I used to work in an Information and Statistics department in the National Health Service,so I’m well aware that things are often very different from what they would first appear.

Which would explain why the Scottish Government is claiming that the influenza rates are much lower than they were at this time last year. The young people in my own family have been hit badly by the flu this year, from my sister’s grandchildren aged 8 and 10 to my own sons who were ill at Christmas and they are in their 20s. As none of the older folks have succumbed we’re presuming that it is the swine flu.

Duncan got it really badly and by Hogmanay most of his friends had it too. They crawled out of their beds to celebrate the New Year at ‘the bells’ but they didn’t have any energy and Duncan ended up coming home not long afterwards, clutching a bit of coal to bring us good luck for the coming year.

Due to the fact that it all happened over the Christmas period nobody has been to see a doctor, so they won’t appear in any statistics. It can take two weeks to get an appointment anyway, unless they think that you might die, so people tend just to stay at home and cosset themselves until they feel better.

So unless Fife has been more badly hit than the rest of Scotland I think we can take the statistics with a pinch of salt.

I’m also annoyed by the weather statistics because the weather people keep telling us that it should be about 2 or 3 Celsius here but my garden is telling me something very different. It’s still frozen solid and it has been like that since November. It was -12 C in Dunfermline during the day not long ago but according to the weather report it wasn’t anything like that cold.

Apparently it was the coldest December in Scotland since records began 100 years ago. I definitely believe that statistic!