Licensed to be Ill

Been feeling 'crook' (aussie term for being ill learnt from Cell Block H) since yesterday. No fever with the sore throat, so I deduce it is a simple cold. No rest for the wicked, the cupboards are so bare my pickney had to buy a sandwich on road for breakfast. 'Wotless babymother' Suzie Wong would call me. I take Co-Codamol, probably the best painkiller in the world, and use Propolis Throat Spray, bought from the health store, it's good stuff. The painkillers buy me a couple hours to make it to the shops and back to stock up.

I walk to Clapham to blow off the cobwebs, which takes about half an hour from my 'gates'. It's a beautiful, bright, sunny day, and the temperature is mild. There's never a good time to be sick, and this definitely isn't it. It's M's birthday dinner and dance tomorrow night, the backless sequinned dress is making its debut, and I need to get some ideas together for next week as I'm working at the newspaper The Independent. Note to self: stock up on Co-Codamol.

Clapham is bustling, this evening in the bars and restaurants will be a busy one as its Valentine's Weekend. Ugh. If you want a night without the threat of gunshot, 'yardies' congregating like dem deh ah Kingston, and bleachin' big belly women wearing too tight clothing avoid Brixton and spend the night in Clapham. Although if you're black don't bother trying to go to Sand. They don't do more than five blacks at once in there. And that includes the staff.

I look in the window of Esca, probably the best cake shop in the world (one for me and you CC). But remember I have just 24 hours to flatten my rounded stomach before I put on my new dress. I opt for a latte at Cafe Nero, the best coffee shop on the high street, which sells the proper black stuff not that watered down cat's piss served at Starbucks that needs an extra shot.

After Sainsbury's, I stop in at Superdrug to get the painkillers and pick up a body scrub. Superdrug do a Vitamin E enriched body scrub, it's dirt cheap and essential for skin-baring body prep before a night out. You can tell the women who skip this part. Skin come like cheese grater. If money were no object, I'd get the £25 Origins scrub, and have someone big and muscly come massage dat pon me. I digress.

When I read women's magazines I marvel at all the lotions and potions white women are encouraged to use to 'fight the signs of premature aging' (note to sistas: that would be wrinkles). I say white women cos I know they ain't talking to me cos 'black don't crack'. I just have to look at my mum who's never spent as much as £5 on a face cream, to know that I don't have to either, and my black girfriends over thirty with flawless botox-free skin, who use only soap, water, and cocoa butter. So I just read the mags, look at the airbrushed models, and keep my money in my pocket.

The best beauty product, one I've tried to invest in heavily since last year, is beauty sleep. Difficult, as I'm a night owl, and love a rave. But I've done my food shop, the painkillers are wearing off, the pizza's in the oven, and I'm taking my black ass back to bed. I guess being sick has its compensations.