The Anti-Sickie

I don't think I've ever pulled a sickie: feigning illness to have a day off work. I may have once had to have a day off due to a largely self-inflicted bout of diarrhoea (my experimental cookery days are now behind me) but I have never claimed to have been infected with the black death merely to get a day's free paid leave. I'd like to think this was due to some kind of moral high-ground but I suspect it is more the horror of daytime telly and being stuck in front of tedious antique shows or Jeremy Kyle for the day. My particular problem seems to be quite the opposite.

I have just had a week's annual leave, taking the family to a cottage in North Wales for the week. It was very nice as well, located about 400 metres up in a Snowdonian rain-cloud. I had planned to do quite a few outdoors type activities with the kids. In fact, I spent most of the week with something somewhere between man-flu and the Ebola virus. This isn't the first time this has happened to me. Whenever, I take serious holiday time off work I end up with some malady or another. I appear to have a serial habit of pulling the Anti-Sickie: actually being ill whilst taking annual leave.

Of course, it does have certain advantages. Producing that much phlegm makes pronouncing Welsh place names a doddle. Not that this has ever caused me any problems - unlike my wife who regards Welsh as a bad hand in Scrabble. This does, of course, cause problems when I'm acting as the invalid sat-nav telling my wife to follow the sign to Llanrwst, Caernafon or Yr Wyddgrug (which is, obviously, pronounced "Mold"). She claims that Polish is far easier to follow - a view I obviously disagree with.

The week hasn't been a complete disaster. We managed to visit a few friends and family in the area and we also managed a few days out. I ended up staying in the car during the beach visit (frankly the beach in Saving Private Ryan looked more inviting the way I felt that day). We also went to Conwy Castle which was the destination for the remedial school kids in Willy Russell's television play, Our Day Out. My kids seemed to run riot around the castle in the same manner but at least they didn't nick all the animals from the zoo. How the BBC didn't manage to lose any of their young actors is anyone's guess.

So we are back home. I'm starting to feel better, which is just as well as I am back to work and on call all next week and we are due to move house after that. However, I really do need to find some way of planning my illnesses more conveniently.