Going viral

The arc of Wednesday was, well, less an arc and more of a diagonal plummet from a chipper morning, through an uneventful mid-section, down to an absolutely disastrous evening.

The day started off well as I crossed the road outside my flat and recognised my local LibDem candidate handing out leaflets in front of the tube station. She smiled at me as she passed me her flyer, campaigning about the proposed 82-week sporadic disruption to the Northern Line (a series of works that could be done in three weeks if it was tackled all at once), and I was able to smile back and say "I've already voted for you." She looked happy and I felt extra bouncy as I ran down the escalator, late comme toujours.

The remainder of Wednesday day trundled along OK - my world was pretty unremarkable, but outside was dark and gloomy for others, as Greece, then Portugal, then Spain's ratings were all lowered by S&P and the trading floor was briefly in a panic. Guys here are saying that this is, in many ways, far worse for the international economy than the Lehman's collapse in 2008, surely something Brown can point to in order to claim that Britain is not suffering uniquely at present. But then, Brown might not have a chance to address that in tonight's final TV debate because so many people are obsessing over him muttering, under his breath, in private, in a car, that one of his supporters was a bigot. I'm obviously not pushing for a Labour win, but if this really is a decisive issue in people's voting decisions then people need to Get A Grip. As Alan Johnson pointed out on the BBC this morning, there isn't a single one of us who wouldn't regret stuff we'd said if we were permanently miked up and broadcast on Sky. Freaking Murdoch. No WAY it would have aired if it had happened to Cameron.

So at 5pm the arc curved a little upwards as I journeyed home, a post-gym spring in my step once again, excited about having seen (and not heard) my first ever Toyota Prius Hybrid whisper past me in action, and keenly anticipating a relaxing evening at my lovely flat and a bit of a treat: I'd organised for a beauty therapist to come around and give me a facial. I'd paid £10 more than I have paid in the past for facials, but in exchange for those extra thousand pennies, I would be able to clamber off the treatment table, sit directly on my sofa and not move for the rest of the evening. It was an experiment about which I was most excited, in a zen way. And so she arrived. Tiphane (pronounced - go on, guess. You'll never guess. It's Tiffany) was pretty, curvy, bubbly, short, and struggling under the weight of all her potions and the folding table. But she set up within minutes and I was soon lying on my front, relaxing under the pressure of her satisfyingly penetrative massage and looking forward to her smoothing various masks and creams into my face, which would leave me glossy, healthy and unequivocally stunning.

Then, having asked me to turn over, she said, "I'll just be one second, I have to take some aspirin." Mid-rotation, I froze.
"Why?" I asked, forcing myself to sound sympathetic. "Are you OK?"
"Oh, I'm fine," she said. "I'm just getting ill." My eyes darted around awkwardly as, half-naked, I tried to position myself on my back and look relaxed while simultaneously freaking out.
"What kind of ill?" My voice surely betrayed my panic.
"Oh, you know, headache, sore throat... nothing serious," she said, breezily, as she plopped a soluble painkiller into her glass of water - MY glass from MY kitchen - and gulped it down as though it contained urgent life or death remedies that she needed without hesitation. And with that, she began the facial.

I went into a flat spin. Facials are not something that can be done at arm's length. They are an intimate process, involving continuous and precise application of emollients, unguents and balms, as well as macro-distance squeezing of blocked pores etc. Should one open one's eyes during a facial, one would see one's therapist inches away. Were one's therapist to be in THE MOST CONTAGIOUS STAGE of illness, one would want to run away very fast indeed. Immediately, I assessed my options. Holding my breath for an hour was sadly impossible. There were only three remaining courses of action: 1) ask her to don a surgical mask; 2) ask her to leave; 3) be brave.

And, since I am only forthright in type and am a wuss when it comes to confronting hairdressers and their ilk with the truth, I chose option three. For the next hour, as Tiphane smoothed and applied, I was continually caressed by her virus-riddled breath, the waves of infection landing every few seconds on my cheeks and forehead, and, during one particularly painful moment, being blown directly up my nose. All the while, I could hear her swallowing painfully. I tried to time my inhalations to fit with the rare moments while she wasn't blowing directly at me, but such coordination was often not possible. It was an unmitigated nightmare. I couldn't have made myself more likely to catch her cold if I'd spent the hour french kissing her. Far from calming, it was perhaps the most stressful experience of 2010 as I lay, prostrate and painfully aware that I'd just paid somewhere in the region of a small fortune to get ill. I was livid. LIVID I tell you.

Today I have been monitoring my health levels closely and seem to have escaped thus far, but when, as is surely inevitable, I catch her disease, there will be trouble, I tell you. Even as I've been writing this, I've become aware of a slight tiredness and back aching situation building up, but it could just be a mid-afternoon slump. Assuming the illness does set in, I don't yet know quite how I will get my revenge, but it will be something involving the SARS virus and a letterbomb. Maybe.

In other news, if you're even considering voting LibDem, please read this. Thank you.