Under the Weather

The worst time, the worst time in the world to get sick, is when you’ve just come back from a long weekend. You can’t take the time off. No one will believe you’re not just blagging an extra day to recover. On the other hand, you’re not going to get any thanks for going into work and sneezing at your co-workers. You’re forced to choose between resentment and suspicion, or being a social pariah. It must be like fighting a leadership election in the Labour party.

In fact, I didn’t really make a conscious decision at all. My problem is that the moment I’m least able to judge my own level of sickness is when I’m sick. I’ll wake up with something that I assume is just a sniffle and tell myself that it’d be silly to take the day off just because I’ve got a slightly blocked up nose. By the time I’ve got to work, I’m guaranteed to have a forehead you could boil an egg on and the Niagara Falls running down my upper lip. This is not a look I want my colleagues to remember me by, but it feels pretty feeble to walk into the office, say ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake’ and jump on the train home again. Instead I tend to tough it out. This is a decision which works just as well as you might expect.

I blame it all on man flu. At some point, probably in the 90’s, someone came up with the idea that all men are great big children who, when they get sick, just want their Mum to bring them chicken soup and Lucozade and rub their forehead with a damp flannel. Well, of course we do. Doesn’t everyone? It’s just, somehow this became a gender thing. Women, supposedly, are long suffering and tough and just get on with it, while the needy men turn every summer cold into pneumonia and lie around like wan heroines from 19th-century melodrama. This is very difficult to argue against. If you point out that you are ill but you’re not complaining about it, then you’re definitely complaining about it. Alternatively, you could try not mentioning it, and just looking vaguely pathetic every now and again. This is playing right into their hands. Now you’re needy and pathetic. You could, if you were a fool, take the approach that men get sick no more frequently than women. You could even point out the last time a significant other was ill and you spent your time fetching hot water bottles and warm brandy. Do not fall into this trap. Do not suggest that they, also, are prone to complain when they get sick. The fact that they are complaining, it turns out, is a sign of just how sick they actually are. Not like you, who clearly can’t be as sick as you say you are, else you wouldn’t have the energy to complain about it.

The most annoying thing about being sick is when you do actually take the day off. You finally get a chance to take a break from work, to laze around the house doing anything you want, and it turns out what you really want to do is sneeze and throw up. This is not the life of universal leisure they dreamed of in the sixties. Its not even a close second. And then, when you do finally start to perk up and think you might actually make something of your time, you’re told this means you’re probably well enough to go back to work again. It’s enough to put you off that third episode of Homes Under the Hammer.

Still, the thing about a cold is that it does go. It may not feel like it at the time, but eventually the Lemsip and hot whisky will do their thing and you’ll be up and about wondering what all the fuss was about. And it's a great unifier. We all get sick. We all know what it's like to feel grotty and anti-social and just want to curl up under the duvet and die. Which is lucky, because no sooner are you out of bed, then all the friends and relatives who’ve been telling you to stop making a fuss will start to sniff, and then to snuffle, and then with a great big sneeze they’ll be in bed and it's your turn to start looking after them. Now where did I put that chicken soup and Lucozade?