Day 1: The hangover

Wednesday 30 September 2009

I thought I’d start the 30 days on a true low to feel the benefits. Everyone has been queuing up to share my final days of drink, so Monday was a joyful night of beer, tempered by a well-timed pizza, and Tuesday was a veritable last-supper style cider frenzy with Vicious, Rioja and Jim, tempered only by... erm... cheese and onion crisps. 

This morning, peeling my eyelids off my eyeballs required concentrated effort to the point where I was considering standing over the kettle and steaming them open. I drank so much water before being able to leave my bed I was making an audible sloshing sound as I lurched off to the shower and, for reasons as yet unexplained, my knees and the front of my feet really hurt.

On leaving the flat, the eating commenced. Now people talk about all the calories you get in booze, but I am sure the actual booze-related weight you put on has more to do with the poor-quality food decisions you make on a hangover day, which today, in my case, consisted of a Starbucks croque monsieur (Why? Why? £3.95 for a glorified cheese toastie?), two cups of carrot and coriander soup (I don’t like carrot or coriander), a piece of bread and butter, a peanut brittle (they still make that?), two bags of Chilli Heatwave Doritos (fair play), three bowls of pasta disaster (more on that later) and a chocolate shortbread trifle mousse 100000-calorie extravaganza from the Co-op. Disgraceful. I feel like Gillian McKeith is going to materialise and lay out my day’s grazing on a big trestle table before broadcasting my bowel movements to a nation.

Then there’s the liquid. Three cups of tea, 1.5 litres of water, a Starbucks coffee in a cup resembling a silo, a can of Dr Pepper – by midday, all this liquid had just about moistened my eyelids enough for them to slide up and down over my eyeballs without sticking, and I was ready for my first wee of the day, which turned out to be the colour of Cuprinol. Healthy? Not one bit.

Then throw in the lackadaisical lethargy, the poor concentration, the inability to process anything anyone said effectively (I kept saying: “What?” to buy myself more time to the irritation of all around me). Luckily it’s a slow week at work… but what if it hadn't been...

Other hangover-related nonsense:

1. I put my tights on inside out and couldn’t be bothered  to rectify the matter. Now it wasn’t like I was flashing my inverted seams left, right and centre all day and I do believe that people should worry less about the small stuff. But is it the thin end of the wedge? Do you put your tights on inside out one gloomy Tuesday morning, and then find yourself, 600000 pints of Strongbow later, living neck-deep in debris and talking to pigeons?

2. I tried to open the bathroom door with the same hand that was holding a cup of tea and tipped most of it down my pyjama leg. That goes beyond a lack of coordination and into the realms of the utterly stupid.

3. I accidentally battered everyone in my local Co-op to death with my shopping basket. Mostly, this serves the bastards right as I am yet to find a worse set of customers for lacking spatial awareness. Even so, I’m usually pretty nifty in there and can easily dodge all the bored men stood sideways-on, mid-aisle, swinging their empty baskets around while their wives manhandle the courgettes. The Co-op stocks a lot of courgettes indented with fingernail marks. I blame wives of bored husbands.

4. I bought pasta stuffed with cheese and bacon – not cheese and mushroom. To clarify: I am a vegetarian and I read things for a living. Yet I could not read the word ‘bacon’. And several pasta parcels went down the hatch before the message filtered from my mouth to my brain that mushrooms are never usually gristly.

5. I am really, really, really, really tired. This evening, had you’d tried to make me do anything other than come home, make rubbish pasta and lie on my bed writing this, I’d probably have burst into tears and not been your friend any more.

And do you want to know the rubbishest thing of all? This isn’t even a “bad” hangover. As they go, this one is relatively low-key. If you’d asked me at any point today how I felt, I’d have said: “A bit crap, but ok really.” However actually writing it all down and reading it back has been quite astounding, and a big reason why this 30 days is worth doing. I am going to bed now and am looking forward to feeling like a functional human being again tomorrow.

Units dodged today: None. No temptation, no inclination. Truly.

The Unit Dodger

30 days of unbridled clarity: lagers that I will not miss this month...

