So utterly fed up with a constantly streaming nose & hacking cough I bow to the inevitable & go to see the doctor.

She gives me a right telling off it being (I am ashamed to acknowledge) 3 years since we last met. Did I realise that I am now classified as an 'antique'? The manner was jolly but her point struck home.

Rather than crack open the leeches she prefers the more modern Dracula method & so there'll be the inevitable blood test which I know already will reveal higher than acceptable cholesterol levels & no doubt some other lurking horrors. However, as I explained to her, I am loathe to become a walking pill box.

What has, though, given me a jolt was the discovery that'd I'd lost my sense of smell. Monday afternoon I bought a nose spray from the chemist & gave my sinuses a quick blast up both barrels & enjoyed a few hours of unimpeded breathing. Since then things have, if anything, been worse & ... a sudden drop out of odours. Autumn has wilted to mere sound & vision. In desperation I have gone around the house sticking my nose into various reliable smell sources - tube of savlon (nothing), jar of coffee & Earl Grey tea tin (faint aroma), bar of soap (vaguely), bottle of bleach (strangely no). At the bread shop just a feeble whiff of newly baked bread .... I have never in my life so missed smells or realised how much they matter & make my world. Fingers crossed & this is but a temporary state of affairs. If not ... what a horrible prospect.