I AWOKE on Monday with a groan, to the sound of a little drummer boy rat-a-tat-tatting against the inside of my skull.

I gingerly felt my tender glands and pitifully attempted to swallow. I honestly thought I was not so much knocking on death's door as bashing my head on it, while gargling pencil shavings.

I lay there, trying to focus my dilated pupils on the ceiling, wincing as the little drummer boy seemed now to have grown up and developed a liking for drum and bass.

In my borderline delirious state I wistfully recalled a time when a little illness was a good deal. A few days of freedom from school, to lie on the couch with an ice lolly(it's all a sore throat will allow) watching Murder She Wrote and the old Charlie's Angels repeats.

Much affection beckons upon the return of a doting mother from work, feeling slight maternal guilt at leaving her brave little wounded soldier all alone.

Sugar-laden, strawberry-flavoured Calpol, the Red Bull of its day, would soon be coursing through my veins. All this for the meagre price of a runny nose and tickly throat.

But things are different now. With university finals looming and daytime TV having substituted Charlie's Angels for menopausal chat show hosts, missing a day of university in a cold, empty flat doesn't hold the same joy as such cheeky schoolboy skivery.

And in any case, I'm an independent young buck in the prime of my life, ready to make my way in the world! I wasn't just going to lie there wallowing in self-pity.

I had to get up, cease being such a drama queen, and trust my immune system to shrug off this beast I believe they call 'man flu'.

I summoned up all my strength and dragged my haggard frame from beneath the covers, heroically shuffling my way towards the hall.

"Mum," I croaked down the phone, "the situation's not good."