If I don't have malaria, I may have a severe masculine-variety influenza

This is how serious that is: please click here (thanks Ruth) - Man cold

Dr Russell the GP was quite sarcastic when I stumbled through his doorway this morning. But the surgery was taking it very seriously - they gave me an appointment for the same day! I must be really sick. Or living in Scotland.

After he'd taken quite a lot of blood out of me (syringe, not leeches) he said: "Well it'll be great fun if you have got malaria." What can he have meant?

I feel pretty good, though, compared with 4.30 this morning, when I was so feverish that I started this blog. It really does work, going to the doctor. I wonder, if you went when you were feeling really well, would you feel even better? Like after a week in a spa (whatever that feels like)?

Have new painkillers. C0-codamol. Like Distalgesic, but with a lighter top-note.

frightening small boys

A little worried that if I do die, I'll be remembered as cruel and tyrannical, especially in boats.

My first blog

It's 6.25 am. I'm lying in a broth of night-sweat and bed-life croutons: DVDs, telephones, a thermometer, packets of pills, crumpled New Yorkers and The Weeks, an old and boring William Boyd novel and various species of gadget.

I've been awake since 4.30am, moaning discreetly and trying to remember which pills I popped when. Not that they do anything at all to erode the great pulsing bag of pain behind my eyes. I took my temperature: a satisfying 39.1. I went online to check out the symptoms of malaria. I've clearly got it - look at the photo.

The sweet nurse on NHS Direct with the voice of a teenage Kirsty Wark clearly thinks so too. Though she couldn't say it. I wept a little at the tenderness in her voice as she told me not to go to hospital now but wait till the Doctor's surgery opens. What's really cool about recurrent chronic severe malaria is you get to tidy up the medicine cupboard. Since Saturday I've eaten nearly every pill in there.

If it's cerebral malaria then I will be dead before breakfast, and thus my first ever blog will also be my last. I wonder if anyone will use it for my obituary. I wonder if I'll get an obituary.

Goodbye (just in case).