AND so the lurgi lingers on. Within seconds of the six-year-old's chicken pox scabs falling off en masse on to the rug, the two-year-old started sprouting suspicious boils.

Okay, I thought, I can handle this. In fact, it's a good thing. Get the nasty, scratchy business over and done with when she's little and then forget about it forever.

Job done. No problem.

What I didn't realise was that life had a sneaky little twist up its sleeve for me. Since my last column I have discovered there is something much, much worse than a two year old with chicken pox, and that is a 35 year old with chicken pox. Especially when the 35 year old is me.

It started as a couple of unfortunate blemishes on my chest, but before the day was out I was officially more blister than person. With hindsight I can now see that my son's pox marks were a discreet little bunch, polite in comparison to the marauding hordes that stormed out of my ears, across my face, down my neck and ever onwards until they reached terra firma.

Not an inch was spared. Not even those intimate nooks and crannies that rarely see the light of day, especially in the pages of a family newspaper. I won't go into great detail on this particular aspect of my life with the lurgi.

All I will say is that while you were reading through the party manifestos on Wednesday night and wondering who on earth to vote for, I was laying on the sofa, alternately wincing and sighing as I repositioned the picnic freezer block I had shoved down my knickers for comfort.

There is something intensely embarrassing about a grown woman getting chicken pox (with or without a block of ice on her bits and bobs). I knew there was a good chance I would not come out of this experience scot (or scab) free because my parents hadn't done their duty when I was a child by lassoing me together with any or all of my pox-addled cousins.

But I had assumed I would get a more dignified version of the lurgi, something involving half a dozen almost invisible pimples and a case of the Victorian vapours that would leave me unable to do anything more strenuous than switch over from Corrie to EastEnders.

At the very worst, I thought, I would get shingles, which is supposed to be painful but at least has a vaguely amusing name that makes me think of a close-knit, close-harmony group from the 1950s ("Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the musical musings of The Shingles").

But, oh no, that would be too easy. I had to get full throttle, no-holds- barred chicken pox and end up looking like a badly paid extra from a sci-fi movie.

In fact, now that I come to think of it, I may be able to make a bit of money out of this lurgi. I could hire myself out while the scabs last (GP's estimate: four weeks) to promote the latest Star Wars film. I have no idea what the Sith of the title actually look like, but I'm sure there must be at least one or two aliens in the latest George Lucas epic that look like fire-damaged Cabbage Patch dolls with bran flakes glued all over their faces.

I could parade around City Screen with a light sabre in one hand and a bottle of Calamine lotion in the other, spouting Yoda-style words of wisdom such as "scabs, I have, and itchy are they" while continuously referring to myself as Scabulon the Magnificent.

Well, it can't be any worse than Ja-Ja Binx, can it?

Updated: 11:26 Monday, May 09, 2005