Gyu

Sometimes irony arrives as a gentle nudge; an elbow in the ribs and a subtle wink, like a friend down the pub. And sometimes it`s more like a red hot poker poked inserted straight into the middle of your face, or somewhere less prominent, by somebody who doesn`t like you very much. And pimping your own toilet only to contract a nasty bout of stomach flu the next day is probably the latter.

That is where I`ve been for the last ten days. In my pimped up toilet, sitting on my new fluffy rug, vomiting into my nice heated toilet and making the most of the toilet roll that the handsome man forced into a two-trip outing. And writing anything - blogs, books, emails, shopping lists - was pushed way down the list: somewhere underneath keeping down a bowl of rice and actually paying my health insurance so that I could go to the doctor. And cleaning my apartment, before the rats ate me.

I didn`t make it to the doctor (I spent all my money on re-pimping), and the rats didn`t get a nibble but a possum nearly did (I left a French window open and it wandered into my bedroom), but today the worst seems to have past. Apart from lingering nausea and total and utter exhaustion, I`ve made it to 1pm without event, and that`s the best I`ve done in ten days.

More importantly, my awful sense of humour has come back (it left somewhere between the second and third day, or round about the third bleary eyed reading of the manga comic in my loo I don`t even vaguely understand because the only hiragana and katakana I can read are a e i o u and they have yet to write a story that only features vowels).

And my humour, as humour tends to, made the most inappropriate return possible.

Every lunchtime, each class Jankens each other for a remaining carton of milk (plays Rock Scissors Paper, which is actually a Japanese game). The chant begins "Saishou gu" - which means: first the rock. Except that the word for milk in Japanese is gyu. And I`m nothing if not a total geek for word play. I have a qualification in Shakespeare, and he was the Emporer of it.

"You should say Saishou gyu," I told a group of twelve frantically competing ten year old boys.
"Eh?" they said with slight irritation. I`d broken the rhythm of the game, so keen I was to interrupt with my brand new pun.
"Saishou gyu. You should say saishou gyu."
"But it`s saishou gu," one of them said in confusion over his shoulder. Stupid foreigner hung unspoken.
"Yes, but gyu. It means milk. Gyu?" I wasn`t going to let it go, and started pointing frantically to the carton. "Saishou gyu? Instead of saishou gu? Like, meaning: first the milk?"
Nine eyebrows lifted, and one politely nodded to show that he had understood that I was attempting to be funny.
I, on the other hand, collapsed into a fit of tired, considerably skinnier giggles.
"Saishou gyu," I muttered to myself. "Saishou gyu." And then took myself to the staffroom, where my colleagues treated me to exactly the same reaction ("English humour").

Ten days spent running in and out of the toilet, and I`m slightly insane with tiredness. But with one little terrible, terrible joke, I think I`ve started to claw my way back to the world of normal people again.

And as lovely as my toilet is, I think - after ten days of solid consideration - I definitely prefer being on the outside.