It takes until late afternoon for my disappointment about the love tryst, that never truly was, to dissipate. I had the very real feeling that Craig David would have made a great couple. The hangover however is a bit more stubborn to shift. After the obligatory lying groggily, staring at the ceiling for several hours act our stomachs grumble loud enough to make us move. After some grub we wander the stunning streets of Barcelona taking in some sights & doing some shopping. I buy a few bits for my upcoming voyage & weirdly all purchases have a vaginal theme. I only went in to inquire about a Divacup so how I came out with not one but two kegel contraptions as well is down to some insane saleswomanship. She fully got me on the weak bladder front. At a friends 30th trampoline party a couple of months earlier I had semi wet myself in the jungle gym zone after an ambitious tuck jump into the ball pit (yes Jamila, your 30th), & somehow this young lady had cleverly dialled into my incontinence fears. BOOM €45. Just like that. I salute you lady, it certainly wasn’t on my shopping list. Three years later & they still remain in their original packaging*. I wish the same could be said for the Divacup.

* Sadly I don’t think there is much of a resale market.

Whilst surveying the extensive kegel selection Michelle begins, maybe unsurprisingly given the subject, to feel a little queasy, & disappears to find a public bathroom. It’s 25 minutes before she reemerges looking less than her radiant best.

She has been vomiting & needs to get home as soon as possible. She is lodging with a family on the outskirts of town so we flag a cab & tell him to put his foot down pronto.

What happens next is best described in a series of bullet points:

• Michelle turns a strange shade of grey
• In my anxiety-ridden, hungover state aided & abetted by Dr. Google I, after a series of yes & no questions I find on Quora, diagnose Michelle with life threatening meningitis
• An astonishing lack of Ubers means I run around the streets of this heavily residential part of town like a headless chicken, in the dark, trying to locate assistance.
• I find a taxi but one look at Michelle & they drive off
• Proving the previous taxi driver correct, 20 minutes of desperate pleas later, Michelle unceremoniously throws up all over the rear exterior of the only other taxi I can find in the whole of Barcelona that will take us to A&E
• Taxi driver loses his shit but I run inside for supplies & wash down the taxi & armed with a bucket on Michelle’s lap he reluctantly agrees to take our sick splattered bods to the nearest hospital
• A&E is jam packed & finding a seat for Michelle is another crusade in itself. She ends up in an abandoned wheelchair.
• We wait stony faced for 2.5 hours.
• She is prodded a couple of times but in true annoying style some of her symptoms start to disappear & it appears the hypochondriac in us is having the last laugh.
• We get told categorically she hasn’t got meningitis; Go Home Forrest.
• I try to go to sleep in a 14 year old girls pale pink bedroom spookily overlooking a monastery thinking to myself this is not quite how I envisaged this party weekend panning out.

24 hours later & I am gratefully back in Majorca. Michelle is alive & recovering from whatever the hell that was & I’m back Face-timing Simba from the lush comfort of the terrace with a pint of mimosa in hand, as if the whole crazy weekend of near Ryanair fisticuffs, a near Craig David fling & near viral death had been nothing but a wild dream.

Now, I’d like to say this kind of hypochondria is an aberration. A blip. A one-off born of hangover and Quora. Sadly, that would be an outright lie. What follows is, to my knowledge, the greatest act of misplaced neurosis ever witnessed by man, woman, or medical professional. Bear with me. This one requires some context.

It is the previous summer. I was trying to dye a dress back to its original pink hue in a bucket in the garden of my parents home in Majorca after I had put it in the wrong wash. It was a hot summers day & I was dressed simply in a bikini & one of those god awful fringed sarongs that we all owned in a rainbow of colours.

There I am squatting, giving the bucket a good old swirl with a stick adhering to the Dylon instructions to the letter when I hear a loud “ewwww” come from above. It’s my sister stood on the balcony, She has spotted the rotting maggoty corpse of a dead bird writhing in activity just beneath me. How I failed to see or smell this myself eludes me to this very day but there I was obliviously crouching directly over a dead bird covered in a mass of maggots with the fronds of my sarong lightly caressing its innards.

I squeal & start heaving with immediate effect, much as I am now mentally recounting the story, & jump in the shower & start my own version of dermabrasion with a rock hard loofah. Now as far as I can tell there has been ZERO skin contact  – I would surely have been aware of that. SURELY? RIGHT? At worst my sarong gave the cadaver a tickle with its tendril. WORST CASE, CORRECT? Well it seems as time goes on I lose my grip on this reality.

