h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was feeling a bit rough this morning. Nothing to write home, or indeed here, about, but just bad enough for me to feel like a grown up for toughing it out and going to work. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I had a colleague once who would call in sick if she had snagged a nail. I'm being unfair, of course. The illness she used to claim she had were much worse than that. But it was obvious to me when I was a kid that this was what grown ups did. If I had a headache or felt a bit sick I took to my bed and demanded chicken soup. Not the adults, they patently toughed it out and carried on regardless. And today I could really do with being an adult.
All in all- bad start. The area manager is in. Not bad, as such. She's alright. But it does make it a bad day to recieve a ranty phone call from my Landlady on my mobile. They're not happy because they're being pressured by the council into petty little things like gas safety checks and electricity safety checks and various other trifling details. So they yell at me like it's my fault their bloody flat isn't safe. And I breath and talk nicely to them and try to molify my wife who has been thoroughly distressed by the way they have spoken to her and then I have to breath in (again!) smile at customers and get on with my job.
Oh, one other thing. For some reason my Area Manager things I'm a genius, so if she can't think of the answer to anything she asks me. Game face on, stream of quips (I am amusing and endearing) and as many brilliant ideas as I can come up with between nine and five thirty.
I want my mum.

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You can have my Mum, I'll even pay for postage to ship her. She's not much of a cook, but can make a stout soup ...

Can she yell at my landlord for me?

Cheers for all the food and stuff Bel