These folk are weeing out of the conventional holes… lucky!

It had been twelve years since I shit the bed, until the other day that is. The previous occasion was in Bali, in a cheap and rotten hotel in Kuta in April 2000. I was in bed with my then girlfriend and, in the relative still of the Kuta night, squeaked out a sleep guff that awakened me in a panic with wet buttocks and a large coffee stain on the sheets. “Oh no!” I cried, instantly realizing my predicament. “Oh no!”

In the interim I followed through on a few occasions, notably once while on the phone to the then SE Art Editor, mainly through ill-conceived foolhardy fart attempts, often after drinking. But for those dozen years, a dozen golden years making the transition from boy to boy with wrinkles, I had avoided shitting the bed. I had swerved soiling the sheets, and certainly the mattress.

This period of unsoiled slumber came to an abrupt halt this weekend when, in the grips of the Norovirus, I sharted in my sleep in my mum’s house at approximately 3.30am on Friday night. (It’s always 3 something isn’t it?). My fiancée had the nasty bug the week previous, and I had thus far escaped contracting it, or so I thought, due to my superior immune system and general manly worldiness. However, in the audience of an excruciating year-end presentation with the whole of Factory Media Ltd (the pubishers of Surf Europe) in London around 3pm Friday, I started to sweat, and shiver. My head felt light, weak, strange. I panted and puffed, fidgetted, suffered. The stomach began to squeak, rumble, do odd things. Resolving to forgo that night’s staff Christmas Party, free booze n’ all, and not to go to my Liverpool St Travelodge hotel (no place to die) but to my mum’s house in Berkshire to expire quietly and with dignity, I took on the rush hour commute on the verge of prolapse. Somehow, I negotiated the 3 hours home on tubes, trains and taxis, and got into bed. I spewed my lunch of haloumi foccaccia into a bucket next to the bed. I eventually got off into a fitful slumber. Mum had placed an old towel on the sheet, and good job too. You know how the story ends.

There is no real point to this tale, certainly no connection with surfboard riding. It is merely an empathetic big up to anyone out there shitting the bed in grips of Norovirus this Christmas.
Jah have mercy on your rectums, and on your sheets.