Maybe the Umbrella's Unlucky



Me with my two oldest and closest friends. Yes, women
like me. The stain, by the way, is soda water, which I
spilt on myself when I drank it from my martini
glass, unaware that it was just to chill the glass and
wasn't the actual drink I'd ordered, although the huge
overflowing pile of ice in the glass ought to be a giveaway.

 Well, I'm back. And I'm old. Last week I turned 30, and it gave me an opportunity not only to reflect on having failed to pass certain milestones others of my generation manage before they leave school, but also to have a bit of a party, as the photograph on the right indicates. That's me in the middle.

The interesting part of the evening, apart from failing to put on an "I am 30" badge and deciding not to bother as I thought it would undermine my authority with the bar staff, was the suit I was wearing. I have not idea where it came from, but I do remember the last time I wore that particular outfit. Pin-stripe dark grey suit, red shirt open at the neck, black shoes, indeterminate socks and underpants, although I think I wore orange socks on Saturday in a feeble attempt at co-ordination.

I say remember. That's about half of it.

The last time, and the first for that matter, was last year's works Christmas party, held on the last Thursday of the working year. I'd spruced myself up a bit, left the requisite bottle of water and packet of ibuprofen on my pillow in case I came back in a poor state and left the house.

My first mistake was forgetting the mouthful of milk. This is, apparently, a trick to being able to drink without getting horribly drunk - a big mouthful of milk at the start of the evening, and the world is yours. I shrugged when I remembered, and decided not to bother. That was my second mistake.



Big Brother is Watching You Embarrassing Yourself.

 The evening was held in some of kind of post-Orwellian nightclub, housed in an industrial shed just south of London Bridge. There was a bar at one end and a huge, three-storey metal structure in the middle of the floor. The installation was the size of a house and covered in external metal staircases, up and down which trooped figures dressed like riot police. I might need to remind you, this was a Christmas party.

The structure turned out to be some kind of performance art feature, with a ball-fighting room at the top - a gantry around a central covered well, with the plastic ball you get in creche ball-pits around the edge - a karaoke room in the middle and at the bottom, visible through the transparent floor, an area divided between a group of people playing cards and a fat man in a sauna. I don't know what this represented. Advent, probably.

The food was barbecued outside, and drinks were lined up and handed out inside. I was having a good time, singing a few songs, chatting to a few colleagues and throwing plastic balls at people's heads, when suddenly at around 11.30pm I turned arou






...the next thing I know is that I'm at home. I'm in bed, in my usual sleeping attire. I'm alone, as usual. Daylight shines in through the window. It has woken me up. It's Friday. My alarm should have woken me up. I look at my watch. It's 9.45am. Oh, fuck.

First things first. I sit up. That was my third mistake. As the room spins around more axes that have yet been named, I stumble to my phone and call in sick. Appreciating that saying I have a hangover is not a good idea, I instead said that I must have picked up a bug after coming home in the snow. Highly credible. My reserves of energy spent, I returned to bed.

I woke a little after lunchtime. It is the only time I can remember having a meal in reverse. No, not that. A trip to the toilet and a bundling of the mat to allow a better kneeling position later, I went back to bed. I woke again in the early evening, and returned to the bathroom to use the toilet's more traditional function. Partway through, however, I needed the other.

This presents an interesting conundrum. Picture the scene. I'm sitting on the toilet, taking a pretty large but not uncomfortable shit. I can feel the bile rising in my throat, as I'm sure you can. Many bathrooms have the safety valve of the sink being close enough to the toilet to allow you to use both. Mine doesn't. In fact, there isn't anything within easy reach of the toilet. Before my landlord had it refurbished, I could have simply leaned over and vomited into the bath. But it was not to be.

As my struggling brain failed to arrive at a solution, only one option was left. I clenched, pinched off what I could, and launched myself at the sink with a squat-thrust that would make my personal trainer proud. As the last drops of unabsorbed water dribbled into the sink from my gaping maw, and I continued to dry heave on an empty stomach with half a turd hanging out of my arse, I felt the last vestiges of dignity leave my body. Now at my lowest ebb, there was only one thing to do. I cleaned myself and went downstairs to watch The One Show.

After a nap, I finally managed to force down some scrambled eggs at around midnight before getting to sleep at around 1am. The following day, I made my expedition to Wandsworth for the only screening of TRON: Legacy in Central London, negotiating the slippery roads and snow-covered pavements with a lot more care than normal.

It was at this point that I started to piece together what might have happened. Firstly, all my clothes had travelled with me. Even the umbrella I left at the coat-check was by the door, its raffle ticket still taped on. One of my first actions after calling in sick was checking that I was still... intact. I remained like a shredded wheat. Nothing had been added or taken away. When I told my father about this later, it was the first thing he asked; with a smile on his face if you please. I weighed myself on the Saturday morning, and found that I had, in two days, lost 5.5kg. That's a lot.

I didn't even have that much to drink. A couple of beers, maybe three-quarters of a glass of wine and a rum and coke - but that's only what I remember having. The barbecued food might not have helped, being cooked from raw outdoors, but it's not likely. I suspect that someone might have dropped something in a wine glass as a prank. No-one remembers me leaving the party, or any behaviour that stood out. Someone else mooned some of the guests, so that would have taken away the focus from any minor transgression. Blacking out like that has never happened to me before or since, and it took a fair bit of explaining when I had my Return to Work interview at 9.15am on 5th January.

So you may have understood my superstitious mind being a little concerned about putting the suit on again for another evening out. The thing is, it just looks that good on me.