How do you like those onions?

I woke aggressively hungover this morning. Last night, after being informed of my obsolecence by a Samsung employee, I'd clearly been affected, and ended up drinking heavily at a bar called The Bank, at 1 Shenton, on Shenton Way, which is a street full of banks, and thus a terrible place to give directions to. I suppose if they'd called it The Toilet it would be worse, but only slightly.

My wife came out to meet me, but since the taxi driver didn't believe that 1 Shenton existed, and all points on Shenton Way are equivalent, she took half an hour to find me. It's not easy to explain to somebody where to go if they can only tell you that they're outside a bank on Shenton and you're in The Bank at 1 Shenton.

All I had for dinner was a packet of crisps and a slice of disappointing cake, and then three pints of lager, a quarter of a bottle of gin and a bowl of onion rings. Clearly the onion rings are what made me hungover. That, and owning a broken, out of date tablet.

I woke up at 8, feeling dire. I'd strained my neck somehow, making it exceptionally painful to look over my right shoulder, and from time to time the pain worsened, as my eyes crossed and all the strength departed my body. I tried to sleep, but in this discombobulated state I failed to do so. Instead I read Richard Herring's Warming Up blog, which has been printed up in book form. The book covers 6 months in 2003 when he was about my age, and terribly gloomy and worried about the path his life was taking. I wonder if I should have taken succour from this, or seen it as something to aim for.

Because we were out all week and avoiding boring things like grocery shopping, there was a lack of any real food in the apartment, apart from bread, and booze. I had to walk to the supermarket to buy fruit, when I was in the precise state that required me to lie in bed while somebody else fed me fruit. But alas, my wife was at work and I was bereft of bananas.

I'd like to say the walk made me feel better, but after ten minutes in the unforgiving sunshine I felt at least as dreadful as before. I managed to write 750 words for my novel, which, while little, is more than I've done in weeks, and then went for a run. All I managed was a mile, so all in all this was a quite unsatisfactory day for any sort of achievement.

On the positive side, I didn't fall down the toilet while carrying out my ablutions today - that always felt like a real possibility.

This evening we're visiting a friend for a barbecue. He's asked me to bring onions, ice, cream, mustard, and dessert, the last of which seems fairly redundant, because if you're not happy with a sweet course of ice, cream, mustard and onions, then frankly there's no pleasing you. I have a fairly significant fear that I'm going to be made to get very, very drunk again. It's the onions that are going to break me.