Someone said to me yesterday that doing a good job in retinal screening is like peeing your pants in dark trousers: you get a nice warm feeling, but nobody notices. They went on to point out that if I give my patients terminal flu, somebody probably would.

So I'm using that as my justification for still being in bed at my parents' house. To be honest, yesterday's a bit of a blur. I slept through most of it, which is either the effect of the flu, the effect of the Night Nurse capsules, or just my body's reaction to not having Amelie jabbering in my ear at all times. She's the only thing that keeps me awake some days.

My sore throat is gradually easing (thank you St Blaise) and my aches and pains haven't returned to the heights of Monday evening, but it's difficult to know if that's down to a significant improvement in my condition, or just the fact that I haven't been out all day trying to work. I was hoping to return home today, but having slept through yesterday, I had a bit of a bad night, and my headache's returned this morning, so the thought of facing two kids with their internal volume control on high is putting me off somewhat.

In the meantime, I've been doing my best to get our money's worth out of Lisa's Netflix subscription. I watched 'Insidious' on Tuesday, which was pretty good, and seems a lot scarier when you turn the lights out and watch it alone, late at night, whilst running a high temperature. It also helped that the demonically possessed boy in a coma looked a lot like me in my sick bed.

'Insidious' was completely trumped, however, by 'Hard Candy', a film I managed to watch yesterday evening, either side of a drug-induced nap. There are basically only two people in it, and one of them's Patrick Wilson, who starred in 'Insidious', a fact I didn't realise until I started watching it, and which made me feel slightly unsettled. It's like he's stalking me through the screen of a laptop.

Anyhoo, 'Hard Candy' is the kind of brilliantly written, superbly acted and intensely riveting (although not quite riveting enough to stop me falling asleep halfway through) film that really should have won a cartload of Oscars. It would make a great stage play too. I'm also beginning to think that Ellen Page is the world's greatest actress. I thought she was excellent in 'Juno', but frankly she was even better in this, and may well have sold her soul to the devil. I can think of no other explanation.

In other news, Lisa's had a call from Churchill Insurance this morning, demanding a hundred pounds before they'll process our claim. We knew there was a £100 excess, but we assumed (in our innocence) that they'd simply knock that off the eventual payout. Apparently not. We have to pay it up front. So as if it's not enough to lose our stuff in a flood which was somebody else's fault, they now expect us to hand over £100 we can't afford, before they'll look at what they owe us. It's enough to make you ill.