In vino levitas

Last night was the night of the dreaded Work Christmas Party. Ho, ho, ho. Etc. I’m feeling slightly smug today at work owing to the fact that I seem to be one of only a few in the building who managed to avoid waking up with a hangover. Having stuck to drinking cooking lager all evening I am an uncharacteristic beacon of good sense. Anyway, and more interestingly, many of my esteemed colleagues may take at least some amusement if not exactly solace from a simply lovely description, by my favourite writer, of what it can sometimes feel like—so I’m told—to have a hangover.

“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim, 1954.

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