myself to contemplate the notion of getting frisky when all I want to do is lie on the sofa in my fuzzy slippers, watch crap telly and drink tea. Oink.