how can the light that burned so brightly suddenly burn so pale?

I had a great time at an office Christmas party last night. You know the drill: good company, a few beers, a lovely meal, some wine, some more beer, meet up with C. and then off to the Walkabout for more beer and some kind of golf arcade game thing. It must have been a good night though, as I had to sit and think really hard this morning how I got home (did C. drive? Did we get a cab?). It was great.

But….Oh… did I pay for it today. I had one of those sneaky hangovers that creeps up on you around mid-morning and gets progressively worse through the day. It wasn’t your typical, pounding-head type hangover either. Oh no. This was one of those ones where you feel a bit wobbly and nauseous. I tried all of the usual tricks to shake it off: lucozade, nurofen extra, a greasy pasty, a mango and passion fruit smoothie, paracetemol, fizzy water, still water…. The only thing that really made any difference was when I caved in about 4pm and bought myself a bottle of Dr. Pepper. That seemed to do the trick, and I am now definitely getting a second wind.

The funny thing is, I reckon that none of this would have happened if I had been able to get another couple of hours of sleep in the morning, as I think that it’s hit me so hard partially because of a lack of sleep. Ah well. Clever girl that she is, C. had taken the day off. Muggins here had to get up and drag himself into the office, where all I wanted to do was to go back to bed. Naturally, I worked a 10-hour day.

I like drinking, but I really hate getting drunk. For some reason, I also hate people seeing me drunk. I reckon it’s down to school, where it was an essential survival skill to be able to get drunk and yet to appear totally sober in front of your housemaster. Actually, many of my oldest friends will tell you that they have never seen me drunk, when in fact all of them have. Partly this is down to what I will call the “bear and the running shoes” theorem:

Two hikers stumble across a bear in the woods. As it makes as if to start running towards them, one of the hikers sits down and starts to take off his walking shoes and to lace on a pair of running shoes. The other hiker is so amazed that although he has already started to run away, he pauses for a second.
“Those running shoes won’t help you to run faster than a bear”
“I don’t need to run faster than a bear. I only need to run faster than you”

They’ve seen me drunk, it’s just that usually they are drunker than me (although at this point, Statue John will probably regale you with the tale about the bottle of Jack Daniels in France after our A-levels. There is photographic evidence, I’m afraid to say).

Maybe I’m a control freak.

Whatever. The prospect of a Leo Sayer at the 8th Annual Oxford Christmas Party this Saturday is currently looking like it might be hard work….

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Top 5 Earworms of the Year please..... to the email address in my profile.