A bug and the buzz

I did something this morning that I last did in June 2003. I rang in sick. Six and a half years ago, the phone call was about my back problem and I ended up off work for 3 months. Since then, of course, my boss has been me - on the days I'm unwell, I usually juggle stuff so I can have extra naps to sleep off a lurgy or a fit. If I have a cold, I work in my PJs and dressing gown, turn up the heating a notch and just get on with it - no worrying about infecting other colleagues as there's no one to pass my germs onto.

It felt very weird ringing in to say I wouldn't be turning up this morning. I'd been up half the night, throwing up, and as soon as I mentioned this my lovely new boss said: "Stay right where you are! Don't even think about coming in." He's right - it's possible I just ate something that disagreed with me, but it's the season for norovirus, a highly contagious bug also known as the winter vomiting disease. And the last thing I want to do is fell an entire newsroom if I have it. I probably don't - my stomach has been calm since 4am and I'm just resting up now. Sorry if that's TMI.

I offered to work from home but the truth is I'm really missing the buzz of the newsroom today. I never thought I'd say that - I've become so used to the calm and quietness of working alone that I dreaded returning to the bustle of a busy workplace. I thought my eardrums would burst on my first few days there - the TV screens (at least 2 different channels) competing for volume with the radio station, the ringing phones, the chatter... I felt quite ill from it all and was relieved to retreat into silence on my return home at night.

Today, I feel like I've been cut off. The quiet here feels oppressive and right now I'm missing the Monday editorial meeting to plan the week ahead. I'm also missing all the chit-chat and I don't know quite what to do with myself here. On the plus side, I was able to listen to all of the show I'm currently working on - usually I only hear snatches of it between phone calls and conversations or intense concentration. I'd set up several of the slots for today so it was a relief to hear all my guests had not only turned up but also gave good radio.

I'm going to flop on the sofa now and watch DVDs. And hope I'll be well enough to go into the office tomorrow. And I never thought I'd be saying that again!

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!

Swings and roundabouts

Freelancing can be a real feast/famine existence. And after last month's extended session of ill health, I was definitely feeling hungry. I struggled to work while I was sick, even passing some stuff on to others, and didn't have the energy to look for new work either, unsurprisingly. So January was thin, earnings-wise, and February has been too, to date.

I was going to blog today about the great pitch void, because pretty much all the pitches I've sent out in the last few weeks have flopped. I'm stuck with one great story I just can't place. I have another great story that I offered to a specialist mag, only for the editor to mail me back this morning to say the publisher's just axed the title, so now I need to find another suitable outlet. Other pitches have not been responded to and even sending chaser emails has not resulted in feedback. I was feeling pretty despondent last night as my editing work has also thinned temporarily.

Things shifted dramatically today, however. First I was offered a regular and lucrative ghost-writing job for a corporate. Then, by just happening to be in the right place (ie the right website) and the right time this morning, I landed a one-off column for one of the Sunday red-tops. Hopefully, that will lead to more work. And then I was asked to do a nice editing job as well. Negotiations are still in hand for jobs 1 and 3 but I'm confident they'll go ahead. I'm also expecting the green light for a pitch I sent to an overseas client. If everything goes according to plan, I expect to be very busy this week and next.

Productivity and annoyances

The bug that's been haunting me for the last month appears to be in retreat at last. Despite problems falling asleep last night (which required a quantity of brandy to rectify), I felt more energised today.

Cue a flurry of activity - I pitched several mags and papers with some feature ideas, sent a cheque to my web host for services rendered and invoiced some clients, which I should have done on Friday last week but didn't due to lack of energy and general feeling of illness.

Next, it was time to overhaul my CV. The last time I applied for a job (and got one) was well over 6 years ago. Since then, I've tweaked the old resumé as needed, especially when attaching it to client pitches, but I have decided to apply for a full-time job (don't panic, I'll still be freelancing, IF I get it {fat chance} ). The CV needed major surgery. I chopped and cut and slashed and burned. Then I sent it to a trusted hack pal who has the ability to hire, for an honest opinion. It came back scrawled in the digital equivalent of red ink. I was momentarily shocked, but the trusted colleague was bang on the money. Hey ho, there are several more hours' work ahead. 'T'will be worth it.

Fingers crossed...

