Soup on a tray . . .

I've staggered to the keyboard. Yes, this brave little soldier marches on despite suffering from (weep for me dear reader . . .) man flu. This scourge of the eighteen plus male finally hit home and layed me low for at least, ooh, forty eight hours.

Of course being ill now is nothing like being ill when you are a kid. A sickness day in the 1970s had a certain kind of format to it. I would be transferred from bed to sofa just as Jimmy Young was piping up on Radio 2. Once there, I would be covered with The Sickness Blanket, a cholera-ridden piece of cloth handed down by my great-grandma. Accompanying this would be The Sickness Bucket. Whatever the illness, the blue plastic bucket, liberally filled with Dettol-infused water would slosh around within vomiting range. Also arranged nearby would be a copy of The Beano and a bottle of Lucozade, complete with crinkly yellow cellophane.

Even though school was obviously out of the question, schools programmes would be served up. And so, semi-awake, I would peer at Seeing & Doing, Picture Box and the eerie Experiment ("Write that down".) Mum would later make an appearance with the Official Sickness Meal - tomato soup on a tray. Why she never put it in a bowl is anyone's guess. This would be served against a backdrop of Pebble Mill at One, the seven year old me being entranced by Peter Seabrook's gardening tips and a song from Patti Boulaye. By the time Crown Court came on I would be feverish and demented.

Two hours that I'll never get back . . .

Anyway, that's in the past. The adult sickness day saw me slumped over this keyboard, hating myself for reading inane tweets (note to celebs: if the only thing you have to talk about is your up and coming tour dates, then please don't bother). The 'feverish' moment came courtesy of Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show which appears to be a spoken version of the Daily Mail, a forum for the 'nuts and sluts' brigade who usually meander on to the Jeremy Kyle Show. Must be something about the name Jeremy. Faced with a TV schedule filled with greedy pensioners grubbing around at antique fairs or rotund campsters tarting up derelict terraces in Stoke, I kept the telly switched off and sweated away in a corner. With The Sickness Blanket. Great-grandma would be proud.