Diseased!

Whenever I get stressed I get coldsores.

But as I don’t really do stress I rarely recognise the normal signs of when I’ve pushed myself too hard so the coldsores, ugly and annoying little buggers though they are, are actually a good barometer of my mental/physical state.

Coldsores, of course, are a simplex of herpes, which in a more advanced form is an STD – and ironically I am researching STDs at the moment.

I mentioned this to the Other Woman as we were walking home from playing pool last week and I also complained how a major downside of having coldsores was that I can’t kiss the Missus as I have no wish to infect her. And the Other Woman's words of comfort were:

‘Well I’m not bothered. I’ll give you a friendly kiss goodnight to show I don’t mind catching your sexually transmitted scabby lip disease…’
'But it could infect you - and your boyfriend.'
'He'll understand. I'll tell him it was a mission of mercy.'

Outside of my marriage this is possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Although Shaggy, one of my long-term pool playing colleagues, did send me a text from a county game yesterday saying how he missed me playing pool. I thought this was really sweet – until I realised this was because without me present nobody had a token northerner and part-time drunk to take the piss out of.

But it was still very sweet in a bloke sort of way. It's good to have friends – for whatever reasons...