Bleh

I have been ill. Nothing fatal, just man flu. It saps the soul a bit though and is boring. So very boring. Also when you ill alone it just means your house gets messy.

Sadly the NHS doesn't extend to having someone deliver chicken soup to your house. It really should though. That would have definitely helped.

Aside from being ill there isn't mcuh to report really, oh I finished the third draft of the book and sent it off to my agent so that's something I suppose. I'll hear in a bit if it made the grade or not. The nice thing about having it with him is that for the first time in ages I don't have a feeling that I should be doing homework. That's nice.

It's only a few weeks till the company awards now. I've been put up for one - I'm not sure if I'm a finalist yet or anything but I'm going to hang around till that is over. I am looking at other jobs but I won't make any moves until I find out if I get the award. It would look good on the C.V.

Fug and flats

I spent most of the weekend in a fug. I'm entirely sure why, but it was there. I did everything I could think of to battle the fug, I ate well, did things I like but it was there like a damp blanket.

Yesterday I went to the gym first thing in the morning and that seemed to help. It made me feel extremely good for a while and then I sick in the afternoon. I think this might be because I may have got a little bit addicted to coffee. I've given it up for a few weeks but I had some on Sunday as part of the attempt to de-fug. It was delicious, absolutely splendid but on Monday I had a head-ache, hold and cold flushes and the hairs on my arms were standing up.

Of course it could just have been another weird illness, there are loads of them floating around at the moment. It seems people are constantly unwell with things that might not be swine flu but could be. Yes, perhaps that's why I felt so awful yesterday. That's far more pleasant an option than coffee addiction.

Or actually it could have been that I had gym rage and pushed myself a little bit too far. I broke my personal record for burning calories in ten minutes and I think I hadn't drunk quite enough water before that. Also I went for a very disappointing meal at lunch time, so it could be that as well.

So it's not really coffee's fault, don't blame the marvellous black liquid.

In other news I'm looking at flats now. Well houses actually, for less than it cost to rent a room in London I can rent a reasonable two bedroom house. I don't need a second bedroom but I do need proper parking for a bike and that seems to only come with places with two bedrooms.

I've never lived on my own, so I'm not sure if I will agree with it or not, but part of the reason for moving is to be in the same town as all my chums so if anything I will have more of a social life.

Being Hardcore

Yesterday was a troubling day. After talking to the Berk at the government organisation, who was messing me about just because she couldn't be bothered to do her job, I was a bit angry. Actually it's more than that. The work I did was in November, and immediate payment had been agreed and I had decided that this job would pay for Christmas.

Since The Berk is being so awful about paying I may not get to have a Christmas. And I mean that in a real sense, I won't be able to get presents for anyone and I won't be able to go home and visit my family. This is why I hate the Berk.

Anyway, after dealing with the Berk I was a bit irked and I ended up having a pretty bad migraine attack at work. Headache, messed up vision, feeling sick, the works. Since I'm on a contract and it takes more than a while to get home I just stuck it out even when my vision went making, me almost blind. I carried on working using the magic of touch typing to do my work which is pretty hard core I think. If Chuck Norris worked in an office he'd do that.

You may notice that this post isn't justified in a weird way. I've gone for a different train ticket this week, the luxurious fast train which means I'm travelling in style with free-wifi and on a far, far faster train but ticket costs more than a week's rent. So not a total win really.

At 9am I'll be phoning the Berk again to find out what is going on, I've instigated Operation Stalk where I'm going to phone them at least twice a day for updates now. It seems to be the only way I'll get paid and very in the keeping of the spirit of Christmas. Ho Ho ho

An open letter to my immune system

Dear Chaps,

We've been through some good times and some tough times together, I feel we have a special bond. We've been through a lot and that makes people closer. Now I like hankies as much as the next chap, possibly more but I do feel the cold and various other aliments that has been with us for weeks now is getting a little excessive.

Perhaps like a house guest over staying it's welcome we should gently usher it towards the door and tell it that we look forward to seeing it soon. It's jolly exciting having new people and things to stay over in the old body but I think it's time we got rid of this once and for all.

I know the summer has been pretty rotten and all that but it's time we all pulled together, I mean it's just about to start being party season again and we'd all hate to miss out on some bashes because we were feeling a bit unwell.

Kindest regards,

Louche

Carry on Convalescing

I'm back, but I'm a bit broken. It appears that four, no five days of almost no sleep and large amounts of cocktails (we may have been camping but there is no excuse for a drop in standards) can make you a little bit unwell.

