Steve Shaw, in any comparison of influenza and Q fever, I have to say, Irishly, that of the two I'd rather have neither.

In 2011, Himself and I went to the Aran Islands for a week in late September. I already had bronchitis, thanks to the cold I picked up on the overseas flight, but I was recovering nicely until the foggy day when we decided to take a nice long hike through the fields. Inis Mor has more ponies and cattle than it has people, all of them busily dunging the garden-sized plots of land that cover the island, and I imagine that as I strode over the landscape, sucking in great gulps of fresh air, I was getting a thick aerosol of agricultural effluvia along with it.

Within 24 hours, I was so sick I could barely breathe, and by the end of the week I had lost my voice (it did not return for months) and was counting the hours until we could get back to Dublin and doctors who make house calls. It was well past Christmas before I could consider myself recovered. Hiking in the country rather lost its appeal after that.