Days Without Alcohol 59.
Another day of pesky and unpleasant illness, but once again work commitments meant that I couldn't spend all day in bed. We were recording the fourth episode of the third series of Banter tonight and having never missed an episode yet I did not want to cry off just because I felt like I was about to die.
There is always the offer of a cab in, but as it is at rush hour I generally think it's easier to go in by tube. Foolishly I did not reconsider this based on the way I was feeling and struggled in on public transport. It is not hyperbole to say that my journey was harder than climbing Everest and trekking to the South Pole combined. There was a lot of walking to be done and nowhere to sit on the tube and as I stood achey legged, sweaty, with my tonsils feeling like I had slowly swallowed a sanding machine, I thought of how much easier it would have been if I was sitting on the leather seats of the posh car that would have picked me up if only I had had more foresight.
On the bus up to Notting Hill a group of unpleasant, shouty schoolboys were standing right in front of me. One of them had been eating Doritos and as soon as he had finished casually let the bag fall to the floor. Had I been feeling a bit better I might have challenged him to pick it up - who am I kidding? He and his friends had tried to open the door via the emergency button as the bus passed Holland Park tube (the stop is about 20 metres further on) and the driver shouted at them. He was of Indian origin and one of the boys then spent the next three minutes mimicking what the driver had shouted in a thick Indian accent. The boy himself was black and one of his friends did at least have the decency to point out that he was being racist. But undeterred the boy continued his parody until the bus stopped and the doors opened some three or four minutes later.
I am not particularly chastising any of them, though it was very wearing for me to have to witness all this in my current state. Adolescent boys are selfish, unthinking idiots, testing boundaries by behaving in unpleasant ways. And kudos should be given to the one boy who realised that something bad was going on.
By the time I was at the studio I was feeling and looking pretty rough, but Dr Theatre got me through and I managed to perform adequately, despite feeling slightly spaced out.
I had been unable to face eating anything all day, which probably had not helped, but I forced down some food, which made things slightly better. The only plus about all this is that it's probably really going to help with my diet. In fact thanks to steady loss since I started touring I am not that far off being 2 stone lighter than I was at the start of the year. Which is a bit frightening. Especially as I still look pretty fat from where I am standing.
