Close encounters of a celebrity kind......

I'm sick ........I feel like death, I look like death, it all hurts......I've got a horrid cold, as a woman I don't do flu. It came from nowhere, out of the dark, about 6ish on Friday evening, bit of a sore throat that was all. I was shopping for food I was going to cook for lots of people to eat. And I was doing this for a friend. I couldn't say no, the show had to go on. And it did. Of course once the Lemsip and the red wine kicked in I felt fine. However, there's no such thing as a free dinner and on Saturday I felt pretty rough. But again, I was committed to an event and it's only a cold for godsake. So, heavily medicated and wearing a fat, red jumper, eyes misted in mascara, a hint of delirium in my demeanour, I gently sweated through another evening. Could have been fever, could have been a hot flush, who could tell? By Sunday I was practically hallucinating.

Of course the meds only mask the symptoms, what I need is a hot water-bottle and bed. Instead, I forge on in a gentle fug, everything seems a little other-worldly which isn't bad, in fact, it feels like Christmas, traditionally the time I fall ill. However, this feeling of being out of it does not just preclude the use of heavy machinery, opportunities can be lost too. Once, way, way back in the early 80s, mid-way through a summer cold and heavily medicated, I was seated at a cramped table in a subterranean London restaurant: Food For Thought, a popular emporium of fine vegetarian cuisine ..........still in Covent Garden ..... it might have been a storage cupboard in a former life. A woolly-haired man with a big nose and glasses sat down opposite me. He wore khaki shorts and a khaki T-shirt with the words 'Temple Of Doom' emblazoned across it. He unfurled a large copy of Variety, looked straight at me and said:
"Hi!"
I glared wearily back, nodded politely. Being unfamiliar with such familiarity I continued to peruse the listings pages of my Time Out whilst working my way through a large bowl of unevenly cooked brown rice. I was far more interested in a devilishly handsome boy at the adjacent table who bore more than a passing resemblance to a young Michael York. The boy was deep in conversation with a small, elderly man who had something of the Einstein about him: his old piano teacher, his Latin master, Oskar Schindler? I would never know. By now the nods and smiles of my wannabee, khaki-clad, lunch partner had increased quite alarmingly and he'd begun to irk as I felt the space between me and my spicy tofu being invaded. My blatant staring at the boy next door (a subtle technique I employed to attract members of the opposite sex in my youth) had gone unnoticed. I lost interest and turned my attention to the nodding man in khaki. But by now he'd given up on me. He shook his Variety for the last time, smiled, and bid me farewell. I looked again, said good-bye, vague recognition flooding my mind. As his sun-kissed limbs gambolled up the stairs the light dawned...............it was Steven bloody Spielberg. Like a moment from a movie the lights flared, the violins soared and I basked in the reflected glory of a close encounter of a celebrity kind. If only I'd engaged in conversation, smiled, tap-danced, just acknowledged his existence ........ who knows what might have happened. At worst a trip to the 'Temple Of Doom' set, a glance at Harrison Ford? At best a few million in alimony. If not for that cold I could have been Amy Irving........

I have subsequently discovered we've all got this cold, well almost all of us, certainly everyone in London. Friends are coming forward with their own favourite cures, I'm currently swigging All In One during the day and doing the hot toddy by night in order to complete the gruelling schedule of work and entertainment. I feel so out of it now, for all I know I could be better. Last night I went to a screening of The Kids Are All Right which was excellent. I went to bed with hot whiskey and lemon, thinking about lesbians but dreaming of the ex-that-broke-my-heart ......... looking remarkably like the lion in The Wizard of Oz ........ what a nightmare.

To tip: Laugh and cry in The Kids Are All Right......oh Annette do I hear the sound of Oscars?