Dialogue: With more time we'll all feel so much better

PAMELA WADE* concludes that 2001 can only improve after welcoming the new year in a traditionally indulgent spirit.

There's a party going on inside my head, and it's nothing like the decorous one I was at a couple of hours ago.

This one has excitable people crammed into a small, enclosed space and shrieking raucously at each other. They are dancing frenetically, but still able to produce a pea-souper of a fog with their cigarettes, which is stabbed through by strobe lights.

There is loud rap music, there is greasy food being trodden underfoot, there is a Harley-Davidson roaring at the door.

My temples are bulging from the strain of containing this hurly-burly, and I am sure my head would be splitting apart if it were not hooped by the steel band which has already been screwed three turns tighter in the few minutes that I have been awake.

Awake, yes, but not wide awake. Wide would be a serious mistake, what with eyes rolling about in their sockets like marbles in a saucer and held in only by gritty lids clamped together.

Vision would, in any case, lead to information overload. There are already enough internal bulletins trundling through sticky synapses and piling up in the brain, clamouring for attention.

The mouth is as parched as a Hawkes Bay hill, the tongue spread between furry teeth like a fluffy bathmat. Someone has inserted a chunk of kryptonite into my chest, which is glowing and burning its way through several of my more vital organs.

The stomach is churning quietly but insistently, like a Rotorua mud-pool, and is working up to some kind of spectacle. Action is required - but it has to be special-effects action, slow-motion and freeze frame.

I head for the kitchen, prudently holding my head in place with both hands. I step carefully, wobbling slightly, like a chameleon on a branch; the swivelling cone-shaped eyes are another point of similarity.

The baleful green glow of the clock flashes 4.08 - an hour I have had nothing to do with since the distant days of squalling infants. I am glad not to have to deal with milk and nappies now. We could be talking geysers rather than mud-pools.

Water is not wet enough. I need fizz to force its way through the dental fur and unstick tongue from upper palate.

The strip magnets give without warning, the fridge door springs open with a rattle of bottles and a dazzling flood of light. A can of Fanta drops on to my foot and rolls across the floor.

The sudden spray of orange in my face is surprisingly refreshing, while the cold and hissing puddle on the floor soothes my throbbing toes.

I feel fully lubricated; the mouth is functional again. Now the stomach needs attention.

There is a bottle of antacid in the pantry, nestled up against the chilli-sauce following the principle of nature that has stinging nettles and docks growing together at the bottom of our garden.

It would, however, be too easy in the dark to grab and swig from the wrong bottle.

Even neat vanilla extract could be disastrous in the short term, and lead to a lifelong aversion to hokey-pokey ice-cream, pavlova and other essentials.

The light must be switched on. It is like being on the fireworks barge in the harbour a few hours earlier.

Eight hundred watts explode from the downlighters, pinioning me to the bench before ricocheting around the kitchen, bouncing from glaring white enamel to polished stainless steel to glittering chrome.

I can hear them. De-coked teeth gritted, I make binoculars with my hands and locate the bottle.

I remember to shake it, one hand clamped to the top of my head in case of dislodgement.

The lid is glued on, someone (not me) screwed it on to a drippy neck last time. It needs to be run under the tap.

Fine motor control is out of the question. The tap suddenly gushes like Niagara. There is a spoon in the sink. It is directly below the deluge.

The inverted shower is also refreshing, and less sticky than the Fanta.

The lid comes off, the minty ooze flows down to coat the irritable areas. In time, Rotorua will subside, the kryptonite will fade and my innards will resume their usual anonymous functioning.

A couple of pills follow to quieten the cageful of agitated monkeys now shrieking and jumping around inside my head. I have done all that I can. Time will heal the rest.

In the morning, I shall consider why it is that when I went to bed, I felt fine - cheerful, expansive, capable - yet now, after a few hours' sleep, it's me who feels distinctly unravelled.

Something is wrong somewhere, but at present is beyond computation. What is, however, abundantly clear is that beginning the new year in such a comprehensively raddled state is a clever step.

From here, the only way is up.

* Pamela Wade is an Auckland writer.