Presents

The problem with the mind is that it has a body of its own, and it doesn't really matter how positive your attitude is: germs are germs, flu is flu, and snot hooked out of the noses of children and immediately wiped on your hand is likely to make you poorly, sooner or later. Six weeks of gliding through a shimmering sea of bacteria with merely a faint cough and regularly bad nightmares has finally culminated in a flu the likes of which I have rarely had before: a flu created and harboured and presented - in little tiny open tissues, like badly wrapped gifts - by a hundred sniffling children. I don't even know which one dealt the final mucussy blow, or whether it was an admirable joint effort: the kind of joint effort I can guarantee they won't be making when we display their respective (shambolic) plays in Spring.

Either way, I'm sick as a dog, and - because my company deduct a hefty amount of money from my pay packet if I call in sick - I dragged myself into school this morning and watched in foggy, feverish interest as the children reacted to their usually loud and genki teacher suddenly begging them in husky, cracked whispers to "please, for the love of all that is good and painless, be quiet." Where usually I prefer teaching the little boys (they tend to be more affectionate and less manipulative, although they break wind far more frequently), today - unusually - I noticed with vague interest a marked change in attitudes; the boys, realising that I could no longer scare them, started to run amuck, while the girls - conversely - became maternal and started petting me and fetching tissues and reprimanding the boys. One of the older ones, in fact, put her hands on her hips, clipped her English into shortened vowels and became so much like me in a bad temper that I feared for the impact I had already made on a young life in such a short time: my short fuse was not supposed to be one of the skills I was passing on.

Anyway, until the fever lets up and I can take an easy part in basic human activities again -breathing, speaking, entering a train carriage without pressing my forehead against the cold window - I am taking to my bed, and letting the children fend for themselves. As tempting as it is, this is a gift I don't really want to send back.