Jessica Jackson Smith
I woke up on Sunday afternoon with a hangover so powerful it could have powered my home town of Reading for a month. I can only describe it as a near life experience, I had in fact Zombiefied myself. I managed to peel myself out of bed and swaggered out of my room and into Paul Hamer’s as I attempted to find the landing. I realised immediately that something was wrong. I have never had a day-glow/high-visibility hangover before. But there it was. Day-glow hangover in full force, is this a brain haemorrhage, have I had a stroke. All I can focus on is day-glow and it is coming from Pauls bed.
I strained my eyes into focus. Paul is asleep in his bed wearing his high vis anorak gently snoring away. Suddenly last night beams back into focus and I run through the room to wake up Jess, “Jess wake up you have to see this!” in between a couple of “Sod off” and “Go away” I think Jess picked up on my delight she stirred and came bounding into Pauls room and fell about laughing.
Our day-glow friend told us to “Duck off” approximately 70 times in under a minuet, which is a record for him. Unfortunately this made us laugh all the more, we are NOT good friends to have. I guess I should explain…..
At about four o’clock in the morning, Paul Hamer left the depleting party and came home alone. Leaving Jess, Panda and I lost in Norwich city centre. We found another club (sorry don’t know the name) and kept drinking had a dirty kebab before finding a taxi to get us back. In our wisdom we decided that Paul had been a traitor and needed to be punished. So we snuck into the house, filled up two pint glasses of water each and went to his room, we picked up some pillows and made a surprise attack. How funny are we…… Yeah!
It is our last day with Jess, she leaves us at seven, Paul and I decide to take lunch away so she can have some time with Mark Forstater, do some networking and have some stories from the Grail of the Monty Python variety. Vodka Revolution with some old payslips do the trick.
When we return, Paul heads back to bed for some hangover sleep and Mark Forstater goes to a production meeting with Mr Hills and co. Jess and I spend the afternoon lounging on the sofa drinking tea and just talked and talked until the dreaded our came to us. Paul and I take her to the station we listen to Elbow, it is the perfect soundscape. At the station we all hug and promise to keep in touch. As we drive away Jess turns around and does an end of play courtesy. Wonderful, it’s like a dream.
Paul and I finish the day in the Fat Cat, the best pub in England so they say. It would be hard to argue the fact.
Ian Manson – Documentary director.