one more for (decorating) the road (with a multi-coloured yawn)
i am hungover...
i have to admit it - i've been in denial since i woke up bright and breezy this morning with a slight pulsating feeling in my temples
it's strange how advancing age has altered the way my head seems to cope with excessive amounts of alcohol - i did most of my heavy drinking at college in my early twenties - i could drink ten pints of beer or real ale without a thought of becoming acquainted with the carpet or ending up on the great white telephone talking to god and shouting for hughie and i frequently won drinking contests with my ability to down a whole pint in under four seconds - apparently i have a good gag reflex (an attribute which has come in handy for other activities over the years...)
in those days my hangovers would be honest, upfront and immediate, often starting before i went to bed on the night i perpetrated the outrage against my unsuspecting brain cells, indulging in drinking sprees where my friends and i would spike each others' pints with a shot or two of vodka, resulting in the time-honoured tradition of throwing up on the rose bushes outside our college bar - vomiting was one way of ensuring that you'd be sober enough to walk home at three o'clock in the morning without attracting the attention of the local police - i was stopped by two policemen one night as i walked down the empty high street of brentwood - at the time i regarded this interference as an outrageous infringement of my civil liberties, but, looking back, i had been at a pyjama party and was walking down the road at two o'clock in the morning in my green pyjamas, blue dressing gown and moccasins - furthermore, we were in close proximity to the local mental hospital, with it's alarming amount of patient break-out incidents - so i think the two constables can be forgiven for showing a bit of social concern - fortunately, i was sober enough to answer their questions succinctly and without swaying about too much, so they left me to wend my solitary way back to my room to collapse onto my awaiting sick bed - thank goodness i had had the foresight to go round the back of a large bell tent (the student body was having a camp out that week to raise money for some charity or other) and force myself to throw up three times, as a way of partially sobering up, by sticking my fingers down my throat (not as easy as it sounds for me because of my aforementioned good gag reflex) - without this timely piece of self-intervention, i might have ended up spending the night in a cell with a fine to pay (not to be confused with the bald truth of a fine toupee)
throwing up was also a way of ensuring you could go back into the bar and drink even more - a spectacle no doubt reminiscent of a roman orgy where people would vomit so they could return to the feast and consume more food - one of my friends, now a respectable head teacher at a school somewhere in south east asia which i won't name, was a master of this - he didn't even need to force himself - at some point in the evening he would stagger outside and his body would carry out the necessary evacuation of his stomach contents without any helping hand (or finger) and he would walk back into the bar confident that he had added a couple more hours on to his evening - after one night of excess i staggered out of the bar to walk home and saw him in the rose bushes with vomit coming out of at least two orifices - he then went back in and ordered another pint of abbot ale - i was in awe of this man's obvious elephantine constitution
nowadays my hangovers don't leap out at me with sledehammer blows to my head and 'flu-like symptoms of nausea and shivering as soon as i wake up, gradually dissipating throughout the day - the passing years seem to have made my body sneaky and an expert in subterfuge, fooling me into thinking that i'm fine on regaining consciousness in the late morning - the light doesn't give me a pain in the back of my eyes, i can tolerate noises without them pounding through my skull and i can go out and eat a hearty breakfast - but as the day goes on, the slight throbbing in my temples, previously the only evidence that i did anything unwise the night before, slowly increases and then begins to spread until, by the middle of the afternoon, i'm sitting in a chair and holding my head back in a posture similar to that of uma thurman's after she o.d.'s in 'pulp fiction'
i have to admit it - i've been in denial since i woke up bright and breezy this morning with a slight pulsating feeling in my temples
it's strange how advancing age has altered the way my head seems to cope with excessive amounts of alcohol - i did most of my heavy drinking at college in my early twenties - i could drink ten pints of beer or real ale without a thought of becoming acquainted with the carpet or ending up on the great white telephone talking to god and shouting for hughie and i frequently won drinking contests with my ability to down a whole pint in under four seconds - apparently i have a good gag reflex (an attribute which has come in handy for other activities over the years...)
in those days my hangovers would be honest, upfront and immediate, often starting before i went to bed on the night i perpetrated the outrage against my unsuspecting brain cells, indulging in drinking sprees where my friends and i would spike each others' pints with a shot or two of vodka, resulting in the time-honoured tradition of throwing up on the rose bushes outside our college bar - vomiting was one way of ensuring that you'd be sober enough to walk home at three o'clock in the morning without attracting the attention of the local police - i was stopped by two policemen one night as i walked down the empty high street of brentwood - at the time i regarded this interference as an outrageous infringement of my civil liberties, but, looking back, i had been at a pyjama party and was walking down the road at two o'clock in the morning in my green pyjamas, blue dressing gown and moccasins - furthermore, we were in close proximity to the local mental hospital, with it's alarming amount of patient break-out incidents - so i think the two constables can be forgiven for showing a bit of social concern - fortunately, i was sober enough to answer their questions succinctly and without swaying about too much, so they left me to wend my solitary way back to my room to collapse onto my awaiting sick bed - thank goodness i had had the foresight to go round the back of a large bell tent (the student body was having a camp out that week to raise money for some charity or other) and force myself to throw up three times, as a way of partially sobering up, by sticking my fingers down my throat (not as easy as it sounds for me because of my aforementioned good gag reflex) - without this timely piece of self-intervention, i might have ended up spending the night in a cell with a fine to pay (not to be confused with the bald truth of a fine toupee)
throwing up was also a way of ensuring you could go back into the bar and drink even more - a spectacle no doubt reminiscent of a roman orgy where people would vomit so they could return to the feast and consume more food - one of my friends, now a respectable head teacher at a school somewhere in south east asia which i won't name, was a master of this - he didn't even need to force himself - at some point in the evening he would stagger outside and his body would carry out the necessary evacuation of his stomach contents without any helping hand (or finger) and he would walk back into the bar confident that he had added a couple more hours on to his evening - after one night of excess i staggered out of the bar to walk home and saw him in the rose bushes with vomit coming out of at least two orifices - he then went back in and ordered another pint of abbot ale - i was in awe of this man's obvious elephantine constitution
nowadays my hangovers don't leap out at me with sledehammer blows to my head and 'flu-like symptoms of nausea and shivering as soon as i wake up, gradually dissipating throughout the day - the passing years seem to have made my body sneaky and an expert in subterfuge, fooling me into thinking that i'm fine on regaining consciousness in the late morning - the light doesn't give me a pain in the back of my eyes, i can tolerate noises without them pounding through my skull and i can go out and eat a hearty breakfast - but as the day goes on, the slight throbbing in my temples, previously the only evidence that i did anything unwise the night before, slowly increases and then begins to spread until, by the middle of the afternoon, i'm sitting in a chair and holding my head back in a posture similar to that of uma thurman's after she o.d.'s in 'pulp fiction'
posted by Tallulah Showerhead at 6:51 AM
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