flashing lights

Typical of me: just when I'm almost recovered I drank too much last night and came crashing back down again. I've spent most of today asleep in Iain's bed. Surfaced to swallow nurofen but gave up when I threw it straight back up again. My head still hasn't completely forgiven me.

Oh! but it was worth it. Sat in the pub drinking stella and addicting myself to salt'n'vinegar Squares before I persuaded everyone to come to the fortnightly indie night at Kambar. I'd never been before but I love that place, all low Tudor beams, nooks and narrow staircases, small dusty tables and cigarette smoke. I danced like a mad thing with my hands in the air and my head down, downed double vodkas and lemonade and couldn't stop laughing simply for the manic bliss of it all. Kept looking at Iain inbetween snapshots of strobe lights and falling in love with him all over again. I love the way they freezeframe people, amplifying every moment so it sticks in your memory like a photograph. There was a group of fifteen year old girls with pale skin and black eyeliner kissing each other, and a crazy boy in denim with bleach-blond hair, spinning round for no reason. I told him he reminded me of Rik Mayall, and he flashed a grin at me: "what more can I say?". The music was more rock than indie and we ended up moshing in a space five feet wide, glad I forgot to change out of my trainers when my feet were trampled on. I threw myself into it with absolute abandon.

We were the last to leave. Ruth and Ed stayed for a while, her on his knee, sharing a bottle of red wine before going back together. We've known they were meant for each other since two weeks into last term - Richard and I were planning ways of bringing it about next year if they hadn't seen sense by then. She told me this morning, grinning like the Cheshire cat, that she was always the last to know these things. Yesterday afternoon neither of them would have admitted to thinking it. I'm so pleased, though. I love them both; they deserve each other.

I'm working myself up to doing that Virgil as I write this. Craving toast. I'm back up to a meal a day now. Steamed trout yesterday in the college canteen, picking the pink flesh off the bones, oh-so-delicate, fingerfood innards. It left a perfect Loony Toons fish skeleton, complete with grey tail and staring head. That pleased me. We played it to pieces; named it and made it drink coke and threatened each other with it, giggling like six year olds. Food is better when it's fun. I didn't manage anything today until an hour ago, and then I left the lamb and contented myself with roast potatoes and gravy, which is possibly my favourite food in the world.