BUCKING UP

Come down the stairs this morning with a jeroboam sized hangover to find Bloggiana knees down on the parlour floor. She has straw woven into her hair, almost as though she is trying to make her name as the first woman ever to create dreadlocks out of once-used horse bedding and her eye-liner has run - again - today forming a Cath Kidstonesque floral imprint on the muck-spattered patina of her cheeks.

"Everything all right, old girl?" I venture.

You would think by now that I Piccalilli would know better than to ask after Bloggiana's health at such a juncture. After all, she was there with me yesterday evening when we shared that jeroboam. And she was there with me too when we shared the second. She was there as we played tiddlywinks (a homespun version involving a large dog bowl, a packet of matzo crackers and the pooled resources of Bloggiana's children's baby-teeth collection). And she it was who, having unfortunately swallowed all the teeth (small question of mistaken identity in the matzo department), suggested we formulate a purgative using most of the rest of our bottle of Poire Wiliam and ever so slight a dash of value bleach.

But it seems there are some things one never learns.

"Bloggiana, old girl, you ok?"

Before I am treated to the Pony Club Commissioner's full response, two things happen. The postman rings. Twice. And the telephone chimes in for good measure. Luckily Arky has just arrived - a vision in moire silk, high-heeled wellingtons and non-hangover freshness. Arky it is who answers the telephone while I Piccalilli take a view and realise that really, the only person left likely to answer the door is me (Our Dog having a somewhat dodgy track record vis-a-vis our door-latch). So I stumble through to the porch hoping that my head will remain atop my shoulders for the journey and through the fog that lies between me, the open door and the postie, find myself reaching out and grasping hold of several brown envelopes, most of them bulgey, some of them gooey.

Arky puts the phone down, I re-enter the parlour, Arky relays the details of the telecon, I put down the packages, Adolesco slopes into the room murmuring something about laundry, Our Dog in pure Gaelic farts, MarkU arrives with a file marked festival budgets - and Bloggiana just explodes. Quite literally. I mean like spontaneously. Call it combustion. Call it a world-class hangover induced jeroboam and dreadlock pate. It doesn't matter what you call it but all I can say is that Bloggiana, in her hour of pain, is a spectacle.

"All right?" she says. "All right? Hell kind of idiot moron do you take me for, Piccalilli? All right? Last night, I consumed five litres of vino rosso, half a litre of peroxide, some toxic perry and several mouthfuls of bicuspids. This morning I come down to find two hundred enquiries in my inbox marked Chutney Festival, Arky tells me I have been selected to address a South Korean conference on Kim Chee, my son reminds me he's going back to school, MarkU comes and says something perfectly sensible about money, you pop a pallet load of Chutney Award entries on the table, the dog reminds us all that he doesn't need feeding and you ask me if I'm all right."

"Answer is, Piccalilli, course I'm fucking all right. Matter of fact, never fucking better. Now find me the yellow pages, there's a duck - and open it if you would at the page marked Sauce."