Small Beer on Self Pity Street
Well, I don’t know. I have a bad cold that does not appear to be developing into anything worse...not enough to squeeze me out of the rat race but enough to expose the rest of the office to rotten germs. Given that I am surrounded by the discarded wrappers of lozenges and cold remedy capsules with silly macho names, as well as heaps of tissues and a pile of filing a mile high....at what point is it best to choose to stay at home?
The work is light today, after the chaos of last week. If I feel any worse tomorrow I will stay at home and not feel guilty.
This is not a common problem for me. I am rarely ill and have not had a day off work for this reason for many years. There is little incentive to fake it since sick days are taken from my holiday entitlement. One of the many pokes in the eye you expect when working for an temping agency.
When I was very young I was at the beck and call of tonsilitis, but this passed as I grew older. And for years at school I contracted something mysterious and flemmy every single December, which took a couple of days to clear up...it was a clockwork illness that began to chime, without fail, on the twelfth of the month.
I always took the opportunity to sprawl out in front of Richard and Judy whilst writing my Christmas cards, occasionally looking up to see a feature about this year's most fashionable Christmas tree...which would turn out to be a useless silver tree with ultra-violet lighting and no decorations. Then a weatherman named Fred would leap around a floating weather map in a repulsive cardigan, spending a frantic ten minutes to tell us that the weather across Britain in the depths of winter was going to be cold, actually. Finally, Richard would say something inappropriate about Judy’s menstrual cycle, a celebrity chef would cook some “alternative” Christmas fayre in which turkey was shoehorned into a summery Mediterranean dish, and then the credits would roll. At this point I would shrug and double my medication.
But that was then. Now Richard and Judy are on when I arrive home from work. I switched on early for The Simpsons the other day to find Cherie Blair phoning the show about how her husband never buys her flowers. After seeing this important piece of television I tried phoning Today with Des and Mel to complain about an ingrowing toenail, but for some reason they wouldn’t put me on the air. The twisted hypocritical scum! One rule for the celebrities, another for the rest of us...although I did get a call from UK Living offering me a chatshow about the draft that comes in through the bathroom window, but I do have standards.
Richard and Judy, of course, managed to trump themselves by having Tony Blair as a guest last week. It being a hard-hitting political show, Tony fitted right in and it proved to be an important use of his time...but then this is the man who took time out of the recent Iraq invasion to record a voice for the Simpsons. Next week, look out for Tony’s debut on Naked News, an interview in Smash Hits about his fave boy band, and a ribbon-cutting at the opening of a new Aldi. Anything to come across as one of the little people.
Where was I? Illness. Hmm. There were rumblings last week about having to come in to work at seven a.m. this Thursday and Friday...whereupon I would have to stand on a freezing cold platform to monitor train arrivals. Jesus. I would fight tooth and nail to avoid this terrible fate anyway, but now I feel like shit there is no way in hell I will agree to this. And if they force the matter I will take a deep breath...then expel the entire contents of my lungs over them in a mucus-tinged cascade of revenge. Or just stick a pair of scissors between their eyes and cut out their brains. Either will suffice.
And on that happy threat of good old-fashioned violence, it must be time for another lozenge.
The work is light today, after the chaos of last week. If I feel any worse tomorrow I will stay at home and not feel guilty.
This is not a common problem for me. I am rarely ill and have not had a day off work for this reason for many years. There is little incentive to fake it since sick days are taken from my holiday entitlement. One of the many pokes in the eye you expect when working for an temping agency.
When I was very young I was at the beck and call of tonsilitis, but this passed as I grew older. And for years at school I contracted something mysterious and flemmy every single December, which took a couple of days to clear up...it was a clockwork illness that began to chime, without fail, on the twelfth of the month.
I always took the opportunity to sprawl out in front of Richard and Judy whilst writing my Christmas cards, occasionally looking up to see a feature about this year's most fashionable Christmas tree...which would turn out to be a useless silver tree with ultra-violet lighting and no decorations. Then a weatherman named Fred would leap around a floating weather map in a repulsive cardigan, spending a frantic ten minutes to tell us that the weather across Britain in the depths of winter was going to be cold, actually. Finally, Richard would say something inappropriate about Judy’s menstrual cycle, a celebrity chef would cook some “alternative” Christmas fayre in which turkey was shoehorned into a summery Mediterranean dish, and then the credits would roll. At this point I would shrug and double my medication.
But that was then. Now Richard and Judy are on when I arrive home from work. I switched on early for The Simpsons the other day to find Cherie Blair phoning the show about how her husband never buys her flowers. After seeing this important piece of television I tried phoning Today with Des and Mel to complain about an ingrowing toenail, but for some reason they wouldn’t put me on the air. The twisted hypocritical scum! One rule for the celebrities, another for the rest of us...although I did get a call from UK Living offering me a chatshow about the draft that comes in through the bathroom window, but I do have standards.
Richard and Judy, of course, managed to trump themselves by having Tony Blair as a guest last week. It being a hard-hitting political show, Tony fitted right in and it proved to be an important use of his time...but then this is the man who took time out of the recent Iraq invasion to record a voice for the Simpsons. Next week, look out for Tony’s debut on Naked News, an interview in Smash Hits about his fave boy band, and a ribbon-cutting at the opening of a new Aldi. Anything to come across as one of the little people.
Where was I? Illness. Hmm. There were rumblings last week about having to come in to work at seven a.m. this Thursday and Friday...whereupon I would have to stand on a freezing cold platform to monitor train arrivals. Jesus. I would fight tooth and nail to avoid this terrible fate anyway, but now I feel like shit there is no way in hell I will agree to this. And if they force the matter I will take a deep breath...then expel the entire contents of my lungs over them in a mucus-tinged cascade of revenge. Or just stick a pair of scissors between their eyes and cut out their brains. Either will suffice.
And on that happy threat of good old-fashioned violence, it must be time for another lozenge.
posted by Jamie at 4:42 PM
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