Like a lot of people at this time of year, I have a cold and it’s making me miserable.

It is just a cold. Just a misery inducing, bundle of aches and pains, with added sinus issues. It is not flu. Flu involves a raised temperature and I know that I haven’t got one of those because I live with someone who always has a thermometer to hand. Always.

In their mind, if you don’t have a temperature then you’re not properly ill which, as you can imagine, certainly adds to the joy.

To be accurate, I am now on my second cold having had one before Christmas for a couple of weeks, recovered and then gone down with the one my daughter brought home from university. I love both of my children but they are absolutely death traps when it comes to catching everyday diseases.

But I am recovering or at least felt like I was recovering until the joys of the peri-menopause joined the party. Combine a bad cold with haemorrhaging blood from your nethers, flooding style, and suddenly HRT starts to sound attractive. If only you didn’t have to go through the whole thing as soon as you stop taking the meds.

& at the worst of it, there’s an article in the paper talking about how maybe the workplace should start to cut peri-menopausal women some slack. Cue endless comments about how trivial the whole event is and maybe we should start talking about men more. because obviously it’s all about the men, even the menopause.

Well, the day I see a man with blood shooting out of his arse (or any other orifice) with enough force to push his pants down to his knees, leaving him blood stained from crotch to knee, I shall certainly be sympathetic. But strangely enough, I believe that I’d probably be pushed to one side by people rushing to get him to an ambulance, possibly crushing the numerous women who have had similar experiences to the floor, in the effort to get the poor flower to the hospital.

By all means let’s talk about the milder symptoms of menopause, the hot flushes the lack of patience with imbeciles and general rattiness of sleeplessness but let’s not pretend that the last two at least aren’t pretty symptomatic of normal male behaviour.

As I grow older, I am developing more and more of an appreciation of general witchiness but also coming to realise that women giving less of a f*ck, becoming more witchy, are really just starting to own everyday male behaviour. We grow older, become invisible to men, and to be frank care less about the stuff that doesn’t matter and that includes the opinion of strangers.

Except you of course.