Sitting there making neat little spider diagrams with a neat blue ball-point pen on a piece of glaring red card about something so completely irrelevant to my life as British film funding methodologies, I felt the epitome of pale. As if, were I to brave approaching a mirror, I would shimmer in a translucent, ghostly way. Brave the mirror I did, and regret it I most definitely did and still do.

There could be no worse timing than being ill now, so I shall ignore how the room reeled and span when I took in that red, and how the clash of blue on red made me feel sick. How my eyes hurt when I moved them, how Cat Stevens, normally mellow and soothing, thumped angrily against my skull like enraged Oompa Loompas stomping up and down, and how the mere idea of crawling over to turn down that little volume dial almost made me cry with the overwhelming effort of it, comparable to climbing Mount Everest.