Write On!

I tried to go to work yesterday, I really did. I got up and excused the dizziness as a function of the hour - 5.00 a.m.

My coffee tasted like mud, but it had been in the pot overnight and who knows, perhaps longer. My wife doesn't always drink it, so it could have been older.

The good news was, I could eat my cereal without the accompanying sensation of swallowing shards of ground glass. So that was nice. The antibiotics seem to have done their job.

I drove to the office at a dawdle; that should have been another clue for me that my world wasn't quite right. When the roads are relatively empty, as they are at 5.30 in the morning, I tend to flick the 'sport' button and drive my car as it was built to be driven, using the gears to slow it down, rather than the brakes.

It was only after I'd reached the office, sat down with a fresh coffee that tasted as much like mud as the first, and switched on the computer, that I realized the hazy, dull sensation was not going away.

By 9.30 the normal thrum of the office fluorescent lights felt like a banshee's scream and my computer monitor was a 13 inch square cut directly from the sun; blinding and cooking me at the same time.

By 9.45 I was called all sorts of names, accused of being a direct descendant of the gits who spread the black death, told to go home and not return until I'd stopped melting.

I went back home to bed, feeling just a little bit sorry for myself.

So this morning finds me feeling mentally much better - my eyes can focus on the screen and my mind can almost form literate sentences. The problem is, I'm still hacking and coughing and generally expelling all kinds of unwanted germ-clouds. So I plan to stay put, at the desk in my writing room, finish a couple of rough draft chapters of 'Mirror Man' and write a few critiques on 'The Next Big writer'.

The only thing I still can't cope with is the banal rantings of the radio 'personalities' but don't know what CD to put on. Any ideas on a 'soundtrack for the slightly sick'?