You know it's February when I wake up every morning envying people who get to stay home sick. The cool thing about staying home sick is that not only do you get to lie in bed, drifting in and out of absurd dreams, while the whole neighbourhood heads off to work, but you also get the satisfaction of knowing that your lovely lie-in is the best possible thing you could be doing for yourself and for society in general at that particular moment.

Of course, when we're legitimately home sick we're always too miserable to care.