So, after managing three posts in as many weeks, I have gone silent for a couple of weeks, due mainly to being quite busy. And lazy. This (the busy part) included visiting relatives, and then (with the intonation differently placed to imply me going to them) visiting relatives. Then, after going out for the first time in my now-native city of Peterborough last Friday, I went to Norwich on the Saturday, leaving on the Tuesday. Busy times indeed.
During this time I took in a party, a pub quiz and a rather long and enjoyable night clubbing. Whilst partaking in these activities I thought about the nature of alcohol and how awesome and frightful it is.
Or, more accurately, I thought about it when I got home fatigued and slowly sobering up, seeing and fearing the hangover that was looming- like catching sight of a prospective murderer’s feet poking out from beneath a set of curtains.
Actually, that is an oddly appropriate metaphor- anticipating looming violence, considering the first point. So I’ll get on with it. 6 Lessons learned from a recent spate of alcohol fuelled nights out…
1: The Lesson: Intoxicated people are immensely difficult to reason with
If you’ve ever tried to usher some thoroughly inebriated friends into a cab home, or been the most sober or, failing that, most socially responsible person partaking in a pub crawl you may appreciate this.
However, I don’t just mean that drunk people are hard to reason with when it comes to shepherding them around, I mean the people who get angry and begin desperately seeking a fight.
Yes, in a move that made no attempt to dispel my feelings that Peterborough is an awful, awful place compared to Norwich, someone made a desperate attempt to start a fight with me this weekend. For having a conversation with the DJ’s 28-year-old girlfriend.
Now while I admire the fact that the friend of the DJ was so adamant in protecting the integrity of the DJ’s girlfriend, I turned 21 this year, and I’m pretty certain that 28 year olds aren’t the typical demographic of a 21 year old, and I’m even more certain that the average 21 year old’s topic of choice whilst attempting to woo a woman is talk of said woman’s children and what goes on at christenings.
These were points I made at least three times, along with a smattering of complaints that the art of conversation had been bastardised by people using awful chat-up lines (which probably only hindered my case) whilst he was imploring me to go outside so that I could fight with him. Suffice to say, I spent 5 minutes declining his invitation before one of his friends thankfully stepped in, made apologies on his behalf, and took me to the bar and bought me a drink, making it the best fight I’ve not got into.
2: The Lesson: I am utterly useless at chatting women up
Whilst on the subject of chatting women up, I feel I should share with you the greatest thing anyone has ever drunkenly said to a woman in the history of clubbing (probably). I like to think that I have the capability of turning a phrase (I probably wouldn’t bother with this rather self-indulgent blog were it not for that fact), but it typically fails in a hilarious manner when it comes to talking to women in a bar or club, it is car-crash conversation, much like Hugh Grant, only without the charm. Anyway, I had just purchased a drink at the bar and turned to see a lady behind me wearing a nice dress. I figured I should tell her, only it came out like this:
“That is a very nice dress, I don’t mean in a pervy sort of “I’m using it as an excuse to look at your breasts” kind of way, but in an “it is actually very pretty” sort of way. And the belt brings it all together very nicely. I’m not gay, by the way”.
Although from this point, we somehow struck up a reasonably long conversation about universities and life after it in general, so I guess it can’t have been that bad, although her friend informed me that she had a boyfriend sometime later in the evening, so nothing came of it anyway.
And I feel that I should stress at this point that the women mentioned in these first two points are not the same.
3: The Lesson: The differences between parties at university and parties after university.
So with Friday evening’s events out of the way I moved onto the far more pleasant climes of Norwich to go to a party of the friend of a friend. This was the first house party I had been to since graduating from university, and I had no idea what to expect. With my head still reeling a little from the previous evenings proceedings, I was hoping it wouldn’t be too much.
I knew as soon as I entered that it would be nothing like the house parties I was used to, the hosts of the party have both been out of university for a couple of years, so have had an opportunity to establish themselves with jobs and recreational activities which don’t revolve around drinking.
There were large canvas prints on the walls of photos taken by the male host, there was a 42-inch LG television carefully placed on a smoked glass tv stand, along with HD DVD players and sundry other new and expensive high tech items. There may even have been a vase on the mantelpiece.
Our group was the first to arrive, so it was relatively quiet when we got there, with my friend catching up with the host and other early comers whilst I attempted to hold my head together for the coming onslaught I was anticipating. Eventually the alcohol started flowing more liberally- from bottles that had been left unattended in the kitchen rather than from a bottle kept by on one’s person at all times to prevent alcohol theft- and rather than partake in one of the myriad of drinking games we’d picked up as students, we merely discussed the merits of some drinking games over others. Then we talked about god.
