No more smoked salmon for me, thanks

I loved smoked salmon; in fact I adore it. When it's on special at the supermarket I joyfully scoop up a packet or two after checking that the use-by date wasn't the day before, and look forward to having some for lunch in fresh multigrain bread slathered with cream cheese, cracked black pepper and tiny capers.

However, two days ago, said favourite lunch decided to contact my old arch-enemy, Mr Migraine, and play a few hellish games with not only my head, but also my stomach, colon, eyesight and ability to stand upright.

I have never seen Mr Migraine in person and don't get those 'flashing lights' that some other sufferers get as a warning, so he's an invisible figure to me. He's reduced to an imaginary but thoroughly malevolent troll-like creature in my mind.

Quite literally in my mind. He somehow made his deliberately clumsy entrance into my brain cavity (no doubt quite easily via my ear canals) with a red hot poker in one hand, an egg beater in the other and a metal nut-cracker wedged in his teeth. He then proceeded to frantically jab, whack, thrust, whirl and beat his instruments of torture against the back of my eyes (favouring the left one mostly), cheekbones, hairline, forehead, jaw and teeth.

To pass the time whilst curling up in my dark bedroom in the foetal position, I chose to think of him as the satanically violent version of those 'Coke Adds Life' bikini-clad airheads who used to run inside a huge inflatable beach ball in the 1970s except that these days there's only one person inside who's actually bigger than the ball and gleefully elbowing hard enough to turn the once-round sphere into a mangled chamber of dents, lumps and pulsating pain.

For added amusement, he then decided to hurl himself in a devilish stage dive directly into my grey matter and make sure he deliberately flayed about in the rubbery ooze like a drunk at a pool party. With my eyes clamped shut I could imagine the scene very clearly.

Unfortunately, he was in an even more foul mood than usual and decided it was time to spitefully squeeze the 'Nausea and Vomit' segment of my brain before skipping off to give the 'Eight Hours of Agony' and 'A Dozen Urgent Trots to the Toilet' buttons a good going-over as well. This is when my decision to have smoked salmon for lunch was apparently not a good one.

During Mr Migraine's visit I discovered that the laws of physics don't seem to apply to the amount of food I've eaten compared to the actual volume that furiously spurted forth a few hours later. My body seemed to be personifying Dr Who's tardis, and that bile-tainted, befouled flaccid fish kept visiting me via the emergency exit trajectory over and over and over again.

For those of you who are not migraine sufferers, I can barely explain the physical skill and dexterity involved in making it to the toilet in time to crap out your entire lower body weight whilst clutching at your splitting head in agony with one hand and keeping the sick bucket steady on your thighs with the other as that satanic salmon sandwich flies out with added pungency and fluid. Then try and work out which part of the body should be cleaned, wiped and covered first whilst ensuring that the other spillages and eruptions are not splashed onto your clothing, eyes or nasal passages.

This is not to say that Mr Migraine is victorious every time. No, he does not always achieve his maximum aim of reducing me to a moaning, curled-up wreck hiding in the darkness hearing the happy sounds of Love Chunks and Sapphire's chatter in the other end of the house but unable to join them because it is too loud too bright too noisy too hurtful too thumpy too glarey too painful too....

No, several days earlier Mr M was obviously feeling a bit lazy and decided to send his apprentice over to do the dirty work instead. With his warty little mitts carrying fruit knives and maraccas and his mouth full of thumb tacks, he growled, "Get over here, RumpledForeSkin. I haven't got the time to be holding your hand all day. You can bugger off and go find Kath Lockett and start giving her The Treatment, you miserable, snivelling little phelgm ball!" At this point, RumpledForeSkin meekly agreed and nervously bowed out of the room, glad to be out of Mr M's way.

Like all apprentices, he'd learned to be polite but also extremely wary. Similar to all other spotty juniors, he is the lowest in rank, the weakest in power and the most eager to please, and therefore would have been the butt of many jokes and the butt of many drunken passes at Friday night work drinks. RumpledForeSkin would also have been sent to the post office for a 'verbal agreement', given the phone number of the zoo to ask for a Mr G. Raff and been laughed out of Mitre 10 for requesting a can of striped paint. Har hardy harrr.

Therefore his attempts to rouse up a migraine in me were timid and ineffective. His little taps behind my eyeball or against my temples gave me ample time to find my tablets, slurp down a double espresso and slow my pace down to a crawl. Rumply-babes was then forced to go back to head office, vainly trying to work out how he was going to complete the days' paperwork: "Umm, she was already dead.....Erm she no longer works there....... She was willingly listening to Robbie Williams on her ipod.....the Cold and Flu guy had already arrived and had cordoned off the area....."

Sadly, Mr Migraine was not satisfied. He got very pissed off with RumpledForeSkin the day before yesterday and shoved him aside roughly, yelling, "I'm going to go and do the bloody job myself!"

Which he did. Extremely well.

Bastard.