They're all with you on the way up, but on the way down, you're on your own.

Eddie Murphy hovers over me. He's talking loud, but saying nothing. I can't make a word of it. My old flatmate from Uni is next to him, wielding a crowbar and staring at me. Just staring. I look over to the left, and there is a sunny beach, with a picture-postcard-perfect palm tree half way down the shore. A perfect spot under it, in idyllic shade from the lasering heat, where a coconut gently floats to the ground, gracing slowly down like a feather. Eddie slaps me in the face, gesticulates like I should be paying attention. He's angry now. Still can't make the words out. I try to explain that I can't hear him, shrugging and raising my hands in deference. This doesn't please my old flatmate, whose face snarls in anger as he brings the crowbar crashing down to my face and...

Another convulsion. This one wakes me up with a jolt. What a fucking crazy dream. Where the fuck am I? Everywhere I look there is a wall directly in front of me. I'm definitely lying down, but other than that it's all wall. Am I dead? Is this what it's like to lie in a coffin? No, I'm on a bed, and it appears to be the worlds smallest room. What the fuck? Looking around this shoeboxiest of shoebox rooms, I feel the familiarity creeping in. This tiny shithole of a room is the accommodation I booked for Gerry's 30th bathday, in Ibiza. Amazed at what a budget room looks like, I survey my kingdom for the next few days. Doesn't take long, since apart from a single bed there is maybe 3 quarters the width of it (if that) to the side of the bed, and a wardrobe at the foot. Not much else to say really, that is it. You couldn't actually have the bed facing at a right-angle, not enough room. An estate agent would be ashamed to call it cosy, and Paris Hilton would go fucking bonkers if that was all her walk-in wardrobe amounted to. In fact, even if it was her dog's wardrobe. I look around the 'room' (not much of it), and picture Paris, going mental, at the lousy estate agent who sold her a sprawling mansion with a cosy dog wardrobe.

Fucking drugs. Another convulsion. This one sharp enough to really liven me, I evaluate the situation further. I'm lying on the bed in just my pants, the cover long since thrown across the 'room' in a feverish pique the night before. Thrown as far as the foot of the bed, where it could go no further. Yes, cosy. I try to clear my throat, the humidity of the room at unbelievable levels, but I'm so dry I nearly choke. Which makes me convulse again, so I shakily stand up and venture to the toilet to throw up.

Crouched in the shower, with my head hovering over the toilet bowl (Cosy? Compact? Fucking hell, never had to stand in the shower tray to use the john before), I start to retch, but nothing comes up. I put my fingers down my throat, determined to get this bastard demon out of me. Nothing. A few pathetic wretches, but I'm running on empty. One tear comes to my eye, the last drop of moisture left in me. Swivelling to the sink, which is right next to my head anyways, and nearly catching my face on the corner of it, I remember the age-old fact that you can't drink Spanish tap-water or you'll be horribly sick. I start to daydream about how two negatives make a positive, and wonder if Spanish sick will cancel out my Britsick. Mouth hovering by the tap, I turn the handle, and then... snap out of it. Of course not, you fucking pleb! I'll only be exacerbating the situation! Exacerbate. Funny how the big words come to me when I'm at my lowest. I step out of the shower tray and flop back onto the bed. Fuck me, I am going to die here. If the thirst doesn't get me first, the stupidity will.

Head throbbing, I survey my kingdom again, and try to piece the previous evening together. There was booze. There was a club. There was pills. Oh the pills. Stronger than anything I've been used to before, I only had one and didn't make it to my bed until god knows what time. Good stuff, but my usual reparation tools were gone. No pint of water for me, or cups of tea, nothing. Game plan time. Where to get my tools? The only hope of liquid I have is to get dressed and go down to the vending machine on the other side of the hotel. I'd have to dress, even though I don't think I have the energy, and go downstairs, past the front desk with the snooty staff. Past all the sober, straight-as-an-arrow Euro-bastards with their olive skin, bad haircuts, and under-breath giggling at me in languages I don't understand. The walk of shame. And then, to top it all off, I'd have to negotiate the tricky fumbling of coins, feed the machine, and head back, facing it all again! Fuck that! On second thoughts, take me now oh Lord!