4: The Lesson: Drunk people- particularly atheists- are pack animals
Drunken philosophical arguments are a large part of student parties, and it usually involves making the same points over and over again with no-one willing to back down over their firmly held views that there is/isn’t a god. They also seem to insist that he accepts, or even condones the fact that they are drinking.
This party was no different; the group involved around 6 atheists (sporadically dropping in and out of the conversation) and an agnostic. Perhaps it was the blunt way in which he argued his point, or the fact that he was the only person willing to entertain the notion that there was a god, but everyone rounded on him like a pack of hungry dogs, spouting sound bytes of Richard Dawkins (or in my case, Tim Minchin). By this point in the night, everyone was defying my expectations and getting rather drunk; although it was hidden better- no one had passed out or thrown a mattress out of a second storey window by the time that we left.
5: The Lesson: Alco pops are acceptable to drink. Even if you’re not a 15 year old chav.
By the time Monday rolled around I was (I’d like to think) understandably quite tired. Over the previous 3 nights I had amassed a total of 14 hours of sleep, although admittedly it was the deep sleep that comes with alcohol.
Tom, my friend who was kind enough to allow me to use his couch hadn’t had much more, and our other fellow conspirator in dancing, Matty, had managed no sleep the night before in order to complete an essay- instead snatching a couple of hours on the train from Derby to Norwich.
Nonetheless, the three of us- along with Tom’s girlfriend Rachel- started drinking and eventually went to the club. I ordered a VS, a vodka-based drink that is beloved of underage chavs for its cheapness, alcoholic content and general taste- a hideous amount of sugar covers any taste of alcohol. In the words of one of my friends from the first year of uni, although numerous people have claimed the phrase since “you’re more likely to get diabetes then get drunk off that”. All in all I found it quite refreshing.
After an hour or so our group, with the exception of me (riding on a sugar high) began to falter, Rachel left- although in fairness she did have work the next morning- and Tom and Matty sat in a corner, exhausted by the heat of the place. So I suggested that they joined me on my VS cloud. We stood under an air conditioner for the rest of the night and danced the remainder away, ordering further sugar hits from time to time. Then went onto another club.
Due to the wonderful and surprisingly sustaining effects of it, I’m considering rebottling and rebranding VS as an energy drink for the athlete who doesn’t really care too much about his performance or the welfare of his liver. Or teeth.
6: The Lesson: Hangover cures. Sort of.
So inevitably, after a brilliant night out, there will almost certainly be a hangover. There are things we can attempt to do in order to prevent them, but its merely damage limitation when you attempt to do it after a certain point (usually around the point at which I begin drinking spirits it is too late). Here are 6 things (of course) I have found a modicum of success with in the past:
1) Staying up: There are few things worse than going to bed with the spins. If I get to the stage where I can’t even shut my eyes without feeling giddy, then I will probably stay up and at least see them away. Or read a book, and then have to reread it the next day, as I couldn’t remember anything that I’d read the previous night.
2) Gravy, on anything: Stemming from student days, when I would often stagger home to find the cupboard bare save for some gravy and a loaf of bread. So I combined the ingredients- the thicker the gravy, the better- into something relatively edible. Although on one occasion I spent an hour cooking bangers and mash on which to put gravy, which was possibly one of the greatest meals I ever cooked at uni.
3) Dr Pepper: The ‘cures’ I’ve listed so far have been preventative measures that I have had to enact the night before, but this is something I’ve typically done on the morning- or more likely afternoon- of the hangover. Somehow, in the typical post-club kebab or chips run, I always remember to pick up a can of Dr Pepper, which despite intolerable thirst, I manage to save for the morning after. There have been many occasions I’ve quietly thanked my drunken self for not only picking up a Dr Pepper the previous night, but also having the foresight to put it in the fridge.
4) Bacon: Bacon is scientifically proven to help people get over hangover cures. I’m not going to go into details, but its something to do with amino acids or something. Also it smells nice. Here is the article.
5) Exercise: This is something that many of my friends have disagreed with me on in the past. It comes from Saturday morning badminton sessions at uni, but I would usually find that on the occasions I successfully got up, braving the risk of unbridled sunshine outside, and went to badminton, after the initial shock of attempting to run about whilst still a little drunk, by the end of the session I had typically seen off the hangover.
6) Hair of the dog: I only employ this if I see myself going out again the night after the morning after the night before, but it does tend to work. My record is 6 consecutive highly inebriated- and cumulatively speaking, highly expensive- nights out, and I’m fairly certain I’m not going to do it again.
Still, these are things that apply to me, and I imagine that they would be met with disbelief and disgust. Usually a combination of them works quite well.
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