Alistair didn't usually feel ill. Every year he would maybe stay in bed for a couple of days, with a mild temperature, reading magazines and watching old Only Fools and Horses episodes. That end of Summer though, he caught a bad cold and because he hadn't looked after it, it turned into laryngitis. This meant that he had to stay at home for a few days, with an awfully high temperature, taking pain killers and antibiotics.
During this period of illness, his friend Robin had called him to ask him to go and see their friend Jack in Derby. "Sorry mate, can't come because I'm ill.. got this flipping laryngitis." "You lucky bastard, I wish I was in your place".
Robin saw the practical side of it. With his bank clerk's job, being ill was a real bargain. You got to stay at home with a full salary. Problem was that Ali was working as a precarious part-time student part-time free lance copywriter. There wasn't much social security for this type of very common human being situation unfortunately.
Nevertheless, they agreed they'd go and see their mate at the end of the month and that way other members of the crew could join them: Simon, Frank, Andrew, perhaps Thomas.
On the Monday Alistair went back to work. It was his turn to cook lunch for everyone so he had spent the weekend making pasta à la Norma. Why on earth he had ventured cooking a complicated Sicilian dish didn't pass his mind. He hated cooking and his favourite meal was beans on toast, but to make his colleagues happy and get a better respected position at work, he wanted to test his chef skills and try and grab everyone literally by the stomach.
He had decided that he'd go to work even though he wasn't fit, because he hadn't got a temperature anymore, even if he still had a cold and sore throat, and because there were many things on his "to do list" but most of all because he didn't have a contract that said he could stay at home when he was ill. Actually he didn't have a contract at all. He was paid with food stamps and petrol vouchers and maybe a few hundred quid every now and then.
"Why are you here if you're on antibiotics, you must be contagious." His colleague Natalie knew how to go straight to the point without being too tactful and friendly. She was particularly concerned about her newborn baby and was afraid of catching something - she had spent three weeks at home in February, because of Bronchitis - so she couldn't care too much that Alistair had been ill. She didn't bother seeming too worried, because in their modern social media oriented business ethics it wasn't very important to show much human care towards your peers, especially when you were face to face or side to side in the same room. Even more so if there were lots of deadlines and unhappy customers.
That evening the council meeting about the building of a new supermarket in their borough had been shorter than usual so he managed to go to Ivan's, the Russian bar down the road, with his old friend from school Ted and watch almost the entire First Leg of Ajax vs Tottenham. While watching the game they chatted about what they'd done during the holidays. They had a lot to catch up with but were too tired to go through everything, so they focused only on the highlights.
Djing: medium. Football: medium. Downing pints: mediocre. Writing: medium. All through the conversation Alistair had kept thinking of how he wasn't particularly good at anything, even though he wasn't total crap overall. He liked to think of things in terms of cartoon characters It gave him a proper perspective. A week before he had watched the whole of Superman 3D with his oldest nephew, so Super-man was the first thing he could think of and this made him suddenly realize who he was and had always beem: indeed he was medium-man.