Now call me odd but I don’t like flushing the toilet immediately before getting in the shower. In my experience it can turn the shower water freezing cold. This behaviour must have been programmed from an early age when I had some experience with a teeny tiny tank of a water heater because I am deeply conditioned. Even when reminded it has no effect I do the deed & get in the shower leaving the toilet lid up to remind me to flush it on exit. That’s my process. Shoot me if you must but it never hurt anyone. (Unless it’s an alcohol poo- now those babies get flushed in motion regardless.)

Now on this occasion in a house with no internal locks, (remember my claustrophobic mum – she just about lets us lock the front door) my sister waltzes in whilst I’m washing & lets out an almighty shriek. I jump out the shower to her aid & lock eyes on the toilet bowl where her eyes are trained. There’s a worm. I kid you not. A gross, black, wriggly worm splashing about in the toilet bowl. I can not believe my eyes. About three inches long. I barely had a bowel movement but there it was chilling like it owned the gaff.

Questions activate my solar plexus; what, when, how, HOW?? HOW?? HOW?? Surely it can’t be??

My mum being the clean freak that she is exclaims that it must be me, never before has she ever, ever had worms in her pristine commode, it just wasn’t possible. There has to be another explanation, looking at me. To which I respond that I too had never had worms in my arsehole so I don’t think that precludes anything.

But you just can’t help but wonder… & that’s what I do for the rest of the day. I wonder. I just can’t shake the notion that that thing came out of me somehow.

What happens next is just plain stupidity looking back & I have no defense. I am stupid. End of. Clearly my whole family too, including my PhD holding sister because after hours of phantom tummy twitches, incessant googling & very little else I announce that I want to go to A&E & they, my normally sane family unbelievably support that decision. In my mind I have been infected with parasitic worms & need treatment ASAP. It’s now 10pm on a bank holiday. I have zero symptoms. Just an anecdotal, potentially non existent brush with a beleaguered bird. But nonetheless we all inexplicably pile into the dadmobile to Palma 40 minutes up the road.

On arrival at a private hospital which is the only one we can find, reception asks for my travel insurance details which I hurriedly hand over. In contrast to the manana manana culture typical of Spain this place is speedy gonzalez speedy & I’m seen in no time, prob due to lack of patients as everyone is fiesta-ing bank hol style – Spaniards got their priorities in check I’ll tell you that now- & before long, I’m providing a stool sample for examination. The doctor is perplexed at my story given the absence of ANY symptoms & even invites his mate in to hear the tale too so I tell the story again & again he asks if I am in any pain? No. Given the description I provide of my wormy friend they say in broken English its hugely unlikely that could have come out of me unawares. I tenderly clutch my abdomen so as to not insult the imaginary family of worms I have conjured up & look at the doctors searchingly, wanting a worthy explanation for why I just shat one out then. They look at me blankly, & I swear the second one is holding down a smirk. They dutifully label up the test tube & tell me they will telephone with the results in a couple of days. Not much else can be done. On the way out the receptionist hollers me over & gives me a bill for €450. YES FOUR HUNDRED & FIFTY EUROS. I’ve barely been in there 20 minutes. I would have whittled my own test-tube if it would have cut costs. Gee whizz. Insanity. Anyway the insurance will reimburse me once I put the claim in so I pay it & we go back to the car. Only now, in the dead of the night, the engine refuses to cooperate. It just won’t start. Numerous attempts produce nothing but a splutter. We ring for roadside assistance but Spanish take their fiestas seriously. Ain’t no one picking up the phone. No garages, no tow-ers , NO ONE. Exasperated there is nothing to be done but to abandon the car at the side of the road & locate a taxi. To the tune of a further €100. We ride back in tense silence.  I feel guilty as sin for bringing my family out here in the middle of night when they could be in a conga slinging back a chupito.

The next day I fly home to the UK & await nervously the results but given my spritely energy its really no surprise that they are negative. Still its a relief & I ring my mum to tell her the good news. She answers nervously & doesn’t seem as jubilant as expected which is odd given Mothers general love of all things anti illness. I hear her shift on her feet & she says quietly that the exterminators have just left. “What exterminators?” I ask. “For the drain” she say. “Seems the neighbours had an infestation, the whole urbanization has been contaminated”

“Right so my ass was always clean as a whistle?” Yes it seems. I’m happy but also a tad riled & dare I say it disappointed given I’d just ruined a perfectly good holiday with such unnecessary aggro. But I force a smile & we laugh. I can see the funny side. My dad less so as recovery costs for the car & subsequent repairs are mounting. But eventually we all see the funny side. Ho ho ho. Silly us.

Next day I ring the insurer to check on the claim after a missed phonecall from them. It is then that horror of horrors I am “regretfully informed” by Sheila with her chuffing annoying Sheffield accent that my insurance ran out 8 days prior. I nearly drop the phone.

€450 to shit in cup.