1. Kronenbourg
Floozie is a top lightweight and a die-hard Diet Coke fan to boot (a difficult one: she has no qualms about sending you back to the bar for lemon slices, ice cubes and straws). Last night, a mix-up in The Lamb & Flag meant that she nobly volunteered to drink the random half a lager mistakenly ordered instead of her Diet Coke. The conversation on her return, went something like this:

Floozie (with scrunched up face of putrification and horror): Is lager meant to taste like this? I don’t remember it tasting like this.
Me (having a sip): Tastes the same as what I’ve got.
Floozie: But it’s disgusting! I’m not having any more of this.
Me: Mmm… tastes like someone’s accidentally spilled a pint of normal lager on a really dirty pub carpet, picked the carpet up and rung it out back into the empty glass – it’s probably Kronenbourg
Floozie: Well then why are you drinking it?
Me: Erm... Lesser of three evils. The only other things I could see were Stella (come on – it’s a Monday evening!) and Fosters (see below).

Dirty Kronenbourg. It has such a filthy tang. And there are few things I like less than tangy lager. In fact the only thing I do like less than tangy lager is hot, tangy lager.

2. Fosters
Sometimes I have a bath instead of a shower. Sometimes I wash my hair in the bath and the shampoo makes the water go all scummy and a bit foamy. I collect this up and sell it to pubs. Pubs then sell it on as Fosters. Don’t drink Fosters unless you want to drink my bathwater. Even I don’t do that.

Bye-bye Fosters and Kronenbourg. Don't expect a postcard!

The Unit Dodger

30 days of unbridled clarity: home alcohol risk assessment...

 
First question: Can I stare down a fridgeful of booze for a month and not give way and drink it all in a mad blur on a Tuesday evening, just a week into my abstinence marathon? 

Second question:  Do I actually own a fridgeful of booze? 

I suspect it’s a bit of a poor show in the fridge at the moment – last time I looked it contained a quarter of a puckered yellow pepper in its death throes, some Utterly Butterly (its surface devastated by Marmite swirls and toast crumbs), and a hell of a lot of cheese... The Lodger was either suffering unendurable calcium cravings or Aldi were doing 7-for-1 on Cathedral City. I also feel sure that if I did have a fridgeful of booze I’d probably already have drunk it. Is that that the dictionary definition of a paradox...? 

So let’s have a look...
 
Five minutes later and I can confirm that I don’t have a fridge filled with booze. No carefully stacked pyramid of Peroni bottles glistening with fridge-dew; no artisan cider; no chilled bottle of flinty Sancerre. What I do own, and what I expect a lot of you own, is a random selection of Crap Booze™, all of which was lurking on top of the fridge. I am five foot three and the fridge is about six foot three. I expect the Crap Booze™ thought it was safe up there. It was not. I stood on a  chair and lo – it’s full horror was revealed to me...

It transpires that I am master of the following liquids:

1) One maddeningly impossible-to-open miniature bottle of Tofoc. 
Tofoc, for the uninitiated, is Welsh toffee vodka. Now that makes it sound bit lame and Tiamariaesque. It is not. Imagine Cillit Bang mixed with lighter fluid, with a toffee twist: now that’s Tofoc. The Wife recently left us to return to her Welsh Homelands, and we each received a goodbye present of a mini Tofoc and some flavoured Welsh salt. The celery seed salt will naturally be perfect in a Bloody Mary once this infernal month is over. But if anyone has any suggestions as to what I can do with the vanilla salt, do tell... 
Chance of being consumed within next month: Highly improbable. Chance of being consumed ever: also highly improbable. Tofoc is fierce stuff – but I like it. The cap has, however, cross-threaded itself into oblivion, rendering it entirely impenetrable. I keep having mad visions of being snowed in next March and trying to saw the neck off the bottle with a blunt bread knife, whilst eating a crust of bread and weeping softly to myself... 

2) One bottle of very familiar-looking pink champagne 
I swear this champagne has been doing the rounds for at least three years now. You get all the kudos of turning up at your friend's house with a bottle of fizz (“Hey – big spender!”) and you know it’ll be back with you the very next time you cook dinner for everyone. Like that episode of Bagpuss where the Mice on the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ keep shoving the same old HobNob through their supposed ‘biscuit factory’ over and over again.
Chance of being consumed within next month: Zilch. It’s probably already signed up for a star turn at someone else’s flat next Friday. Also, does anyone ever really sit down of an evening and crack open the bubbles? I bet even the queen doesn’t: she’d probably rather have a can of Fosters. To me, champagne has the taste of fear. It’s what you always get at the start of vile networking events where you’re expected to speak impressively to strangers and the organisers know that, for the fastest results, something that slips into your bloodstream quickly is the only way forward. And even when you drink it somewhere nice, like at a wedding, it carries an aftertaste somewhere between a sock and a fart. 

