Curry on puking

The last blog entry was a little bit sharp, a little abridged, mainly because my stomach was starting to declare war on my body after a particularly virulent strain of dopiaza which attacked my mouth and anus, forcing immediate evacuation. Not good for me or Em or toilet. Saturday was a complete write-off - I lay in bed all day, getting up only to moan, sweat, urinate, sip water, and read very briefly. I hadn't been ill like this in years. The last time was on a flight from Istanbul to London, where I managed to be sick three times in three different countries. but even that paled in significance to the curry carnage of last weekend.

The worst thing is that I couldn't even disguise it. When I'm sick my head explodes. My eye-lids and temples burst, leaving little specks of ugly blood across my face which remain for several days, like some sort of tribal warmask. They've just about gone now.

Random observations:

*At least my football team is doing well - a 2-1 come-from-behind win over Blackpool makes the City 5 games unbeaten, with a second-string defence. Torquay away next, the sort of nasty little cup game which Cov can always be relied upon to struggle through. In my lifetime we've lost to so many of these teams - Sutton Utd, Luton, Hereford, Cambridge et al. Plus life-and-death struggles with Woking and Wycombe. Setanta, helpfully, have produced a series of adverts based on FA Cup upsets to remind me of the Gandergreen Lane debacle, when Matt Hanlon scored against us for very non-league Sutton in '89, when we still had most of the team which had won the blasted thing two years earlier.

* A point I made last week worth re-iterating: How come Ronaldo can write-off a high performance sports car leaving debris littered all over the road and sides of a Manchester tunnel
and get out unscathed - and yet the moment an opposing centre-half taps his calf he goes down like he's been shot in the scrotum?

*The jobs situation continues to worsen. Everyone knows about Woolies and Adams, but we as journos hear rumours constantly about other businesses falling away, roles being terminated, lives being ruined. And now the changes are its affecting us. We were waiting for the announcement and it finally came on Friday; Subbing (i.e putting the stories on the page) is to be centralised to Peterborough, affecting three different zones across East England. 33 production posts will become 14, grouping people from Louth and Sleaford and Spalding and Stamford and elsewhere all into one office. It's horrible news and leaves a lot of people up in the air. Will keep you informed.

Take care

John