The Morning After
When the alarm clock ticked over at 7am and filled the bedroom with the local radio station, I woke with a start and rolled upright in bed. It turns out moving was a bad idea, given the headache that had been hiding somewhere in there before I moved. I seem to remember in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox described drinking a pan-galactic gargle-blaster as being hit in the head by a gold brick. That’s a pretty accurate description of those first few moments after sitting up in bed.
I made it downstairs to the shower, got dressed, and carried on with the usual routine of making breakfasts, lunches, cups of tea, and clearing up after everybody else. While sitting with Miss 12, waiting for her taxi, I began shivering and a wave of nausea rushed through me.
After saying goodbye to everybody as they left the house, I took some pain killers, and wandered back to the bedroom, climbing back under the covers – still fully clothed.
This is where it all gets a bit strange.
I woke back up, and went off around the house looking for my Christmas sweater – we were going out for a Christmas meal with work and a call had gone out to wear Christmas sweaters if we had any. I do – a particularly ridiculous one with LED lights that flash all over it, around the face of a ridiculous grinning reindeer. I ran all over the house looking for it – turning rooms upside down.
I had failed to notice one thing – I was running around my parents house, circa 1995. It was a dream.
I figured this out when I woke for a second time, and realised the time on the bedside radio now read 9:45am. Reality slowly re-assembled itself in my head and I raced downstairs, picking up the sweater I had folded the night before, throwing my bike helmet on, and heading out the door – emailing work to tell them I would be in a little late. The headache and fever had miraculously vanished. The pain-killers had worked.
I still don’t know how I made it through the work Christmas lunch.