Sunday, June 17, 2012

Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu

Greetings from my sick bed, and apologies for the untidiness as you look around my bedroom. The carpet of tissues and those dirty socks stuck to the curtains will be removed as soon as I’m back on my feet, which I haven’t seen for days as they’ve been playing hide and seek under the duvet.

It’s been about a month since I wrote my last blog. Actually, that’s not true. It’s a month since I published my last scribblings but I’ve diligently written every week since then yet found myself stuck in places where I couldn’t get on line, so maybe I’ll keep them and slip them in at a later date when no one’s looking.

I was very flattered by the flood of enquiries asking where I’d gone to. Well, not so much a flood as a stream after a particularly long and parching drought. But that email really cheered me up. Thank you mum.

In fact, since we last “spoke” I have flown back and forth to Glasgow, Dubai, Oman and Portugal spending more time in the sky than the ever present rainclouds over the UK. I have hosted charity events, media training sessions, produced and directed a video, done voice overs, and caught pneumonia. I didn’t so much burn the candle at both ends as set it on fire with a flame thrower then threw it in the oven and chucked the whole stove in a furnace just to make sure, so I’m guessing I deserve a bit of illness.

I just wish it could have been acne or athlete’s foot instead.

As far as I know I’ve never had pneumonia before. I think I’d have remembered the coughing and pain, and just how crap daytime TV really is.

Every fibre of my weight depleting body screams that I should “man up” and just get
on with it, but I can’t get my head off the pillow, which will make for an interesting hat when I finally emerge. Maybe I can add some ribbons and a small parasol on top before my holiday. So far I have lost six pounds in six days on the pneumonia diet. It’s like Weight Watchers but with more phlegm.

As a showbiz ham I’m practising multiple roles for the upcoming Christmas season, doing my best impression of Sneezy and the other dwarves who didn’t make the Walt Disney cut including Wheezy, Spluttery and Coughy. If Snow White pops by to cheer me up with her pal Happy, I’m sticking a GPS in her handbag and alerting the woodsman to follow her with his axe.

The problem with illness isn’t the discomfort, it’s the boredom. No one’s invented a pill for that yet. I tried crosswords but couldn’t focus. Sudoko was a failure because I couldn’t count past three, and the book I’m reading about an atrocity during the Balkans war somehow had that “feel good” factor missing. Instead, as I’m trying to get my latest quiz show format commissioned, I lay back and thought up new TV show formats. The only one I think has a chance is “Embarrassing Bodies: The Musical”.

I’ll be back next week, or maybe I’ll be in hospital instead being treated in The Drama Queen Wing for terminal over reaction.

Either way, it’s time for more antibiotics.

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