The Pneumonic Plague

After spending the weekend in the pub, my chest infection has come back with a vengeance. But I thought I was better! I whimper, kicking myself as I think about all the things I did this weekend that I shouldn't have and knowing full well that my imminent pneumonic death is totally my own fault.

Luckily it's a bank holiday, and so I can spend the morning sweating and coughing in bed, having an upsetting yet somehow enjoyable fantasy in which I end up in hospital, taking my last raspy breath just seconds before all my friends and family rush in through the ward doors. If only she'd looked after herself! they say to each other at my lavish but ultimately hopeless funeral, tears rolling down their grief-stricken cheeks. God, I am making myself cry just thinking about it. This is fun for a while, but then starts to get a bit depressing, and so I imagine "Bootylicious" being played over the graveyard speakers, as all my friends and family start bumping and grinding around the hole in the ground because there's just something about that song, really, isn't there.

But the fantasy gets boring after I write myself out of it, and so I get up out of bed and down to the chemist to buy some medicine and some magazines, just in case today is the day that I finish reading the internet. I can't decide between the Guardian, which has a very good crossword and the amusing headline: "Archbishop blames liberals for church rift", or a magazine with a picture of a glowing Angelina Jolie on the cover, looking super-trim after her effortless pregnancy with twins. I quite like Angelina, even though — having also once been left for a sexier, more intelligent woman — deep down I've always been Team Anniston.

In the end I buy both the Guardian and the glossy, and some oranges, and a microwaveable shepherds' pie, and then I climb back into bed and blonk about my thoroughly eventful and fascinating day even though it's not even 12 o'clock yet.