PHIL KIRBY has a hangover from the CV get together last night… Don’t ask.
It’s when your tongue feels like a window cleaner’s squeegee.
When your socks choke your ankles and your eyeballs prickle like they’ve been replaced by conkers green from the tree.
Your stomach swells and dips and your head feels like the entire crew of a Viking longship got bladdered on a batch of dodgy mead and spewed all over the deck.
Even typing the word “spew” makes you want to vomit.
The sound of your own blood pumping is like the grinding of a Mississippi paddle boat flywheel and your hands dither like you’d been shattering concrete paving all evening with a pneumatic drill.
A cat purring too close to your ear can bring you out in a sweat even though your teeth chatter like you’ve been munching on icicles.
Your balance is precarious as a butterfly in a force ten gale.
Daylight sears the retina, and whooping, screeching people from the night before seem to be partying on in the room next door, and then a door slams and the howling silence scoffs at you.
Your spine is rigid and brittle as if it were carved out of a single stalagmite.
The hairs on your head hurt and your flesh hangs on you like that XXXL Oxfam duffle coat you bought last time you got this drunk.
Your feet appear to have grown extra toes and walking is like wading through frogspawn that’s about to hatch.
Your throat is dry and scratchy as the unlit fuse of a Catherine Wheel. Next minute it’s like molten treacle.
When you toss and turn in bed it’s like your skull has been surgically removed and the pillows had turned into sacks full of scrap iron.
Your kidneys ache and cry out for relief.
Knee joints have turned to sponge and your eyelids are venetian blinds made of razor blades and broken glass.
When you steady yourself against the bathroom sink the taps turn into leering demons and the plughole flashes incisors, threatening to swallow you whole.
Should you attempt to go downstairs, the banister becomes a writhing python and each step is like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie.
You have completely lost the sense of touch and your fingertips have all the sensitivity of a broken brush handle wrapped in duct tape.
Everything smells of spam. Trifle smells of spam. Peppermint tea smells of spam. Your armpits smell of spam. Even the cat has a whiff of luncheon meat about her.
You dream that Beth Orton dumped you in the middle of a central European tour for a Macedonian entomologist called Herakleides (I suppose the upside is that at least Beth Orton dumped you! Hangovers bring out my shallow side.)
Your nostril hairs have been plugged into the national grid and your nasal passage is currently supplying all the power necessary to boil every kettle in Wolverhampton.
You need to sleep, but when you close your eyes it’s as if you were laying at the bottom of a lock on the Leeds Liverpool canal as a barge crashed and splashed over you. And when you open your eyes it’s like someone pushed you into the canal.
You attempt to write a sentence but your brain can just about compute three letters, and any more than that it’s just hsgyrnroshfambafre…
If you look out of the office window at the building opposite it would appear that the bricks are gradually crawling upward.
Lights fizz and pop at the back of your eyes and a myriad of tiny green elves gather to sing the chorus of “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time?” conducted by a gnomic Bob Geldorf…
That’s when you know it’s time for another drink…
Hair of the dog in The Victoria anyone?
Fortunately I wasn’t invited (in time)
It was a very random affair. Your name was mentioned.
I was in Paris. Red wine has a more gentle embrace, which is why I abandoned beer and spirits a while back
Yes to another sesh in the Vic.