Is this really my first post in 2006? Shocking.
Anyway, I'll gloss over that and begin by saying that I'm sick. Or more precisely, I was literally sick a couple of days ago. Now I'm well aware that tales of other people's "I threw up everywhere" exploits are about as interesting as listening to detailed descriptions of their dreams but this is worth noting for the record.
It begins with M being sick on Saturday. We had been over to Kew in the morning so that she could buy some material and I could visit the National Archives*. We went into town and had a bit of lunch at a pub before going to see a film - Capote if you're interested, think Larry Grayson meets Dead Man Walking.
As the credits rolled I leaned over to M and asked "What did you think?" to which she succinctly replied "I think I'm going to be sick". Before I could say "I think that's a little harsh, perhaps Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance was a little theatrical but surely it captured the mood of the times..." she was up and running for the toilet.
She then proceeded to throw up a few more times before getting home, including into a plastic carrier bag on the train, mmm. It laid her out for the next couple of days and she only properly ate something yesterday (Wednesday). We put it down to the nachos she'd eaten at lunch time and resolved never to eat pub mince again**.
We couldn't have been more wrong though, after a work trip on Tuesday I was in the car back when I started to feel dodgy, and my innards starting grumbling like a pensioner in a post office queue. I was dropped off in Amersham and caught the train to Marylebone when I really felt like shit. By the time I had got to Victoria and got on the train to Beckenham my stomach was grumbling like an Israel-Palestine boundary negotiation.
As we approached West Dulwich, a good four stops before Beckenham it was all getting a bit faint. I thought that if I got up and stood by the door when it opened I could at least get some fresh air***. The train pulled into the platform, I leapt up and once everyone had got off I leant out of the door and sucked in a deep breath. All this managed to do was displace whatever was bubbling in my stomach and I jumped off knowing that I couldn't put it off. I managed to wait til everyone who'd just got off had filed past me and I walked quickly in the opposite direction down the platform away from the entrance.
The platform was long and lit with lamposts but at least it was now deserted, I got as far along as I could before my diaphragm spasmed and my mouth filled with vomit. I clamped my hand to my mouth to hold it in, took three more steps, turned to the fence and blew the lot onto the floor, via my shoes.
Just at that moment, the train I'd just got off pulled away. As I retched my breakfast and lunch into the floor, safe in the knowledge that the platform was deserted the crowd of people on the platform opposite got a full view of me hunched over, wiping sick from my nose and plucking my glasses out of the puddle of now steaming vomit on the concrete under a lampost.
I went and tried to get a cab but couldn't find one, the smell of sick was in my nose, and the stain of sick was on my shoes, suit and dignity. I had to hang around for twenty minutes before another Beckenham train came though. When I eventually got home I stripped off, got straight in the bath, got out, threw up again, got back in, got out, dried off and went to bed.
I took the next day off.
*Family tree stuff, I know, I know, a bit of a fad at the moment but I've been sucked in and it is annoyingly fascinating. Look at it this way, I'm vaguely related to a bigamistic fraudster and a family from Norwich called Whittle. They are not the same person.
**The fact that this says 'again' shows how slow on the uptake we are.
***No, it is quite fresh, it's Dulwich remember, not Crystal Palace.
