Compulsory Attendance

Every "suit" knows that there are some things you just have to attend because no one else can do the task for you. It's one of the many good reasons we are paid more than teachers, traffic wardens, nurses, typists and barmen. You can't call in sick and let someone substitute for you. One such occasion is a seminar. You can't cancel the whole seminar, people are relying on you to turn up because no one else knows enough about the topic to talk for you.

So after two days in bed of genuine sickness, non-alcoholic induced, I had to get out of it to give a half hour talk this morning. Hard enough at the best of times, but in Hong Kong where everyone who lived through SARS is paranoid about coughing or sneezing, you have to present without all the symptoms of such bugs.

Medicine to dry up the nose running like a tap, pills for the fever and careful consideration for the loss of two days of your appetite later, off I rolled into the taxi. Feeling okay for the first half an hour. Feeling fabulous during the talk until the last five minutes where the heavy narrative was making for heavy feet and can smell food steaming outside the room. Clock watching and answering questions along the way because like an injection for an injured footballer this state was going to last approximately..........five more minutes and there was a good ten until the final whistle blew.

The room was getting sweltering. Others around me were in coats, shivering. The Chair called for more questions, sweating developing all over my body, even my feet. The room was spinning the pills taking over my malnourished body from the zero appetite that this bug presented. I call "time" and the Chair wraps it up. Bolt for the door, host offers to walk me to the taxi. Bastard. I was about to run in heels to the taxi stand or better still the obscured garden. Walking slowly, ears blocked, trying to think of good thoughts as the taste of phlegm rumbled in the back of my throat. Crowd develops and walks with us. I am trying not to think of anything at this point. Hands sweating like just got out of a steam room, I say my goodbyes. A taxi pulls up, I jump the queue pointing to my watch and gesticulating to my cellphone, squat down low. Crowd is angry.

In one rather athletic swoop yell at driver to drive, he steps on it, I squat and lunge across the seat, count to five after I close the closest door to stop the fabulous view of my Elle McPherson's for all to see, flinging open the opposite door and BOOM projectile vomit into the garden on the roundabout.

Posh hosts who went to an extreme amount of effort, none the wiser. Taxi driver quite delighted that his taxi escaped unmarked waives the $NZ3 fare in acknowledgment of my backseat acrobatics.

Back to bed.