Guilty secret

I threw a sickie yesterday. My alarm woke me up & I just thought (as I have done every day this week) that I couldn't be arsed. I wanted to curl up & go back to sleep. Unfortunately, the tension created by me trying to think up a viable excuse to have a day off meant I couldn't actually get back to sleep. I decided on a mild back injury in the end. I genuinely had one a couple of months ago so figured it was plausible that it'd crept up on me again. Anyhoo, today was spent faking a sore back. Gingerly sitting down, getting up, not bending over, wincing now & again.... I think I got away with it. Trouble was that I had a really shit day. It seemed to be 'Walk all over Spaceminx' day. Fat Slag wanted to swap lunch breaks, one of the bosses wanted me to do something that she was more than capable of doing herself, an engineer decided to get arsey with me on the phone. Karma getting me for telling a huge porky pie no doubt.

Ah well. The Thai takeaway I bought more than made up for it. Crispy wontons & sweet chilli sauce followed by chicken with ginger & spring onions & rice and all was right with the world once again. Funny how food is always my little comforter. It would explain why I'm about 3 stone overweight.

Luckily I managed to completely avoid daytime tv yesterday. I watched the latest episodes of Lost and CSI, surfed the net then watched an episode of Hunter with the gorgeous Nana Visitor in. I also pottered about the house, cleaning as I went. Looooovely. Later, I headed into Manchester to meet my chums for beer & curry. And what a laugh we had. A couple of chaps popped in who I haven't seen in a while, one of whom emitted such venom at the mere mention of Ant & Dec. He used to be such a mild mannered chap until he became a teacher. Now its bile, bile, bile all the way. You only have to say the phrase, "Of course, Ant & Dec are the new Morecambe & Wise" and a string of obscenities comes out of his mouth. Talking about all those '100 Best' programmes seems to set him off too. Highly amusing for the rest of us. And then came the inevitable, frightening discussion of how old we've become.

Basically, the bunch of us (apart from one notable exception) have known each other for about 17 years when we were members of a sci fi group in Manchester. We were all teenagers apart from Chris who would've been in his early 20s, young, not really very innocent, enthusiastic, hopeful. We'd discuss the new SF series like Star Trek the Next Generation (yes, it was new in those days), tell dirty jokes, arrange the next trip to Longleat or Laser Quest. Nowadays its all venom about crap tv, how rude the bar staff are, what guest beers are on this week, work, friends marriages/babies/divorces... How cynical we've become (& how much weight we've put on). Still, we've probably got more money than we had then, Dr Who has become mainstream & good, we can drink as much beer as we like without parents tutting at us when we roll in pie eyed and we're all better dressed.

Well, except Neil. But that's another story altogether.