I hate feeling ill. Sure, it's only a cold that has kept me away from work for the last three days, but that's not the point. I'm not 100%, shit, for the last few days, I've probably been hovering in the bottom quarter percentile, and I seriously despise feeling this way.

What also annoys me is the common female attitude towards "men with colds". I'm pretty convinced that their blas� disrespect is positive proof that the common cold somehow affects men in some different way than it does women. I'm not saying that I was 'on my deathbed' with this cold or anything, but at it's worst, this illness really is something that brings a man to his knees.

At points over the last few days, I've had trouble keping my balance, as my head swam in and out of consciousness. My joints have ached almost constantly for several days - my knees are still giving me jip even now - and my head seems to weigh a tonne. I think the biggest factor, though, in making me feel like crap was monday and tuesday nights, and the amount of sleep I managed to get. Which is to say, pretty much none at all. You see, when a constant stream of mucus is slowly working its way down your throat, it's difficult to slip into dreamland. Your breathing is ever interrupted. Breathe through your nose, and you'll blow bubbles of slimy snotty - and sometimes bloody - mucus all over you pillow, and just as pleasantly, back down your throat some more. Breathe through your mouth, and it'll make a noise comparable only to the amplified sound of grinding a wet stone against glass, making it difficult to sleep.

You can't win. After a few days of no sleep, you enter a whole new world. No energy, no willpower to do anything even if you did, impossible to maintain concentration on anything and no interest in doing anything anyway.

Of course, after all this, slowly the nasal nightmare slowly comes to an end. But just when you feel that the punishment is over, that insatiable tickle at the back of your throat appears, and before you know it, you're coughing away like a choleric leper. Hacking unstoppably and filling your mouth with blood and solid balls of flegm. Your head spins, your balance fails and your chest protests, but the tickle never dies, never stops.

I'm in work today. Why? Because I'm better? Don't let such fatuous thoughts fill your head. I'm worse, if anything. I can FEEL the flegm in my throat, the tickle tempting me to hack and cough like some cancerous decrepid, and, still, the unending stream of thick, multi-coloured liquid gathering in my nostrils. My head is still in some prancy fairyland, and refuses to take a grip on reality. But what can I do? I can't sit at home, staying housebound over the last few days drove me nuts. Curtains closed to keep out the baneful sun, used tissues gathering quickly around the sides of the bin, which already has its fill of them... I couldn't stand it anymore. I hate being ill, but I hate having to miss work because of it even more.

Unlike all of you smiley people out there with permanent contracts with terms and conditions and working benefits, as a contractor, paid by the hour, if I don't work, I don't get paid. No sick-pay or any such fancy helping hand.

So here I am, at work and feeling like shit, but in the knowledge that there's absolutely fuck all I can do about it.

Mine is the vacuumous black heart of contempt.

IB

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