Tied to the toilet

I apologise for the scarcity of posts this week, and also for the scatological nature of this one. I have been ill, you see: a stomach bug originating, we suspect, at Brit Jnr’s nursery and passing through the family with a dramatic snowballing of effectiveness. A few interesting nappies for Baby, a day or two of discomfort and appetite loss for Mummy and last, for Daddy, 24 hours of leg-aches, bowel-liquidation and toilet-clutching puke-spasms. I like to think that I have killed the thing by heroically taking its full brunt. Not the worst I’ve ever had (I once had salmonella poisoning and there were moments there where I really would have welcomed death), but it was a nasty sharp one. The type where between the merciful oblivious periods of sleep children’s songs pound remorselessly round your head (Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle, the cat and the fiddle, the Hey diddle diddle the cat and) and memories of incidents from your past are replayed with a vividness bordering on hallucination.

One of these at least caused me bleak laughter in my delirium. An old university pal once declared, unexpectedly, that he was tired of being ‘tied to the toilet’. “It’s like there’s an invisible elastic cord attaching me to the bog, and every day, several times, I have to keep going back to pay it homage.” Well it’s the kind of thing Eng Lit undergraduates do come out with, but I found it funny. We are all slaves to our bodies, nothing like a violent vomit to remind us of that, and so much for free will et cetera. Sorry if you read this while eating your office sarnies.