My Top 10 Bastard Vomits

It’s good to share, especially bodily fluids and substances, and some time ago I shared with you, Dear Reader, the top 10 poo-related tales from my life.  Such an out-pouring of nostalgic self-indulgent depravity garnered more plaudits than most other blog posts of mine; and so it is, that I now develop that theme and spew forth from my past my top 10 vomit-related incidents.

 

10. The 70s was a great time for car and coach travel.  There was no air-con, the suspension in most vehicles was as flexible as a concrete slab being dragged down a stone staircase and a relaxed attitude to car safety meant sitting wherever there was room.  We holidayed a lot in a caravan that we towed to Cornwall, my family and my Uncle, Aunt and cousins, crammed into a Volvo estate, dragging the portable holiday home along the A303 at 60 mph for about 8 eight hours, all the kids in the boot.  I’d last about two hours before feeling ill, regardless of the travel sweets, at which point I’d clamber from boot to back seat and sit on my Mum’s lap, head out of the window.  Despite the G-force and the consequent flapping of my cheeks so that my face appeared to crawl backwards behind my ears, I wouldn’t feel any better, and at some point I’d vomit.  At that speed, the sick would spread itself all over the back window of the estate car.  Completely.  We’d arrive at the caravan site and my Mum would retrieve a spatula intended for the Bar-B-Q and sort out the by-now-crusty layer of discarded breakfast.

 

9.  I won’t be taking the credit for every vomit in this list.  This one goes to my friend Pat, aka “CJ” which stood for Cambodian Joe, a rather cruel nickname bestowed on him at secondary school on account of his lithe frame and the famine ravaging Indo-China at the time.  Ceej (short for CJ) liked a Guinness and on no less than two occasions demonstrated his stylish “puke-while-you-walk” move.  Strolling between pubs he would turn his head to one side and hurl over his shoulder without even breaking stride.  With a cool wipe of his mouth he’d assure us that he was OK and the next round was on him.

 

8. Running the risk of repeating myself, in case you missed it in the poo-related list, the puke my little brother did in response to the turd I left in the bath makes the top ten here.  I’ll let you investigate the details from that earlier blog post, but suffice it to say, there was no water in the bath, I was experimenting and my Mum bloody killed me afterwards.

 

7. My first ever trip abroad was a day-trip to Boulogne when I was about 13.  I vomited before we hit the coast and cringed to see the resultant hot gut-juice find the gully on the coach that carried it five rows of seats towards the back.  My partner for the trip was allowed to move away, the teacher scolded me for not forewarning him and securing the service of the available bucket and I spent the day in France lurking round the alleyways of the town, alone, enduring the after-shock mini-pukes and generally feeling like a complete fucking leper.

 

6. At a more mature age, nearing 40, and as Head of the Humanities faculty at the school in which I worked, I felt it to be correct and appropriate to set a good example to those younger colleagues for whom an end of term night out required the multiple consumption of shots.  I proved that I could take those shots like the best of them.  It wasn’t the Sambuca that caused me to ask my wife to stop the car three times on the way home so I could puke, it was my car-sickness.  I get car-sick, that’s all.  Nothing to do with Sambuca.

 

5. As a student, I went inter-railing with three mates.  Our first night was spent on a ferry crossing from Harwich to the Hook of Holland.  Once the bar closed, the need for alcohol (peer-pressure, of course – none of us really “wanted” anymore) lured us to check out the duty free shop where they sold a liquor called “Underburg”.  By the morning, given the motion of the sea and the delicate constitution of yours truly, I had added the prefix “Ch” to that drink.

 

4. My most recent sick was last week.  I had my normal breakfast of four Weetabix (with chocolate chips in it), took out my phone, belched and deposited a mouthful on my phone-case.  A bit out of the blue, that.

 

3. Names and details spared, I was once (it was one of very few times) kissing a girl, when I had to turn to vomit.  Drunkenness is a wonderful tool for getting someone to suspend their taste and dignity long enough to kiss you, but that suspension didn’t extend to continue a kiss after I’d done some interior decorating of my mouth with burning hot beer-fuelled stomach bile.  And I’d assumed she wasn’t that fussy.

 

2. I worked in a pub in Reading, while at University, called The Turk’s Head.  On my 20^th birthday, which started in a different pub at noon and finished in the Turk’s, my friends decided to kindly present me with a gift of a “Turk’s Head” t-shirt.  I put it straight on and it remained in its pristine, washing-powder-advert state of purest white for about half-an-hour, before I decided to lie down in a puddle of piss right underneath the urinals and get sick all over myself.  Come the morning, I felt that no washing powder advert would persuade me to do anything other than dispose of the thing.

 

1. School trips at primary school tended to be to either Devon or Somerset.  Either way, a fucking long trek on a 1970s coach.  Something marginally less comfortable than being held hostage by terrorists.  On one particular day trip from Combe Martin on the north Devon coast to Exeter in the South, I happened to prepare for the hour-long journey back by purchasing a can of limeade and a mint-choc-chip Cornetto.  The offspring of this unwise combination, coming as it did at the moment when I stepped off the coach outside our hotel, was as green as summer grass and as toxic as nuclear waste.  There was no doubting that my pre-journey snack had proved a poor choice.

 

So there we are, the contents of ten stomach-churning tales.  We have all met Hughie and Ralph for one reason or another. They are our friends and don’t forget, it is only for that moment in which it happens that getting sick isn’t one of life’s most laudable and levelling pleasures.