I do this every year and yet I never learn. Ho-hum. Luckily I've got a few things to catch up on while I convalesce, like the latest edition of Bike magazine. Huzzah!

Also I have decided that it's time for a new pocket watch so I've stopped using the mechanical one and now I'm going to be seen about with only the rather minimalist number with the white face. Or at least I will be seen about with it once I've managed to stop being so unentertainingly ill.

Huzzah for Port! The miracle cure that heals all

Yes, after a fairly extensive course of drinking port last night while alternating between shivering and sweating I have been cured entirely, well mostly. I still feel a bit strange but that's probably due to drinking so much port last night. I wonder if they should list that as a side effect on the bottle.

Well since I'm feeling okay it's definitely time to go to a garden party, perhaps two. Now where did I put my pith helmet?

Breakfast wines

I had wine for breakfast today, not because I'm some decadent dandy* who bathes in Champagne and uses silk for loo paper but because I'm ill and I'd completed some tricky work even though I was practically deaths door due to man-flu and the only food I had in the house was a couple of slices of bread, some slightly 'troubled' cheese and half a bottle of terribly good Shiraz.

This morning I had to finish off a feature which I should have completed a while ago, and suddenly it was asked for so I woke up at 7am and wrote it, then I finished off another piece of work all before 9am.

To mark this Herculean effort I made myself some English Rarebit, which according to a telly program I watched last night is cheese on toast where you give the toast a good sploshing of red wine before you put the cheese on. I tried this and it was marvellous, so good I did a little dance.

Sadly after I ate it I realised it was the last bit of food I had in the house so I'm going to have to shuffle down to the shops while unwell. Blast, but if I do make it out I'm morally allowed to buy all sorts of treat foods because I'm not long for this world and I probably should enjoy it while I can.

It's entirely logical if you think about it.

*Although most of the time that is more than enough of a reason.

Man flu and soup

I have man flu, I don't think it's fatal but you never know with these mild temperatures. This rather dull illness has caused me to rethink my weekend plans, I was going to go to a rather strange festival but since I was feeling a bit off I thought a few days in a damp tent drinking far too much would probably not get me in tip-top condition for racing motorbikes.

Since there was no-one to make me chicken soup I had to slog down to the shops to get the ingredients myself, it wasn't a pleasant trip but I managed to get some supplies in and spent the rest of the day dosing myself with vitamin C and sleeping.

It reminded me of the time that 'a girlfriend' was unwell. I spent the whole day, yes the whole day making a chicken soup for her. Luckily I had roasted a chicken the day before so in between working I carefully tended a stock pot filled with tenderly chosen vegetables and other delightful herbs to make the best soup I possibly could.

After hours of attentive cooking it was ready and I presented it to her. It smelled amazing, I mean really good. Just thinking about it is making my mouth water and I thought that by putting so much effort into making some food for her she would really appreciate how much I cared for her.

She took a sip, and then said "If my dad had made this he would have strained it to remove the fat."

Civilisation Crash

I have returned to London, I'm not sure I like it anymore, for a start there aren't nearly enough horses.

The final part of my journey home was rather unpleasant. I foolishly thought that a bus that took you smartly to the train station from near to your flat would also travel the same route in reverse if you caught the same number bus travelling in the opposite direction.

What a moron I was. Instead of being deposited a few hundred metres from my flat where I probably could have man-handled my luggage with the minimum of tears I had to jump off the bus before it got any further away from where I wanted to be and then had a slog of about a mile or so with my luggage. With my luggage and my bruised ribs. It was no nice and it seems to have made my injuries noticably worse but more on that later.

Once I'd dropped my bags off home I chucked on both my new pocket watches (decadent I know but I love them both so much I can't really take being parted from them at the moment) and joined some chums at the pub. It was a lovely pub visit of nonsense, inappropriate jokes, silly business ideas and even a light smattering of proper grown up conversations about serious issues. We scampered back to the train station singing, well inventing a very silly song together. I won't share it now because I think unless you were there it will be a bit strange. It was a marvellous trip to the pub and I collapsed into my bed excited and ready for the next adventure.

I woke up at about six am had to go and spend some quality time talking to the loo, then again twenty minutes later. Something was not agreeing with me and I couldn't even keep water down for more than a few minutes. This would be unpleasant enough but imagine if you will the sensation of having to be sick when your ribs are a bit wonky. It's like vomiting when your torso is contained in the jaws of a venus fly trap. My ribs are much worse today, I think because I had to heave luggage around so much.

