Lucozade, Kilroy and tutting – having a day off school

I kind of pride myself on never pulling a sickie at work. Even if I had the plague I'd still feel honour bound to turn up, then spend the whole of my shift crawling round on the floor. Not so when I was a kid – I was forever employing weird and wonderful tactics to wangle a day off school; inventing bizarre tropical diseases to achieve my nefarious ends.

Most of the time this didn't work. My parents, being older than ten, saw through my flimsy facade straight away, and bundled me off to St. Joseph's to sit there in a jumper and knitted kilt, learning my seven times table.

It wasn't that I didn't like primary school, I did. I had a laugh with my friends and, barring P.E., did pretty well in most of my subjects. However, the heady pull of a bona fide day off was often too strong for me. The slightest sniffle and I was in seventh heaven, my mind filled with dreams of sofas, Lucozade and crap daytime TV.

So how did a sick day pan out? It normally started with my mum (or 'Her Magnificence' as I referred to her when she kept me off school) deciding my queasiness or my slight fever was indeed real, and informing me that I'd 'better stay at home for today, and see how I feel later.' Note that she only really did this when I was genuinely ill, not when I'd drawn felt-tip spots all over myself. That worked in the Beano, but it seldom worked in real life.

In order for a sick day to be fully appreciated, you had to be careful not to be too ill. You had to be well enough to be in the living room without the noise of the TV and the vaccuum cleaner making your head explode. And it was better not to be so ill that you have to go to the doctors – that kind of illness is not fun. Once, I got food poisoning mixed with a bit of sunstroke when I was on holiday in Ingoldmells. My mum took me to the surgery there, and I was sick everywhere, including in my mum's handbag and, bizarrely, up the doctor's sleeves. I spent a week of that holiday holed up in bed watching Tommy Cooper reruns, when I could have been eating blue ice cream and losing at tele bingo.

Assuming you're the right amount of poorly, you lay in bed listening to your mum phoning the school from the hall. At this point you got a bit nervous, as if the school was going to call your mum a liar and demand she bring you in immediately. That never happened, but it was always a worry in the back of my mind.

Next, if your mother deems appropriate, you are invited downstairs to spend the morning on the settee. This is fantastic, since everyone knows that on the settee in front of the fire in the middle of the day is the comfiest place in the whole world. Plus, if you got bored you could always look for loose change down the back, which you mostly got to keep.

A few items were needed to make the morning on the settee go as smoothly as possible. Most important were Lucozade, Calpol and your quilt from upstairs – the holy trinity. In exceptional circumstances you also had to have a sick bowl next to you, but if you had to use it much then you probably weren't going to get the most out of the day.

Once you were suitably comfortable in your settee nest, you were free to take part in activities suitable for a slightly ill child. The main thing to do was to watch daytime TV – getting a rare glimpse of all those mysterious shows you normally missed, and because they were shown while kids were at school, you began to think it was somehow forbidden for kids to see them. This carried all day, apart from lunchtime, when Rainbow and The Riddlers came on.

Possible programme choices included the following -

TV-AM

This morning

Take the high road

Win lose or draw

Young doctors

Flying doctors

Pebble Mill at one

Chain letters

Going for gold

The time the place

Kilroy

Sometimes your mum would make a token effort to get you to watch BBC2 Schools, but you just feigned an attack of diarrhoea to get out of this. Unless they were showing a good story, like Badgergirl or Geordie Racer.

An entire day spent watching these mysterious, forbidden shows was brilliant enough, but what truly reached stratospheric heights of greatness was those days where you accompanied your mum into town, because she had some urgent shopping to do or something.

This was better than watching forbidden TV for two reasons. Firstly, you got to find out what it was that grown ups did during the day, because you were pretty sure they didn't have to go to school. Sometimes, though, this was a bit disappointing. Instead of seeing sword fights and disco dancing competitions, you were treated to the sight of some women stood tutting over the price of pork chops in Safeway. However, this was still more interesting than being sat there sharpening your wax crayons while pretending to do some work.

True excitement

Secondly, because you were ill, and had bravely left your sick bed, there was a good chance your mum would buy you a present. So not only were you allowed to witness a world that was normally more secretive than the Freemasons, you got a new Barbie too! Top that off with your mum buying you a chocolate milkshake and a sausage roll from Baker's Oven, and it was truly a glorious day.

These days, as I said, I'm not the kind of person who can phone in sick without mountains of guilt, and anyway, daytime TV isn't what it used to be. Although I can't hear the theme tune to This Morning without being transported back to my Lucozade and Calpol days, I actually hate that show, and would rather just watch the blank screen of the TV in standby mode than watch that load of tripe. Besides, I work shifts, so I have plenty of free weekdays at my disposal. I no longer feel the need to bunk off on a Tuesday to see women tutting in supermarkets, because now I probably am one of the women tutting in supermarkets.