Quarantine

To steal a turn of phrase: I'b ill.

I woke up this morning at 6:30 to find that, as I feared, the tingle in the throat had developed significantly, and I'm now the poster boy for mucus-awareness week (it's pretty much between me and the Alien Queen as to who leaks more). That being the case, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

At about 10-ish I called into work to tell them that they wouldn't have the pleasure of seeing my pale, snot-covered face sitting in the office today. On the plus side, of all the times to be ill this is probably the best (if such a thing could be said) because I'm not horrendously busy and so can afford to take a day off. Still sucks massively though. I also have the worst bed-head hair ever, which quite frankly I couldn't be bothered to deal with; I have, however, spent the day in fear that someone would ring the doorbell and I'd have to answer it looking like *this*.

I think this is the first time I've taken a sick day since I moved into Sparky Towers, so altogether the experience has been a bit bizarre. In days gone by I had Sparky Ma to look after me, but now my wearied moaning falls on deaf ears, and I have to get my own drinks. The thing that's most weird, though, is the fact that I don't have the family sick blanket to rely on.

Rather like Linus with his security blanket in Peanuts, my family has a massive wooly blanket that only sees service when a member of the family is ill. Bearing in mind how much action that thing's seen over the years, it's probably rife with disease; I'm pretty sure if Sparky Ma was to give it a shake in the garden to freshen it up everyone in a half-mile radius would contract plague. But it was always reassuring to know that if you could survive a couple of days smothered under that thing, you were pretty much sitting pretty alongside cockroaches and potato waffles as the only things that would survive global thermonuclear war.

In the absence of Sparky Ma and the legendary yellow blanket, I've spent my day thus:

• Inhaling Vick's vapour rub.

• Watching South Park (there's bugger all on daytime TV).

• Asleep, until rudely awoken by someone ringing the doorbell at 17:00. I ignored it.

Riveting stuff I think you'll agree. A word of warning, though; don't get Vick's vapour rub smeared across your hands while trying to flick it into a bowl of steamy water. It gets everywhere and is a complete bugger to get off.

So there you have it; I am the living, breathing personification of at least three of the seven dwarves - Sleepy, Sneezy, and Snotty. Roll on Doc's arrival, I say.