A grand day out plus illness

It's been an odd week.

On Tuesday, my legs decided to swell up to unusual and grotesque proportions. A trip to the GP was required next day. The net result was an evening trip to A&E on suspicion of a DVT. Long story short - no DVT but possibly kidney problems.

Despite my crap health, I jumped on a train today as planned and headed to London to do telly. The OH was outraged, as he'd been expecting me to go for a kidney scan today. But you can't keep a good hack down - even though I felt like I might puke at any moment, looked like shit and could barely waddle let alone walk, the story was more important. And this time I was part of it.

Thus it was that I entered the hallowed doors of TV Centre at midday. Only one thing could have excited me more - walking on to the EastEnders set at Elstree. The place is massive - a veritable rabbit warren of corridors populated by blokes with goatees, jeans and trainers. I drank some of the legendary BBC tea, which was bright orange and tasted fucking awful. I heard some very scurrilous gossip about a couple of household names and was disappointed not to spot Jonathan Ross or any other slebs in the bar after filming.

But, I did get to see how news programmes are made, which was interesting although how anyone can watch 30 screens at once in the director's gallery is beyond me. I did the green room for about 10 seconds before filming, had my make-up done and generally managed not to fluff my rant to camera. Afterwards, we retired to the bar for an "editorial meeting" (for which read several rounds of alcohol). As a hack who's only ever worked in print or online, my eyes were seriously opened to TV - the politicking I heard of is unbelievable (it makes print look like a walk in the park), not to mention all the petty budget squabbles and fights over job titles. So - now you know how your licence fee gets spent. To be fair, there are good people employed there who are doing the best they can under difficult circumstances and I was pleased to meet some of them today. The whole experience was a real eye-opener.

After the "hospitality" (cough), it was time to head home. Tomorrow means proper work again (I can't believe I gave up a whole day's work for 4 minutes' airtime, but needs must!). I arrived back to 139 emails, 66 RSS feeds demanding to be read and (eep!) over 200 posts on my favourite forum. And I haven't looked at Facebook yet!