Meanwhile, I may be back in the union, but the union's not backing me... I have my reissued membership number, but will the NUJ recognise it on the website and let me log in to all the exciting behind-the-scenes stuff? Of course not. That was too much to hope for. Hey-ho again, I'll have to get on the phone. Tomorrow's phone round also includes booking a haircut I should have had a month ago except I've been ill, ordering a bottle of calor gas in case of a cold snap, so I don't die of hypothermia in my office, and chasing a company that promised me a refund several weeks ago. Oh, and chasing some of today's pitches.

Working when you're ill

Being ill is never pleasant (if we're going to state the bleedin' obvious), but there are pros and cons to being on the sick when you work from home.

I went down with a lurgy on Friday. I'd had a bad headache the day before, which I'd put down to stress and hunching over my keyboard. In fact, it was a warning of a cold that was settling in my sinuses. To be blunt, I felt like shit on Friday, but because I was at home I was able to work in fits and starts. The cleaner was in, which forced me to dress, otherwise I'd have sat in my dressing gown all day.

Had I been at an office, I'd have called in sick, gone back to bed and slept it off as much as possible. For one thing, not going in would have meant not passing on any germs to colleagues (workmates are not generally keen on sick people staggering in). And the main advantage of being employed is that you still get paid. You can stay indoors, wrap up warm and not worry that being ill might make it difficult to pay the bills at the end of the month.

Over the weekend, the cold developed and I spent all Saturday and Sunday in my dressing gown, trying to catch up on sleep and rest as much as possible in order to be fit again on Monday. And indeed, yesterday morning I felt quite a bit better despite a disrupted night. It was not to last. I deteriorated during the day and by mid-evening was sick enough to require an out-of-hours trip to the GP clinic as my lungs had become infected and I was having trouble breathing. The duty GP prescribed antibiotics.

I'm still feeling like shit but at least I can work. I've put back all the non-urgent tasks and tackled only the most important stuff today. Luckily I had nothing booked in that had a deadline, which meant I could sleep in until 10am. Since then I've been at my PC dealing with mails but not really "working".

The advantage of home-working is that these minor illnesses don't usually prevent you from working full stop. It's usually possible to juggle things and take breaks for a nap when you need one. I've avoided the phone the last two days as the lung infection makes speech difficult, especially combined with a rattling cough. But I can still handle email, paperwork and minor jobs. And I can nip to the kitchen at will to brew tea or take medicine.

What I dread is longer-term sickness (she says, touching wood). Freelances can buy insurance to protect against loss of earnings, but I gather it's expensive and can be very difficult to claim (as you might imagine, I don't have any). Like employees, we can self-certify for illness the first 7 days - after that you need a doctor's certificate and then it becomes hideously complicated. I recall a colleague describing how she'd called the DWP about sickness benefit, to be instructed to get herself to a Job Centre to collect a claim form (which is apparently not available online to download). Said form is 56 pages. Now, if you're ill, do you really want to have stagger to the nearest job centre? Bearing in mind that if you are not in an urban area, you could have quite a way to travel. Then there's the matter of filling in a massive form, when what you should be doing is resting.

My advice? Never get anything worse than a cold! And make sure you have at least 3 to 6 months' worth of "pay" stashed in a savings account so that if you really do become incapacitated, you have enough income to live for a while at least without worry.

When sickness prevails...

...the advantage of being freelance and home-based is that you can keep working. No one will know or care if you are in your dressing gown and look like death on a plate served up with a side order of greasy hair and blotchy skin. As long as you're able to sit upright, use the keyboard and put your best telephone voice on, you can keep working. And earning.

None of this applies, of course, if your illness involves having your head down the loo for the best part of three days.

I had plans for Tuesday - an earlyish train to London, a couple of meetings with Useful People, and friend's book launch at a pub in the evening, followed by a night in a hotel and an earlyish train home again on Wednesday morning. On Monday it was clear that I was too ill to travel and - possibly - that train travel could either have worsened my own health or endangered someone else's, give the parlous state of train toilets these days. So I cancelled everything and consoled myself with the thought that I could get some work done from home anyway.

Alas, it was not to be. Too weak to do anything beyond feebly attempting to surf the net in between bouts of reacquainting myself with our bathroom tiles, I lay on the sofa to watch daytime tv. This was when I discovered that BBC Breakfast no longer offers headlines at 9am, that the morning schedule is littered with tedious property programmes and that having one's toenails yanked out with hot pliers is probably preferable to watching Loose Women. I was only consoled by tennis at Queen's in the afternoon.

Feeling a lot better today, I'm now playing catch-up and can't put the necessary phone calls off any longer.