Hijacking my blog for one second for untheatrical purposes, I tried to do a small good work on Saturday. I was all signed up to go and shake a bucket outside an ASDA and was very looking forward to it.

But at 5:13am (or thereabouts), a mysterious vomiting bug struck. My slot was 12pm. I threw up a few more times, debated phoning in to cancel, fretted about all the people that have ever cancelled on me with "mysterious" vomiting illnesses, thought fretfully that I didn't - on my sole charitably active day of the year - want to be one of these people and dragged myself into the shower with minutes to spare.

Well, on arrival, I was worse than useless. Couldn't stand inside as I was too hot, could hardly stand outside as I couldn't stand up very convincingly. I sweated anxiously inside my giant daffodil yellow too tight as my head is too big for all normal hats top hat, pinned a few daffodils onto the lapels of coats of adorable children and capitulated after 55 minutes. (Having at one point, managed to upend the bucket with all my hard-earned collectings on the floor, thereby breaking the security seal. Luckily no-one saw this. But they will, of course, now think I'm a robber.)

I feel racked with guilt about my inability to complete the two hour slot. Two hours out of however many there are in the year. So I thought I'd ease my anxious conscience with a little post here and if you'd like to contribute to the upended bucket, here you may. Then I shall (as it instructed on the little hang it round your neck box of daffodils) look you in the eye and say Thank You.