3) A dreg of Gordon’s Gin in a dusty bottle welded to the top of the fridge
Jesus. How long has that been there?
Chance of being consumed within next month: Again – zilch. Quite what substance it is welded to the fridge with, I know not. But if ever I decided I wanted to remove it, I’d have to get Two-Woman round with her power drill...

4) A nearly full bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin
Such a pretty colour. But in terms of the ten botanicals it supposedly contains, it’s all fur coat and no knickers. Yes, I’ve done the Vinopolis Bombay Sapphire Experience, where you get to sniff an angelica root and some juniper berries and a piece of bark. Perhaps it’s my lager-deadened palate, but gin’s gin. You could put Happy Shopper Value Gin in my G&T and I’d be none the bloody wiser.
Chance of being consumed within next month: Slimline. Come on chaps: we’re moving out of G&T season now, plus a lack of coordination on my part means that I either come home with lime and there’s no tonic water; or I come home with tonic water and there’s no lime. That or I've gone out and left the freezer door open and the ice cubes have melted. Making the perfect G&T is a complex act of science, and seldom is science on my side.

5) Half a Bottle of Pinot Bollocks (can’t read label... looks like I accidentally put it in the washing machine with my gym kit and a packet of tissues).
From memory, this stuff doesn’t keep well. It’s a left over from The Wife’s work away-day two months ago. Its sister bottle was left open in the fridge for a week and when I unscrewed the cap on a curry evening, everyone went running round the kitchen gagging. Also, handling  the bottle rather curiously makes my hands smell of sausage rolls.
Chance of being consumed within next month: Erm… may as well cut my losses and tip this down the sink now. Whilst wearing Marigolds. Unless, of course, I fancy spending the next week smelling like a cheap buffet.

6) A dreg of tequila. 
Oh and the horror comes flooding back. A night spent on the balcony during a visit from Mrs Cohen (an entirely disreputable and incorrigible man), both doing Jackie Stallone impressions. I fell off my chair and was left with an imprint of  the decking across both buttocks for three weeks afterwards. I believe we originally started on the Bloody Marys, ran out of celery salt and switched to curry powder, then ran out of vodka and switched to tequila. But at what point did we decide to stop and hold back just a couple of tablespoons of tequila? Possibly the point at which we tried to re-enter the flat and realised we were being held back by a mysterious, invisible forcefield. On closer inspection, said ‘forcefield’ turned out to be the glass patio doors. This is what tequila does to your brain. The following day I was too ill to attend my own house-warming party. Mrs Cohen had to clean my bathroom, and I spent the day receiving visitors from my bed. This was one of those seminal moments where you think “I’m never going to get that drunk ever again” – and it actually turns out to be true.
Chance of being consumed within next month: A-ha. A-hahahahah. Hah. No fear. Perhaps I should FedEx to Mrs Cohen with a note that just reads “Itsh Jackie!” Failing that I might just use it to unblock the plug-hole in the shower... 

7) Fonthill Glebe Cassis Liqueur from a market stall in Salisbury.
In a nutshell: alcoholic jam. Another leftover from The Wife. She has a fondness for rustic home-brews such as this. It goes with her other quaint obsessions (fridge magnets, Wedgewood and chutney).
Chance of being consumed within next month: Again: not likely. I tried a shot of this before I went to a birthday party a few weeks back. It dyed my front teeth blue, gave me a dizzying sugar rush and constricted my throat. I think its rightful place is in a trifle or summer fruit pudding once the month is up.

And there we are. That’s the last time I need intrude upon the unique ecosystem that is the top of the fridge for the next three years at least. And at least at home I should be safe from the siren call of Crap Booze™. The pubs of London will prove a greater test of my resistance.

Two questions before I go:

1. What Crap Booze™ is on top of your fridge?

2. What would you call a Bloody Mary with the vodka swapped for tequila and the celery salt swapped for curry powder? 

Do tell.

The Unit Dodger

30 days of unbridled clarity: the build up

We were talking about that line in Size of a Cow by the Wonderstuff that goes “you know that I’ve been drunk a thousand times”, and, worryingly, that didn’t seem like such a hell of a lot. And then I was worried about it not seeming like such a hell of a lot, because surely a thousand’s quite a big number, isn’t it? A smaller number would be 780, which would be the total number of times I'd have been drunk had I got drunk once a week since the age of 18. But then you have to throw in wildcards such as university, where it’s compulsory to get drunk at least twice a day for a solid three years. And the early 20s, where no first job is complete without tottering around the vile chain bars of the more obvious parts of central London with your new colleagues, glugging white wine with gay abandon... and then doing the same thing the next night. And the next...

