teenage festivity

One year, it was christmas as usual in Winchester. George and Dorothy were there, and all the siblings. I'd been out the night before. Who knows who with. Presents are always unwrapped in the morning. It's a long ceremony, involving selection, opening, apreciation. Essentially a spectator sport. Intersperesed with mince pies. I always remember this hangover as it adds weight to my evolving perception that hangovers decrease in intensity with age. On that morning, I was so sick, all I could do was lie on the sofa and grunt upon occasion. Presents were as welcome as school tapioca. Every single aspect of this thing called Christmas Day had been engineered in order to make me feel worse. I survived the morning, battled through lunch and slept all afternoon.