I couldn't do it. I couldn't get out of bed. I tried to rise with the alarm. I had things I wanted to do. I had the racks to fill. I had some colleagues to visit. I just couldn't. My mind had been racing all last night and my stomach was reeling too. Something was wrong. I concluded that I was either totally preoccupied with a new way of religious thinking which nobody on the radio programme on my alarm clock seemed to understand... OR... I'd been sleeping fitfully, in a slight delirium caused by half-sleep and illness, and the whole religious thing was part of some dream, but that I was physically wrecked.

I couldn't let myself be licked - who would lick me anyway? I'm a grown man of 34 years old with a reasonably unpleasant and rather unpalatable physique. Who would tongue this? Noone. However, I couldn't let myself be metaphorically licked in a boxing sense, either.

So I took a shower. I sat in my towel, thinking about the clothes I would wear to go out in. I really tried.

Then I was licked.

I had to get back into bed and sleep more.

I slept all day.

I couldn't eat.

I was tired and ill and my stomach wasn't happy. The start of the illness.

I thought I could sleep it off.

All day in bed - used to be an ideal of mine. In truth, it just kind of aches and you get bored.