I went out with some friends last week. It was a beer and curry night, which is always fun 

There was a big group of us, and we piled into the curry house in a good mood and starving hungry.

We sat down, and were brought poppadums and beer.  And then, while I looked through the menu, I drank another beer, because poppadums make my mouth dry and because I’d spent so long chatting to the friend next to me that my first beer seemed to have evaporated.

I chose a not too hot curry, but it was still hot enough to need washing down with yet another cool beer, which disappeared with equal speed.  Eating and chatting sure is thirsty work.

And then all of a sudden the beer and curry had gone, and I was still chatting so fast that I may have resorted to breathing through my ears, and it was definitely not sleep-o’-clock when I looked at my watch.   And so it was that the sensible people went home, and I found myself in a pub playing “Snog, Marry, Push off a cliff” while sipping Baileys with too much ice.

For the uninitiated, “Snog, Marry, Push Off a Cliff” is a game that involves your mates picking three celebrities, from whom you decide who to snog, who to marry and….well. You get the idea.  (For the record I have agreed to snog Emmanuelle Beart, marry Eddie Izzard, and push Jeremy Paxman off a cliff.  Regular readers will know it was the beard that did it for Jeremy.)

Alarm bells should have been ringing as I ordered the second Baileys.  I hate Baileys.  But for some reason, when reaching a certain level of drunkenness, I think it’s a great drink to curdle in my stomach with beer and curry and order several doubles.  I really should know better.

I arrived home around midnight, plastered, and trying to engage Fireman in a conversation about whether I should have chosen to save Paxman’s life whilst insisting that he shaves, or whether that wasn’t really within the rules of the game.  I’m not claiming this was the most sophisticated night out.

The morning was horrible.  And this is the point that I really need to discuss.  A hangover is fine.  It’s deserved and we all know they go away in time.  The trouble is that hangovers increase in direct proportion to one’s age, and I find that grossly unfair.  When I was drunk as a student (which was a not entirely a small amount of the time) I would get home plastered at 3am, down a couple of pints of water, take two precautionary paracetamol, and wake up fresh as a daisy and ready for brunch around midday the next day.

These days hangovers are unbearably vile.  I am woken up at 6.30 by my kids, with an absolute bastard behind the eyes.  There’s no point reaching for the painkillers because if I swallow anything more than saliva I will probably vomit.  I can’t get up, I can’t eat, I can’t drink, and I feel like a gorilla has shat in my mouth.  It is truly, truly dreadful, and is followed by an angry internal conversation:
WHY DID YOU DO THIS?  You KNOW this is going to happen to you! AND ON A SCHOOL NIGHT!!

The hangover lasts all day, and inevitably ends with that declaration we have all uttered: “I am NEVER drinking again!”

Which of course is a hopelessly feeble lie.  Not least because it’s my birthday next week, and I have at least two nights of drinking to get through, and my increased age has in no way resulted in an increased sense of responsibility.  I’m doomed.

Bottom’s Up!