I went to see Electric 6 and all I got were these lousy drugs...

Well I got drugged last night, how 'bout you?

Yesterday started off pretty fine, played Ultimate Frisbee in the afternoon, followed by a bit of Guitar Hero and then set off to see Electric 6 - a pretty idyllic and non-productive day I'm sure you'll agree.

I was wonderfully dressed for the night - tight, lace-up, flared bright red trousers, a mostly open tie-dyed blue jacket, a multicoloured cravat/scarf and of course, my blue suede shoes. It also looked as though someone had stuffed a tango bottle down the inside of one of my legs, in true 70's style. Probably because they had. If there's any pictures, I'll post 'em once I get them.

The first act, Hey Pablo! were kickass, I was especially a fan of the bassist. They said this was their last gig, but no-one really believed them so I suggest you go check them out if you find them playing again anywhere.

Next up were an electro band called Ping Pong Bitches - and I think I was the only one in the venue who even remotely liked them. Problem was, I popped off to the toilets after their second song, and I don't remember much more than that.

I do vaguely recall taking a glass of water from a trio of girls, which I'm sure you're all calling me an idiot for now, but in the circumstance it seemed pretty harmless and I'm still pretty sure they were drinking from it too. So, it wasn't definitely those three, as I did have other drinks during the night and although I didn't leave them unattended, I'm sure someone brushing past could have dropped something in - it was a gig after all.

Apparently Electric 6 were great, and I'm told I seemed to be having a great time, albeit blindfolded. At this point it was fairly reasonable for Imogen & Gib to assume I was just being me and having a bunch of fun, but I'd have thought that one of the following later events would have tipped them off:

I remained blindfolded for the entire way home.
This resulted in me falling over and walking into things.
I had to be carried most of the distance to the car because I was unable to walk.
When I got in the car I passed out.

Though, to be fair, that does seem a little bit like a very good night at karaoke, so I suppose it's fair enough. No-one's up to give me full details of how I got from the car to the house; I'm presuming Imogen and/or Terra carried me in. My next recollections are from the pretty scary time after I woke up on Terra's bed.

First off it seemed a bit like a dream, my eyes were open (apparently Terra opened them for me, and it was a few minutes till I began to focus on anything) and I could vaguely see movement but I couldn't move them to follow it. I also couldn't move anything else, but I wasn't particularly worried, it didn't have any sense of realism.

After another short while I could follow the two of them about with my eyes and my head, but it took a bit more time for any sound-recognition to come through. Steven Hawkings came in handy yet again by lending us his system of 'two blinks for yes, one blink for no' (although I think he's refined his system to a slightly better version nowadays) which allowed for a very frustrating conversation. Imo & Terra are shite at charades =p

Next to come back was the use of my hands - or my fingers at least. Once I had my wrists too I had a go at writing, but I couldn't remember:

How to hold a pen.
How to make any hand shapes at all (ie: a thumbs up).
Which hand I wrote with.
How to write.
Where to find a particular letter in the alphabet.

The first two problems were eventually overcome to a degree by getting Imo & Terra to make the hand shape I wanted and then copying them exactly. It took a while longer for me to be able to write anything legibly which is why Imogen copied out the entire alphabet for me to point to. That took a while to get anywhere, especially as I had for some reason decided to spell everything phonetically, and was having real trouble grasping the difference between 'to', 'two' and 'too'. It doesn't help that I'm a language nazi and insisted on correcting myself when one of those two noted an error I'd made =D

Over the next hour or so I gradually remembered how to move each of my muscles (so weird, it wasn't as though the muscles were dead or anything, I just literally couldn't remember what to do with my brain to make them move), and then decided to try walking. For those of you with 20+ years of practise in the field of walking, you might not grasp quite what a hard concept it is to pick up, given only a small set of verbal instructions and a couple of demos.

I failed quite miserably, which I'm sure was pretty amusing, although again, it was rather frustrating for me. They then got me sitting down at a computer which let me type things out (a bit slower than my handwriting was, and presumably not at the ~100wpm I'm typing this at), which was quite amusing. I also managed to pick some jazz to listen to, though I'm not sure why no-one explained to me how to use a mouse one-handed, I was holding it in both hands as I recall.

After calling Lucie so Imo/Terra could tell her what had happened, and so I could hear her voice, I decided to walk upstairs to bed. Oh yeah, wait, can't remember how to walk. That took me a good 5 or 10 minutes and was really quite painful as I recall. Stand on one leg, put your entire body weight on that leg, don't fall over. Don't fall over. Don't fall over. Get caught when you fall over, balance on that one leg again. Then lift the other leg off the floor entirely. Don't fall over. Then move it in front of the first leg, and put your weight on it. Fine. Now, lift up the other leg and balance entirely on the one you just moved. Don't fall over, don't fall over....etc.

Eventually got to bed and I'm feeling pretty fine now, bit of a headache, but no worse than when Ed's given me a couple of yards of ale. Quite hungry though, my plan of having dinner after the gig didn't quite materialise.

So, don't worry too much and ring me up immediately to check I'm ok or anything, for those of you who'll be tempted to do so - I promise I'm pretty fine now, and the symptoms passed progressively exactly as Imogen's doctor mother predicted.

And finally;

Thank you Imogen.
Thank you Terra.
Thank you Gib.
Imogen, you suck at charades.
Terra, you suck at charades.
Gib & Imogen, you think I'm way too hardcore a partier.
It's really hard to teach someone how to use their vocal chords (as I forgot to include in the above, my voice was one of the things we didn't manage to regain last night, remembering how to talk was a bit too far for me).