Ugh. I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday. (It is Wednesday, right?) 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon, while sitting at work, I suddenly felt the opening snivvles of what was to quickly turn into the evil achey snivvly death. I’d suspected this was coming on for the past couple of days as my nose had been itching (a sure sign), plus everyone else in that disease-ridden office has been coughing and barking and snivvling. January office aircon syndrome, clearly. Everyone goes away to the four corners of the country to visit family and friends over Christmas, drink to excess, pick up every germ going with their weakened immune systems, and then return to work to breathe it into the air conditioning. So I called in sick this morning. I don’t actually like calling in sick, because everyone thinks you’re just skiving, but I would have been no use to anyone. I don’t understand these draconian sickness policies that some employers have that make you feel obliged to go to work, invariably spreading your disease to everyone else and making them ill too. Yeah - that’s productive... This now means that I have had three periods of sickness in a twelve month rolling period, which means that I’ve got a disiplinary interview (yeah - seriously!) to look forward to when I get back. I’m sure that can’t be legal - but it’s only serving to work against them because I’m not going to go in tomorrow either. What the hell - if I’m going to get a bollocking for it, I might as well make it worth my while and get to see two editions of Countdown! I don’t really care anyway - with any luck I’ll be telling them where to stick their job next week. I might even draw them a map... Speaking of which, I’m sure they’re trying to torture me. After hearing nothing from the agency on Friday I decided to call them myself on Monday morning before work. Vince at the agency told me that he hadn’t heard anything yet, and was going to give them a call later that morning and he’d let me know. Later that afternoon I had an answerphone message from Vince telling me that, whilst I am apparently “the chosen one” (do I look like Luke bloody Skywalker?), they still can’t give me a definite answer as the MD of the company is still on holiday until next Monday, although he is apparently picking up his emails. They did ask my permission to approach my referees though, which is promising. And they said they’re not bothered about approaching my current employer which is an added bonus. The waiting is just killing me though... Finally spoke to Riche this evening and had a good long chat. We keep going through these little periods of not talking to each other, not because we don’t want to, but because we’re both as crap as each other at doing these things. He’s had the achey death these last few days as well, so mine must be a sympathy thing. We talked about when we’re next going to see each other, but didn’t come to any particular conclusions, mainly due to the hectic January I have ahead of me, so I’ve promised I’ll let him know as soon as I work out what the hell’s going on and he can book some time off work. Ugh - I feel like someone’s shoved a quilt up my nose.