Another Post About Drinking.

Of course, I could start this off by apologising about my recent absence from the regular-posting game. I could detail the many busy activities of my futile existence, each more stressful than the last, and declare that I wouldn't forsake you lovely people forever, and that I'll be more diligent in future, and please, please don't hate me for hiding in the corner for a while. But the truth is, if I don't have a story to tell, I'm not going to write. My quotidian life, with all of its breakfast-eating, work-going, lunch-eating, work-finishing, dinner-eating and all, is not a terribly amusing adventure for onlookers. It is rarely an amusing adventure for myself. But, having turned a corner in the last few days, I figure it's time to tell my not-so-amusing story for the week.

Another reason why I haven't posted for a while was that I spent all day Friday sick in bed. And it was entirely my fault.

I was suffering from The Worst Hangover, Ever.

In fact, I doubt anybody in the world, all through space and time, has ever suffered a worse hangover than mine.

So now it is Sunday, and I have slept an entire night, and I am again able to hold my food down. I will present you with a recipe for how to achieve The Worst Hangover, Ever.

1. Go out somewhere you would rarely go, with people who, on the whole, you have never met. (In my case, a surprisingly good French film called UV, with members of my university's French club.)
2. Go for 'a drink' afterward, and begin buying rounds with the guy sitting next to you.
3. Feel like a third wheel while sitting with your drinking partner and the girl who invited him. Get progressively drunker as not only the rounds keep coming, but other French club members keep going home, leaving half-full carafes of potent house red at your disposal.
4. Begin talking to drinking partner and his prospective girlfriend about pretty-well everything you shouldn't talk about. Religion, for one. Where your family comes from. Why you may, or may not, want to live out your life without ever having children.
5. Realise that drinking partner and the girl have no romantic intentions toward each other when, in the course of a conversation, the girl inconspicuously mentions her boyfriend (yet only once, and only in context).
6. Wait for the girl to go home, leaving only you and drinking partner left at the table. Wait for her to just reach the door of the venue before he earnestly, dumbfoundedly, asks: 'did she actually say she had a boyfriend?' Become privy to a moment's emotional turmoil as drinking partner realises he was only invited as a platonic film friend.
7. Encourage drinking partner as he decides that, on that basis, he needs to get really drunk. (Disregard clear fact that drinking partner is already really drunk.)
8. Go to an awful nearby nightclub, the kind you have sworn for years you would never enter. Switch from the clever combination of beer and wine to gin (or in his case, scotch), and enjoy as he complements his next round with a bonus round of shots of vodka. When it is next your round, make sure to reciprocate. Seeing as the music, and the clients, of this nightclub are all awful, ensure that the very act of drinking is the pervasive feature of your evening. Celebrate this, and compete with fervour.
9. Laugh when the girl with whom you now find yourself dancing guesses your ethnic background, and exclaims, 'I can marry you now!' This despite her being pale and blonde and not exactly a stereotypical example of the ethnicity she purports to share with you.
10. Realise you probably don't want to marry her, leave and catch a taxi home. It is now 3.30am. You started drinking at 11.30pm, and have consumed anywhere up to 15 standard drinks, of all sorts, in this time.
11. Despite intending to go to work on Friday, only wake up at 11.30am. Your head will not lift from the pillow, and your stomach will accept neither food nor water. You will not have a headache so much as a dull thud consuming your every limb. Spend the day wishing you were asleep (and, for the most part, being asleep), and declaring that you will never, ever do that again. Rather than, say, see one of your favourite bands on Friday night, end up nursing your head while staring blankly at a football match.
12. Sleep well Friday night. Still, wake up dizzy and disoriented on Saturday morning. Realise that you're a fucking idiot, and you deserve everything you get.