HE’S QUITE A CATCH

THE FACT THAT INFORMER RARELY SUCCUMBS TO SICKNESS IS CURRENTLY COLD COMFORT FOR YOUR AILING, ACHING AND SNUFFLING COLUMNIST

Sick. So sick. Thoughts addled, but must write rectangle. Must write proper ... must write properly ... must just write. Can no longer be arsed correcting predictive text. Just too suck. I’m so sock. Has anyone ever been so sack?

Informer felt the onset. It appeared like a lone cowboy on the horizon in an old western movie, then grew larger and more menacing as it loomed closer.

Rather than packing a couple of Colt 45s and a Winchester rifle, this thing was packing bacteria and other virulent horrors, all yellow-green and wet and sapping.

Maybe I picked it up in Sydney. It’s crowded there and on overcast winter days there’s a miasma about the place, like a city in Cold War East Germany.

Every breath you inhale has been exhaled by someone else and that’s a licence for a chain reaction of infection.

Even so, your beloved correspondent is usually a patient patient, probably because I tend not to fall ill very often.

The last time was this time last year. I wrote about it then too. I’m also keenly aware of how lucky I am, because I know a few people who are really sick and it must be so hard to be so brave so constantly.

My issue is with people who say they are sick all the time.

The ones who are always clutching tissues, always cold, always telling you how “I really shouldn’t be here” and “I didn’t want to let the team down” and blah, sniffle, blah, cough, blah. They revel in catching that seasonal cold before anyone else and in having it the longest and in letting everyone know what they’re going through.

Do you know the worst thing that could happen to these people?

Getting better, that’s what, because then they’d have nothing to talk about. But they never will get better, because there’s nothing wrong with them in the first place.

Informer’s been blessed when it comes to illness and injury because — touch Mrs Informer’s head — in all my life I have spent only one night in hospital, for a simple hernia op. Mind you, while hernias are a fairly bland medical occurrence, mine was more exciting for being suffered while descending the rigging from the top mast of the replica of Captain Cook’s Endeavour.

And yet I am suffering, albeit temporarily. My hair hurts. My lungs are making noises like an old car that just won’t start.

My nose is producing material that defies description. My joints are all sharp angles, spurs and splinters.

When I blink, it makes a crackling noise. That can’t be right surely.

Mrs Informer rolls her eyes if I make the slightest complaint or request for sympathy. I’d roll mine back at her, except it hurts my ears. I’m as weak as the Carlton forward line.

And so as I write, I imagine every word is another lone cowboy on another horizon, with each one coming together to form an etymological posse moving Informer ever closer to the bottom right corner of this rectangle, and relief.

I’m sure I will eventually return to rude rectangular health. Until then, I don’t know what to do. I suppose with these types of things, you just have to see what comes up.

“THEY REVEL IN CATCHING THAT SEASONAL COLD BEFORE ANYONE ELSE AND IN HAVING IT THE LONGEST.”