LIZ JONES’S DIARY: In which I end up in hospital with the ‘kissing disease’ after a lot of snogging with the German…

I have decided to concentrate on completing the renovation of the parsonage. I have a new kitchen and this week the bathroom for the bedroom on the top floor was finally installed; building permit took months.

I’m so excited that I have friends to stay that I’m going a little crazy. I installed a mini fridge so it’s like a hotel, I bought Aesop products and candles.

I bought bed linen at Ikea: did you know that an Oxford cotton pillowcase costs €2.50? How could I not know this? I think it’s so much more fun to stay with a friend than with a guy. They notice everything without being asked: “Did you see that incredible skylight? The stone stairs? The chandelier?’ Men never seem to look up. Or get the giggles.

But I have been floored by illness this week. I have tonsillitis again, just a few weeks after my last attack. Oh dear god, I just googled sore throat after sex. Regardless of my other symptoms (I’m too embarrassed to list them here), I may have oral chlamydia. I’ll be tested tomorrow.

During my last visit the GP was quite negative, I thought. ‘As you get older, you are more susceptible to viruses. Have you had a shingles shot?’ God knows what she’ll think now, when I come in wearing stained sweatpants and crazy hair (I haven’t been able to wash or even drink water, my throat is so sore) and tell her how much unprotected sex I’ve had. to have.

She’ll think I have psychiatric problems, Walter Mitty Syndrome. It’s like I see a woman the size of a bungalow in Tesco, pushing a tiny baby into a trolley, and I think unkindly, ‘How did you ever have sex?’ I am offered counseling, not antibiotics. I’m waiting for the results.

But oh dear, I’m much sicker than I thought. I am writing this now from my hospital bed at Darlington Memorial. This is the first time, I think, that I have submitted a copy during my hospital stay, although I have filed from a few strange places: a hammock halfway up Everest, Ian Fleming’s Jamaican villa, behind taxis during fashion weeks, a gas station on the M1 (that was when Thatcher died).

The doctor was so shocked that I had not eaten for five days and could no longer swallow water that he immediately referred me. Nic drove me. Of course the parking garages were full.

In the end we succeeded. The ENT surgeon who looked in my mouth was impressed by the size of my left tonsil. My whole face is now swollen; it’s like I’ve had filler. He took blood samples (‘That’s almost an entire arm!’ A room full of blank stares. Why doesn’t anyone remember Tony Hancock?), gave me steroids, intravenous antibiotics and I’ve now been on an IV with fluids and painkillers for a few hours. to see if the swelling and pain decrease.

I will never again discredit the work of doctors and nurses.

The surgeon came back with the results. ‘It’s glandular fever. The kissing disease. No wonder you’ve been so ill since you met the German.’ Turns out, even surgeons need light relief when reading newspaper columns.

Glandular fever is most common in teenagers who kiss a lot. It is spread through saliva and semen. We kissed a lot. He has a very strong tongue. I haven’t been near another soul. I spend every day alone writing. When I take care of the horses, I am alone.

I’m waiting for the IV to finish and the surgeon to let me know if I want to stay overnight. So this is where I end. Not married to a handsome man, living part-time on the Thames. But in a narrow hospital bed, needles in my arm, only the IV to keep me company.

JONES moans… WHAT LIZ HAS BEEN DOING THIS WEEK

• Hospital parking lots. Why are they always full?
• People who say, ‘It’s my forever home.’ It’s not that, right? No one lives forever, despite what Liam Gallagher might sing.
• And why is it that when you open a pack of tablets, you always get the end of the folded leaflet?

Contact Liz at lizjonesgoddess.com and find her @lizjonesgoddess