Illa Milla

I was ill and feeling wretched and so was Lolly. We felt sorry for ourselves but deserved no pity.
Lolly, because her sickness was down to a lusty session with a rabbit, fur and claws and all with a side order of horse poo; me, because I had to have consumed half my body weight in wine.
Plus, I’m deeply unsympathetic towards illness such as this, I have no truck with it, I am harsh and unforgiving. It is boring and self-indulgent, and I don’t like being bored and I don't indulge. Not when there are real people out there with real things wrong with them. So now that it was my turn, and self-induced, I deserved no more than being ignored, despised slightly, maybe. But shown no favour or concern. A maelstrom of crossness and misery was I.

I was so bad that I had to go to bed, shaking, sobbing, throwing up. I never do that. Ever. Indeed, I’m horrid and superior about lightweights that take to their bed by day. Added to which was the self-loathing and high embarrassment factor. Cringing at my own inability to grow up, lamenting the loss of my liver, promising any bored God who might lend an ear that Never Ever Again etc.
I went all day without turning on the computer: this just does not happen in a well-ordered universe.

At some stage I staggered into the kitchen, which I hadn’t been able to focus on at breakfast, to assess the full horror of the trashed pub scene which would correspond with the way I felt. But lo, what odd sight is this, but a perfectly tidy and respectable-looking room bearing no Bacchanalian scars, no signs of dancing on tables or smashed glass. All clean and polished and thoroughly grown up. Just 3 neat empty bottles lined up ready for recycling. There had been 5 of us drinking so 3 is no shocking tally. Almost admirable, indeed, taken over several hours.

I went to collect T11 from a rugby tournament which had coincided, by some strange serendipity, with the nicest day of the year so far, a mile from the Arctic conditions promised for this weekend.
And bumped into M who had been with me the night before. She looked evil, pale and spacey, clammy and leprous. My twin.
"Where you alright today?" she said.
"No," I said, and nearly cried.
She had been sick. In the car. Had sobbed as she cleared it up. Had gone to bed, and been sick some more. We sort of nodded heads in agreement with each other, not too much, it would have hurt. M is a person who is certain about things, very high-achieving, so I listen to what she says. She is always right.
“It was a bad bottle of wine,” she said.
“Not too much wine?” I said.
“Oh, no,” she said, surprised, “we weren’t drunk at all.”
“You’ve got that bug that’s going round,” someone else remarked. Some fit, hale, hearty person with rosy cheeks, who segued then into a robust and unnecessary chat about her weekend. M and I needed something to clutch. Hunched we stood, as the presentation went on and on and on, the requirement to clap being almost more than I could manage.
Then M2 staggered over. “Fragile” was the word she used. We all wore sunglasses. I always do (think F9, think Lolly: disguise is necessary) but M and M2 don’t.

The relief was huge; to be able to blame a proper bug and not just assume the worst of my own behaviour was a new position to be in. I tend to absorb blame. There had been a note home from school about it which I had tossed in the bin, but a note home from school suddenly seemed something very important. It pointed to the validation of a legitimate illness, and not just vile self-damage and how nicely smug is that.

Am still cold and shivery now and feeling a bit dull. Starvation-induced dizziness. I have even cancelled a night out tonight which I was looking forward to, thinking: what’s nicer than a date with the rug on the sofa in front of crap telly. I plan to be in my jim-jams by eight and can barely wait.
Normal service will be resumed. I hope.