Worried

I feel terribly ropey, and it is worrying me slightly.

When I got up this morning I ached all over. It was completely out of the blue - I felt fine yesterday, I was fine all weekend, even with getting both sunburnt and soaked to the skin, and sleeping in a field for three nights.

I've now reached lunchtime and I have to face the fact that there's something wrong with me. I have the energy levels of a ninety-year-old. All my joints hurt and my head is throbbing as if I have a fine old hangover (I haven't). I just want to lie down and be left alone. But Roxana is off on annual leave for the rest of the week, and now I am thinking I may be off too and that will mean no-one on the Visitor Info line for two days. Not good. Damn it; but this is another of the things that happens when two people try to do three people's workload.

I'm eating as I write - a toasted bagel with a bit of Wensleydale cheese. It tastes like dusty all-bran with sour milk. Yuk. I have some Morrocan mint tea but that doesn't taste quite right either. If I have this blinking swine 'flu I will be really cross; but I have to admit that that is what this feels most like - the beginnings of 'flu. Blast and b*gger it...

I will not get in a panic; I am a healthy adult with a normally-good immune system. I came through one of the famous "terrible 'flus" of the last forty years - that dreadful Christmas in Tankerton when we were all ill, and none of the presents were opened until the 28th. I will not run down the hallway wailing that I've got Mexican Swine 'flu and I'm going to die, woe's me, woe's me... Doubt very much if I could muster the energy to, anyway.

I will soldier on to the end of the day if I can, and then see how I feel tomorrow. But if I vanish from here for a while, that's why. I am not usually a hypochondriac, or a malingerer, I'm glad to say. I don't want to be off work this week; it will really screw things up for everyone else in the department. But I do feel increasingly dire as the day progresses.