Hangover hell

 

This weekend, I visited the land of hangover hell. 

 

I don’t go there very often anymore, but I was a regular during those distant college years.

 

But hangover hell was different back then.

 

Back then you could ring in sick, nap,  lie under a quilt on the sofa all day, nap, eat takeaways, nap, watch daytime TV completely undisturbed, nap a bit more.

 

Hangover hell has changed.

 

No more are the long recovery lie-ins, no more peaceful groaning about the headache and dehydration to sympathetic flatmates. No more undisturbed flopping about in front of the telly.

 

Oh no.

 

Nowadays, small people prod my mummified body awake in the darkness and the cold, unreasonably demanding things like food and water and Peppa Pig.

 

Nowadays, the throb of blood pounding between my eyes is amplified by high pitched screeches of joy and delight, each one like a shard of ice driving into my brain.

 

Every moment feels impossible, reaching for the breakfast cereal a task of such momentous pain I have to squint my eyes for ten minutes before scraping together the last dregs of inner strength to proceed.

 

My hands shake, the teenager makes sarcastic commentary and the three-year-old bounces off the walls like a human Tigger. It’s all too much but there’s no choice but to soldier on.

 

There are two solutions I think, collapsing into a chair only to be leapt upon by a writhing child: one is to never, ever go out again; the other is to hire a babysitter who would be willing to stay not only for the night out but also for the next day.

 

That would be heaven.

 

Daisy Wilson is a freelance writer who lives and works in West Cork. Mum to an almost-teenager and a toddler who is striding through the terrible twos with a glint in her eye, life is noisy, fun and covered in fingerprint marks.