What a surreal couple of days. I woke up yesterday in a hotel room in London feeling rather ill. It may have been alcohol related. It may have been a dodgy sandwich from the dodgy sandwich shop. It may have been my stomach condition playing up. Or possibly (and I think this is most likely) it was the stomach bug that had been going around the main shelter, carried to the pub on Tuesday morning by some of the main shelter staff.

Whatever the cause, I woke up with a headache and nausea. One rather unpleasant session with the sink later (unpleasant, but surprisingly easy to do) and my head cleared. Fatigued and in discomfort, my only thought was to return home. If nothing else, my tenure at the hotel had expired and I wasn't really all that keen to extend it purely to spend another 24 hours throwing up in a sink - that's hardly worth paying for.

I took regular breaks on the motorway, expecting to be sick at any moment, but never managed it. The nausea was there, but didn't want to work to order. So, sipping water, I made it all the way along the M1 to the M18 and then from the M18, I joined the A1. At this exact juncture, my stomach could take no more and I, very skillfully, in my opinion, managed to stop the car safely, remove my glasses, grab hold of some cleansing tissues and adopt a safe stance, away from the car, in order to do what nature intended me to. I don't envy the motorists who saw me throwing up on the hard shoulder. That must have been a bit off putting.

As if by magic, the action of hurling seemed to clear my head and I jumped back into the car and headed north again. I made a stop at Scotch Corner because I was feeling light headed and sleepy. I needed to get myself awake enough to finish the journey. I was also very very very cold. At Scotch Corner, I managed to put some sugary Ribena inside me - hopefully, this raised my blood sugar enough for the journey. I also wrapped myself up in a coat (I'd been driving in shirt and jeans) and got ready for the final leg home.

I must have arrived back home at 5 or 6pm. It's hard to say. The time from arriving home until getting out of bed this morning at 9am is something of a blur. I know I nearly lost myself to the cold at 6am when I went downstairs to put the heating on and then swaddled myself under two duvets and a dressing gown. I know that I was hallucinating about some sort of pain relief system that was keeping me from feeling too bad - this has happened before (last time it was some work related project planning thing). I know that I couldn't move for much of the night.

It's been weird.

I still ache and I've nothing in the house to eat. (Okay, I have some tins and some frozen stuff... but nothing fresh).

And I don't know where's open to buy stuff.

And I can't face the cold outside.

So I feel like I'll either watch another DVD or go back to bed.

Happy New Year.