And now: a couple of beers with a curry; a shared bottle of wine with a nice meal out; a cheeky lunchtime pint; a few after work on a Wednesday; a big night out on a Friday or a Saturday... I sometimes think that if you laid all the receptacles I’ve ever drunk out of end-to-end, they’d go all the way around the Isle of White three times and I’d get into trouble with the local council.

So I thought I might stop. Or – rather – pause. Because, really, I should be able to. I think there’s been the odd week here and there when work’s been busy, I’ve been a bit poorly and suddenly seven days have floated by booze-free. But seldom more than that. Self-imposed attempts at a fortnight usually conclude with the blissful relief of crumbling two days early in a cackling frenzy of rule-breaking drink-mixing: “I’ll have a large glass of your roughest white wine with a Stella chaser and a bucket of sambucca to soak my feet in...” and then waking up with half a Cornish pasty stuck to my eyebrow thinking “Oh no. Who were those people?”

Really though, I am a proper grown-up. I am a woman before my prime. I have many lovely friends with whom I can spend quality time. I live in one of the most exciting cities in the world (admittedly less exciting when you’re stuck at London Bridge and they’ve closed the Jubilee Line plus all the relevant bits of the Northern line and someone with no sense of personal space is standing with the corner of their folded Metro newspaper tucked into your bottom crack. That is not my idea of excitement). I should be able to do a fortnight. I should be able to do three weeks. Hell, I should be able to do… a whole month. And, what’s more, it shouldn’t be that hard.

So this is why I am doing one month, or 30 days, or 720 hours, or 42,300 minutes (hmmm – that doesn’t sound like much?), or 2,592,000 seconds sans booze.

This friends, is, for me, a voyage of discovery. Here's what I'm hoping to achieve along my unusual journey....

1. Discovering that there are answers to the question: “What shall we do tonight?” other than: “Three pints of Amstel in the Marquis.” Going to the cinema with friends often feels like a crushing waste of time that could otherwise have been spent speaking to them. People so often scoff at solitary film-goers, but it is such a very solitary pursuit. Yet there are places you can talk to your friends other than the pub. And actually you can talk to them without drinking a lot of gin in the process. Going to pubs without drinking and going to other places where you wouldn’t drink anyway are both on the agenda this month.

2. Having the stress taken out of trips to the theatre with Dave because we don’t have to stampede to the bar at break-neck speed during the interval to secure that (for some reason) essential bottle-of-beer-in-a-plastic-glass interval drink. Maybe we can just have wasabi peas instead? Although they do make me sneeze.

3. Great riches – I could be really rich! If, hypothetically, your average London pint of metrosexual lager costs £4 and you have three of those three times a week, then sling in a £15 bottle of wine in a restaurant, that’s £51 a week, £204 month – £2488 a year! But I’m not doing a year: I dislike extremes. £204 would be handy though: that’s a cheap holiday to somewhere crap and hot.

4. The faithful liver also gets a cheap holiday. I'm far from being a wrinkled, red-eyed, bloated slob but, you know, the sample weekly drinks menu above equates to around 3,324 calories and an alarming (if you’re a lady and 14 is meant to be your max) ahem... 33 units. So maybe I’ll be more streamlined, brighter of eye, luxuriant of hair, glowing of skin, shiny of nose... just healthier… after 30 days off?

5. Discovering new things. Not like bungee jumping. I refuse to do anything that may cause me to lose control of my bowels: not even alcohol has ever done that. I welcome all suggestions

6. More time. You don't get masses of time before you cark it, if you think about it. There’s a sort of cosiness to a not-really-all-that-serious hangover... although only if this occurs at the weekend. You can huddle around in floppy clothes, indulging in salty snacks and and litres upon litres of tea. But a hangover does render a day somewhat unusable.

7. Less embarrassment. How many times have I lost control of my coffee, made a high-pitched choking noise and started panting wildly out of the train window of a morning (while the person next to me subtly shifts seats) because I’ve just had a terrible flashback and can’t believe I really said that.

8. Discovering that the answer to the question ‘do I have any self-control?’ is actually ‘yes’. I’ve long suspected there has been a great strata of self control, buried deep within me, just waiting to be excavated...

I’ll be writing about my progress from Wednesday 30 September until Thursday 29 October. Got any suggestions as to how I should spend my 30 days? Would you like to not go for a drink with me? Let me know...

The Unit Dodger