For the past week I have been suffering from the Man Flu. That particular brand of influenza that undermines all males yet seems to spare the fairer gender of our species. Whilst believing ourselves to be the masters of our own domain and the hunter gatherer and protector of the TV Remote, it is this head cold of biblical proportions that lays waste to men.

I have been unable to cook, clean or even do rudimentary house work whilst my partner is at her place of occupation; returning later in the day to a bomb site of existence such is the all-consuming consequence of this near-fatal disease.

Mind you my symptoms are paralysing.

My ears feel like they have been replaced with highly attuned pain receptors only capable of inflicting the direst of auditory messages to my brain. It’s so bad I have to turn the TV up to drown out the tinnitus. My eyes. My poor eyes. They seem only to function when closed. Opening them too wide brings shards of bright sunlight onto my retina. I beg for some transient pedestrian straying past our house to come in and draw my living room curtains closed. However no one comes as my voice is not capable of making a singular coherent noise.

Only guttural grunts emanate from the boiling contusion that is my vocal chords. The death rattle of a terminally ill patient is no competition for the constant moaning and groaning that leaves my body.

The route to the kettle is the most often ploughed during this sickness. The trusty cuppa combined with a constant supply of lozenges is needed to assuage the effects of the Sahara Desert that has decided to take residence on my tonsils is needed. This requires constant updates to my family no matter what their individual needs are at the time. For when this rampant invader rapes and pillages my immune system, I am singularly the most important man in the world.

And still the Man Flu marches around my body to the beat of a drum banged out by the evil general; Genghis Headache. My joints begin to throb with the undulating relentless vibration of a deep bore mining drill scouring its way into the earth. My hands ache to the cold touch of the TV remote and my back shouts its lament as I tarry too long on the couch.

I cannot shuffle to the kitchen sink to wash up the cavalcade of coffee cups that have taken residence there. My clothes lay discarded like the bodies of fallen soldiers on a battlefield waiting for the medics to take them away. I stumble and fall towards the phone. I gainfully open an application to inform the world that I am indeed on the precipice of death.

My announcement goes unnoticed by the fairer sex. For they know the reality of the situation. They too have been victim of the Man Flu but unlike their hirsute partners have managed to build a tolerance to its deathly grip. Not for them the endless hours spent recuperating on their favourite piece of lounge furniture. Not for them the incessant binge watching of ‘B’ Grade shows on Netflix. For they know they must overcome this inconvenience. For if the Man Flu struck them low like it does the menfolk, then there would be no dinner for the family, no washing done, no kids scrubbed, no shopping done; the house would cease to function and children would probably expire on the vine of neglect.

And after the Man Flu has passed into the dim recesses of the female memory, dismissed as a mere inconvenience, the men gather in their caves and sheds to compare the impact of their illness and how it affected their ability to keep up with the broader issues that affect the world; namely who will be in the their fantasy football team this week. Whilst the men do this, the womenfolk laugh amongst themselves in the full knowledge that they are indeed the stronger sex. They just can’t tell the men.

Jay B McCauley is The King of Sunday Morning