Christmas and new years

i got Christmas off this year. (clicky) and Christmas eve too, which i didn’t find out about til the last minute.

Christmas is a time for family, so Christmas day was celebrated together with my parents, my sister and a neighbour who’d fallen in the ice and broken her arm, so she couldn’t travel to visit her own family. my brother in law always spends the Christmas period working at the Crisis homeless shelters in London, so again he didn’t join us, but had a valid excuse…

boxing day i drove my parents and sister down to Winchester where we met up with my aunt, uncle and 2 cousins. they also had a neighbour in who’d have been spending Christmas alone. it was nice to catch up with everyone and especially to see how my aunty is doing with her Alzheimer's. the effects are getting bad, but she’s hiding it well.

as for presents, well I've now got enough books to see me through 2010, although several were not in the right order, so I've some gaps to fill… my main presents from my parents were a bit of a disaster though. 1 got burned in a warehouse fire or something and the other (a pair of trainers) didn’t fit, despite being the same size and make as another pair of trainers i have which fit well…

i did a couple of overtime shifts between Christmas and new years as i need the money. they were wholly uneventful, the second shift being busy, but with not one person who actually needed a front line ambulance…

then there was new years… a party at a friend’s house. i took my old friend Jack Daniels with me and dressed as Hannibal Lector as it was fancy dress and stupidly entered a drinking game.

i’ve played Centurion (clicky) before, but only with beer and not having drunk any alcohol previously… this time however, i’d already had a couple of glasses of punch, some shots of apple sours and quarter of a bottle of Jack Daniels before we started! if that wasn’t bad enough, the beer ran out about half way through and some disgusting Belgian beer was produced… then when that was gone, on to the cider…

the game was generally interspersed with shots of god only knows what and ended with something that nearly made me vomit… lots of people dropped out along the way, some having to run off to vomit and only 2 of us finished the whole 100 shots. i felt fine after and soon moved back onto the Jack Daniels. midnight came and went with the usual best wishes and glass of champers, then suddenly it his me…. like all the alcohol I'd consumed suddenly caught up with me! my memory becomes hazy, the room spins and i have to go outside for air. the sudden cold air makes me sick and i find a large empty plant pot…

back inside in the warm and sitting down i lapse in and out of consciousness… i am aware of being decorated with clothes pegs and things, but completely unable to do anything about it… it’s 3 am before i come round enough to shed the clothes pegs and find somewhere proper to sleep… sensibly i take a bucket with me!

i awake about 8am and immediately vomit. my head is pounding, the room’s spinning and i can’t stop vomiting. all that’s coming out is liquid. I'm guessing i left all solids in the garden… when i stop vomiting, i find a glass of water (did i take it to bed or did someone put it there?) either way, i take a sip and immediately vomit again! for the next 4 hours i struggle to rehydrate myself as all water going in comes straight back out and all the while my hangover gets worse! i finally venture downstairs in the early afternoon, everyone but the hosts have left, but i still feel way too woozy to drive.

we watch bad movies until early evening and I'm able to eat crisps and nuts and things with salt on and wash them down with coke without vomiting… then home to bed.