That’s what my dear wife Ginny thought about my sniffles, scratchy throat and mild fever.

‘How could she possibly know that for sure?’ I thought in a spirit of congested misery. ‘What if it’s something much more  lethal, like beriberi or bubonic plague or the human version of Dutch elm disease!?!’

And furthermore, she said it on my birthday: that unwelcome annual reminder that 365 more days have been stuffed in the chronological backpack I’d be lugging across life’s portage, that an additional growth ring encircled my substantial trunk and that one more burning candle had been added to the conflagration that’s been gradually incinerating my faculties. 

Clearly Ginny didn’t feel nearly as sorry for me as I did when she bid a cheery farewell and flitted away for jolly revels with her sisters and other family members.

And there I was, alone with my thoughts, the ‘build-it-yourself’ plastic model kit of a Spitfire airplane she gave me and 3 unsympathetic and unruly dogs.

A bit gloomy and melodramatic, you say? Well maybe. ‘Cheer up,’ I told myself, ‘things could be worse’, I said, and thought about Ernest Hemingway ...