THIS week I have mostly been suffering from the annoying things people say when you have the ’flu.
Actually having the ’flu was bad enough. I lay in bed for days on end in a weakened state.
My only source of entertainment was daytime TV, which turned out to be a toxic brew of Jeremy Kyle shouting at poor people; ‘Diagnosis Murder’ and an endless stream of shows about buying houses, each just slightly different from the last.
Meanwhile, I hawked up enough phlegm to fill a small lake.
Being ill was pretty bad, but the real problems began when I returned to work and found myself in a Groundhog Day of annoying conversations, because for some reason, there are only two things that people say to you when you say you’ve been off work with ’flu.
"Ah, man ’flu, was it?" goes the first, generally said with a knowing look from one of my female colleagues.
No, I say, actual flu. The sort that does not discriminate for gender. The sort that should not be belittled with insinuations that all I really had was a bit of a cold.
"Okay," people say. "Well, don’t go giving me your germs."
And in the name of all that is decent, how am I supposed to manage that? Does the rest of the population have a way of keeping their germs under control that I don’t know about?
The week after you return to work is a high-wire act of waiting for the merest cough or sneeze somewhere in the office and knowing that there will be some buffoon who will turn to you and say: "Oh, Ken Gorm, you’ve given me your cold."
But how can they tell it’s mine?
The world is full of bacteria that we can’t see and certainly can’t trace, yet as soon as people get the merest hint of the sniffles, they feel able to point to a direct link between my illness and theirs.
Whenever people tell me I’m giving them my ’flu, I tell them that it’s a wholly unwarranted accusation that has no basis in science or law.
That usually ends the conversation, to be fair.
So to sum up: being ill is bad, but not as bad as returning to work.
Bah.