I can't even get back to Eddie Murphy, to see if I can figure out what the fuck he was saying, cos I'm wide awake now, that awkward winged come-down from the yocks. The humidity in this room is unreal. There is an air-con unit in here, and, lying back on the bed, I reach my right arm to feel it (above the door, so I'm basically just flopping my arm off the bed). A warm fart of moving air gently brushes my arm. This won't do at all. I open the window (behind the wardrobe) to let some fresh, but warmer air in. The air-con clicks off, circuit broken when the window opens. Fresh air comes in, but the temperature rises. Which to be? The air-con, doing nothing but slowly circulating the smell of my gradual demise, or the fresh, hot air which is accelerating it? I am going to die in this fucking place.

I am going to die in this place. On this fucking rock. Dead, on a bed in a shoebox. In my pants. I can picture it now, them carting my body out of here. There'll be a commotion in the hallway, as other holidaymakers will gather around the room, spotting the paramedics and wondering what the hoo-hah is. They won't be able to get a stretcher into the room (cooooosy) so they'll have to carry me into the corridor, dead, in just my pants, before they can put me on the trolley and cover me up. And what if the way they're lugging me out happens to pull my boxers down, and everyone gets to see my cock? Of course it's gone AWOL due to the pills, but no one else will know that. Look at that sad, pale, shrivelled cock of a man, dead, that's what they'll all say. Where's my legacy then? Will anyone talk of the time I rescued a drowning child? Or the time I went into that burning building just to save a neighbours cat? No. Of course not. And for two very good reasons. Firstly, neither of those incidents happened, but secondly, everyone just remembers the image of a sad, dead bloke in his pants, and LOOK AT HIS COCK! HEE HEE!

Fucking hell. Distract my mind. Distract. Right, tool check. MP3 player is dead, so no music. Lost my phone, so no music there either, with the added whammy of not being able to phone Deej and see if he's awake on the other side of the hotel. Or to phone my mum, and ask her to send a priest. Can't read the book I brought because my eyes are still twitching all over the shop. Distract. Distract. Distract distract distract. I do have some cigarettes left. Yeah, that's what John McClane would do when the chips are down, smoke a fag and say something salty, and wisecracky.

Half way through throwing salty wisecracks at myself, chugging my stinking Marlboro Light (the only half-decent smoke to get abroad, and my god it stinks), I notice that I'm only filling the room with an even more unbearable fug than was already there, and I drag myself to the window. The inspiring view from my window is of a wall from the opposite building, so I finish my smoke and flop back on the bed. Fucking walls everywhere. Maybe I'm in prison, or I've already died? Maybe purgatory is nothing but talking to yourself, thirst, and walls? This being the only logical explanation for my sorry predicament, I spark up another Marlboro and go back to doing the John McClane on myself. Can you die in purgatory? Let's find out. I spark another.

Gibbering to myself for god knows how long (could be 30 minutes, could be 30 seconds, with no phone I have no clock), there is a knock at the door. Probably the Grim Reaper himself, come to tell me that it's check-out time from my room, if I would be so kind as to gather my things and head into the lobby of Hell; or to remind me that while John McClane had no shoes, he sure as fuck had trousers on. Do I answer the door? What evil lurks on the other side? I turn the handle.

"Yes lad, ye right?"

Is this some kind of Soul Sucker? Some archfiend come to escort me from Purgatory Hotel? I see the bottle of water in his hand, fresh dewy drops running from it. It must be an angel! I chug hungrily from the bottle and everything slowly defuzzes, back into focus. "Ye right sir?", comes the voice again. I look up from the bottle, and Liam 'Deej' Rodden is stood in the doorway. I manage to strangle the words "Yes lad" from my charred, scorched throat. "We headin' to town or what then lad?" he quizzes. "Aye, 5 minutes" I croak back. "Jesus, look at ye Ted, lyin there, like a big eejit", he fires back. With the water already working its magic on my nervous system, I throw on some clothes, gel my hair, and out the door we go. Back to the bars, and the madness. Oh, the madness.

And it happens all again the next day. Purgatory? Fuck off, I'm on holiday.