A Numerical Week.

If one were to mark one's week out of ten for services to the fledgling economy through mindless, anaesthetised, flu-ridden, food-orientated consumerism I confess that this week I would quite possibly tip the scale.



I have been ill. As in, take three days off of work, spend four nights back in the bosom of (to be honest, a surprisingly sympathetic) Mama and Papa, eat five (medicinally purposed) tubs of Ben and Jerry's (yes, five- count 'em), two Asda chocolate-fudge logs and eight Rolo yoghurts a day sort of ILL.



This can quite commonly be known as 'Cant-give-a-jaffa-cake-it-is-nearly-Christmas-and-I-can't-be-arsed-itus', but most definitely not in that phone call to the boss to explain that seriously, you hate to let the team down but you just need a day or two to get back on your feet. This overwhelmingly distressing and debilitating illness really did just strike you when you least expected it. No, you didn't even suspect so much as a throat tickle last night when you were dancing on the table to Queen whilst holding a wine bottle with a straw in it (for a friend) last night. Okay, you'll take it easy. Thanks for being so understanding. (*Cough, cough*).



In hindsight, I suppose that really, I just couldn't get it together enough to enthusiastically list the merits of a life-sized 'Drink Tea with Belle' doll over a High School Musical dancemat when the benefits of hours lay horizontal with not a boyfriend in sight were far from refusable when it was just so cold outside. The laws of karma do tend to dictate, though, that in using a very transparent and quite obviously poor excuse you will indeed actually become ill, and have to plough your way through days that seem to last three times as long as they should do whilst snot escapes like a fugitive on the run from your nose and you managed to splutter a thin film of phlegm all over the display of roller-skating dogs and the last Etcha-Sketch because you already took sick leave last week.



And nobody will care, because everyone is sick in December. You might even find yourself so delirious that you give out your number to random ladies looking at computers in the multimedia section, because they tell you they'd love a new laptop but just don't know how to work them, so you offer to teach them. For free.



Worse, you might even find yourself so drugged-up on Lemsip and paracetamol and cough mixture and menthol chest-rub that you have a conversation with an even more random woman at the customer service desk who you tells you you have a good energy, a friendly aura, and that you should give her a call, so you take her card and promise to and it doesn't even occur to you that SHE IS A CULT LEADER AND BELIEVES THAT ALIENS WALK AMONGST US. Oh, and naturally everyone who knows that you have exchanged numbers with not one but two females of the species in the space of a week will talk about you being a closet lesbian in the lunch break room, because even though you say you've been with the same boy for over five years and are practically heterosexually married he 'apparantly' lives hundreds of miles away and suspiciously nobody has ever met him. Hmmmmm. I don't like to gossip, but...



So there you go kids- a story with a moral. If you are going to lie about being ill, know only that it will come and bite you on the ass and make you gay. And cost you £83.60 at the supermarket in junk food.