I'm not sure entirely why, but I went to my meetings in the morning anyway and managed to get almost all the way into the Soho office with out having to be sick again. I was secretly a little impressed that I had any fluids left in me. Thankfully I was only steps away from the office at this point so I could clean up and change into the spare shirt I always keep there. It's for when one stays over night with a 'new friend' and has to go straight to work the next day. I also keep a wash-kit under my desk for the same reason.

Mildly refreshed I went to see another client but instead of working with them for a day I had to stay for only an hour because my stomach had managed to find further reserves and decided I needed to spend a bit more time getting to know the bathrooms of the London area. At that point I gave up and went home, thankfully my digestive system relented and I managed to slink back without anymore issues and fell fast asleep in my bed.

I feel a bit more human now but I still don't want to eat anything and my various action man assignments are going to be on ice until I'm back to the point at which I can do things like that. Amusingly, while I was enjoying my period of enforced fasting (it seems to be in vogue at the moment - check out Bete De Jour) I got a call from an editor asking me if I wanted to do some resturant reviews. Since smell is most of the eating experience I might be able to get away with it if I just sniff the foods, but I think the best solution is to drag along some friends to act as my tasters.

Mushrooms and I

Mushrooms and I are no longer friends. We had a bit of a to-do before Christmas which caused me to miss out on a few lovely parties. On the day I was dumped by T.P. I ate some mushrooms which really didn't agree with me, and continued to argue for a few days.

I've not really had them much since then but for some reason after returning from the pub (more on the pubbing later) it seemed like an excellent idea to cook up some suspiciously elderly mushrooms and have them on toast. This was an extremely bad idea, because of those dastidly fungi I spent slightly more time in the bathroom than my bedroom last night and I awoke with a fairly serious handover and aches in strange places.

It was sort of worth it though, not the mushrooms but the pub visit. I scampered down the road to Wimbledon to go drinking with Piqued and his lovely ladyfriend. It was an excellent pub visit. We talked about genetics, obsessives and large amounts of nonsense. Afterwards I was buzzing with good humour and so the walk back seemed fly by, which is probably why I thought that having some dodgy mushrooms would do me no harm.

I awoke this morning in pieces - absolutely ruined - but after a cold shower, a fresh shirt and a summer hat I feel like a new chap. One with a slightly fuzzy head but a new chap all the same.

Devon and Dorset

I've rushed off to the West Country. Not just because it's time for the yearly Family Shoot, but because my Grandmother is deeply unwell.

She is in hospital right now giving the nurses lectures on the correct way hold a fork which I'm taking as a good sign.

Anyway the shoot is tomorrow, so I have to go bed now.

Just a little bit more

'I say Louche' you might say. 'You are having a bit of a week, still it can't get much worse can it?'

There would be no reply to this, because I am in bed with some awful sort of sickness. It's not even a romantic illness where I can waste away gracefully at the seaside while writing poetry, oh no. I think I ate something bad, or perhaps the stress has just finally got to me but either way I think I've lost about a stone in weight just today. While this miracle weight loss may sound pleasant the method of getting rid of that weight was not.

Now I'm desperately trying to pull myself together as Noel Fielding from the Mighty Boosh is opening his art show toinght. I really want to go but I can't if I'm a shivering wreck.

I think I'm on the path to recovery, I managed to eat a bit of fruit with out it deciding that it had too much to live for and decided to scamper out of my belly again. Plus I'm blogging and I'm pretty sure that is one of the 10 signs of life.

Two simple things

We had the casino party on Saturday night, and it was a huge success. Who would have guessed that people like playing cards for chips? The bash ended at 7am with the final crowd of poker players being reluctantly pushed out of the door. I was rather unwell for the party (I had caught a nasty bug off T.P. while looking after her) so I couldn't drink and spent quite a lot of time feeling like I was about to explode, and yet I still had fun.

Such is the power of card games I suppose. There was even a hint of love as two different friends took a liking to each other and spent the whole evening loudly flirting while playing cards. This flirting took the form of trash-talking over who had the best hand but it was all very amusing to watch. After the party was over the male of the pair requested I get the females phone number and the very next day I had a text message from the female asking for the male's number to apologise for her behaviour.

It's like a Rock Hudson/Doris Day film.

I'm still waiting to hear back from various people for work but this is more bearable as I've shown some of the work stuff to people I know and respect and they liked it so it seems just some agents miss the point entirely. Silly chaps, still one mustn't hold a grudge, it's petty.

Of course if in the future the agents find themselves destitute and for some reason in a burnt-out building covered in soot shouting "Why god. Why?" at the sky, I might allow myself a wry smile.