Barf!

A fast-moving day in my rootin' tootin', project-managin', conference-callin' life. Into town. Outatown. All around the town, in fact. And when the town is London it all just seems to happen on a bigger scale.

I don't hit the office until 5pm and I'm fizzing after a new business win. Two hours later I head out with the boss - ostensibly to introduce a great friend, but it quickly turns into a celebration of the day. A local tapas bar. The first bottle disappears in minutes.

The friend arrives. He and the boss hit it off quickly. More wine. We're building links, networking, adding to the sum total of this crossconnected sponge of neurality that is London business. Calamari, garlic chicken, sardines, the stuff of what's becoming one of the world's great cuisines. We munch tapas and talk turkey.

And then the horror sinks in. Through the fog of Rioja I recall the skipped breakfast, the skipped lunch. There are 24 hours of emptiness in my stomach, and I already know what effect the red's going to fill them with.

It happens quickly. The room starts to tumble and twirl. One of those moments when you'd give almost anything, anything to rewind your life about twenty minutes. I make my excuses and leave the table.

And soon I'm exploring inner China. Offering a sacrifice to the porcelain god. Yawning in glorious technicolour. Callin' up Ralph on the big white telephone. I haven't been this sick for at least a year, and the arrow of time points towards it getting worse. My body's about to suffer increased entropy and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

The restaurant continues going all Blue Iguana on me. And my altered state is obvious to my dining companions, who find it funny. As we rise, I give the waiter a tip. "Watch where you step in the toilets!"

I realise I'm going to have real problems getting home without contributing to a Job Creation Scheme for Tube car cleaners. The friend offers his sofa, and I accept.

Less than an hour later, I'm having weird dreams about showers and glue. (I'm going to have to think about getting heating installed in my house; the pervasive warmth of this apartment is sooo comfortable.) I wake often, but it's so relaxing it feels as refreshing as sleep. This sofa is comforting, womblike even. Even in a post-projectile vomiting, drained, quivering physical state, I have the faculties to wonder if my clinical decorative tastes are a bit austere.

And the friend's reward for offering his sofa for the night? A blocked sink in the morning, for which amazingly he isn't annoyed - and actually sounds amused. Thanks, RS, for being a great human being.