How my children make me sick

They're adorable, but total germ magnets. Particularly the nursery-school lot, who have access to abundant germ varieties, plentiful as pumpkins at a wholesale grocer.

Do you know what children give you? Yes — perspective, infinite love, unparalleled joy etc, etc.

What children also give you are germs. Bugs, ailments, illnesses and maladies.

Toddlers may be still developing their talking, walking, reasoning skills. But at germ-sharing, they are ace. Ninja-skilled. Our toddler shares by loving her baby sister with kisses — and the odd lick. Why she must taste her sibling, we will never know. To us, the germs come disguised in hugs and hand-holding.

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Different strains, the mutant things. As soon as we work out what to do with one, it morphs into another, with an extra head. They seem to meet and cross-pollinate in sandpits and at break time when grubby fingers invade each other's lunch boxes.  How do nursery school teachers remain uninfected? Fembots with tough immune systems, surely.

We have stopped saying, ‘Sorry we can’t attend because someone has a bug’, because there is unlikely to be a time when these little humans are in perfect health. They seem to maintain a nasal tone and a snail trail on their ruddy cheeks all through the year. 

There will be times when their bugs will necessitate changing their linen three times in a night or cleaning carpets the next day — yet they seem to carry on happily with life despite sky-high fevers and hacking coughs.

But when the bug hits adults... we are felled like snotty, swollen-tonsilled trees. It comes at you with different or repetitive symptoms, but guaranteed to be inappropriately timed. The easy ones come with coughs and sneezing, sore throats and lost voices. Others are evil, with the green mucus that sticks like honey on that twirly stick, making the sufferer smell a bit sour.

The wonderful part of the body-aches, sinuses being stabbed by tiny soldiers with pins, head pounding, colds and flu, is that unless you are bordering on delirium, you have to get on with the daily grind. Because the germ carriers need time and attention. There are tea parties to be had and train sets to build. There is nowhere to hide.

Get a flu jab and an immune booster. Winter is coming.