The morning after

Sobriety can be a scary thing. I like to have patches of it from time to time, partly because my liver likes it, partly because it's nice to let the bruises heal and partly because it's salutary to see what a fool one makes of oneself with a clear head.

I don't do it particularly by timetable, and even the best-laid plans have a habit of going awry. Best friend and I, for instance, once went to Jordan to give ourselves a rest, on the principle that there's nothing like a Moslem country to remove the temptation, but still found ourselves sitting up in bed at four one morning in Aqaba drinking neat arak because we'd polished off everything else in the minibar. But generally I like to have a quick bout of spiritual cleanliness at the beginning of the year on the grounds that the festive season makes a depressed January if you're not careful.

Obviously, there is some correlation between the desire to dry out and previous naughtiness, but it's been quite a well-behaved couple of weeks, considering the time of year. I only broke about six glasses and gave a couple of people the benefit of my acute psychological insights, and it's not like this cute blond on Paul's staircase was attached to anyone else at the time. And I still do think that Bonnie should ditch that faithless oik, though it might have been wiser to tell her so rather than him. And I'm really sorry about the bean bag, OK?

I'm being a good girl now. Haven't touched a drop in five days, haven't eaten a chop or a bar of chocolate. I'm so healthy I buy my fags in packs of ten and walk everywhere. And apart from the four cups of espresso necessary to rational thought of a morning, I've ditched the coffee beans in favour of water.

I can't say I feel any better for it so far: an army of spots is performing guerrilla manoeuvres on my chin, I have no news to share on the weekly round of dirt-dishing, my head is occasionally assailed by the sort of stabbing pains that Leon Trotsky would find familiar, I have no energy to haul my bones out of bed in the morning and none to stay up at night. Call me at midnight, and I'll slur like a stockbroker.

But I'm learning. I have a greater understanding of the human condition than a week ago. For a start, I'm beginning to grasp how come health-lovers are all miserable gits. They have no bloody fun, that's why. They're so busy soaking mung beans and smiling indulgently to show that they're not proselytisers that they forget to make jokes. You go for a plate of lentils at a health-queen's house and the conversation will revolve around low- fat cooking and how good they feel since they gave up cheese. And vegetarians seem to be universally obsessed with bowel movements. Let a vegetarian get on to their diet, and you can guarantee a five-minute lecture on stool quality. But dancing on tables? Painting their lips scarlet and smearing it on other people's collars? Sitting up all night rewinding the sexy bits in Elvis movies? No.

The other strange thing about making radical adjustments, though, is the peculiar psychological effects. I pay a certain attention to my dreams, as they give you pointers about the things you're ignoring. Whenever something good happens workwise, for instance, I have a series of dreams in which I've learned to fly but haven't learned to control it, so keep swooping past satellites and plunging towards the ground. This is a fairly obvious example of the dream thing, though I wish I didn't always wake up feeling queasy.

But I've been having very odd dreams in the past few days. They began with soothing ones about breaking chains. But they've got odder. I keep getting into dream fights. I gave Michael Heseltine a thorough pasting on Wednesday night, and Michelle Pfeiffer ripped a big hole in my devore dress with her fingernails a few hours later. During a little afternoon doze on Thursday, I had a long chat about the cultural importance of the stiletto heel with Attila the Hun.

I went to the last of the Christmas parties that night, the devore mercifully recovered, stuck to mineral water and refused the cocktail sausages. Best Friend was also there, quaffing orange juice and batting her eyelashes. We talked stocks to stockbrokers, guns to gun merchants, sex to academics, like you do. At about 11 we got into a corner and dissected the horrors of the party season. She forgave me for the red wine on the carpet and I forgave her for the bleach in the Christmas cactus. A chap called Rory joined us. We were in full flow by then: fondled his tie, mussed his hair and told him how handsome he was. He did that bloke thing of resting a hand on the wall just above your shoulder and leaning over you at 45 degrees. BF ducked round us and cackled away across the room.

"You know," said Rory, "what amazes me is your stamina. You just never seem to let up. You were both completely out of it last night and here you are pissed again. There's no way I could keep up the pace."

Which just goes to show. I untangled myself, caught a cab and went home to bed, wondering if it was all worth it. And in the small hours, I dreamt that I was married to Sylvester Stallone. And it was really, really nice. He wore a little apron when he cooked, and was very affectionate and supportive of my career. And he was a great kisser