'Tis the season to be...hungover

A game plan to combat the sauce plus things I've enjoyed this week

Feeling like Christmas comes earlier every year makes me sound like an old person complaining about how young policemen are these days but….it does, doesn’t it? I was in Cliveden for the last few days (a gorgeous hotel and former family seat of the Astors, the place where I got engaged and full of wonderful stories I’ll write about another time) and they were putting up the tree as I left. It’s still November as I write this and will be for another week yet… I’m trying to stay with the quiet pleasures I wrote about last week (more below if you want to skip the next bit) but I’m bravely facing up to the fact that the fun factory has started.

Not boasting but I’m quite the pro when it comes to drinking and hangovers (which I never used to get but which started to land on me in my 40s, along with an urge to wear elasticated waistbands and get excited about going to bed really early). This is my hit list of hangover cures to see you through the parties because while the odd Singapore sling fling is fine it’s the day-after-day pile up scenario that causes problems.

The Ultimate Preventative

Don’t drink any alcohol. Yes, yes, har de haar. But it’s funny how often one doesn’t think of this as a viable solution when it totally is. For a start, many more people don’t drink at parties than they used to (in other words, you don’t have to be an alcoholic to say no to a drink) and if you ask for an elderflower spritzer, only a character out of a 1970s sitcom is going to chastise you for it. Drinking a zero beer or virgin mary no longer casts you out into social Siberia. In fact, if you don’t mention it to anyone, people don’t even notice.

If I want to make absolutely sure I don’t drink, then I drive and take a few non-alcoholic beers with me (I think the best is Birra Moretti Zero, available in any supermarket). The slight pang I have at the thought that I won’t be dancing on the tabletops at 3am showing off my latest ‘moves’ is that I will leave when I want, have no train or taxi hassles/expense, and wake up in the morning having had a great time and with no hangover and lots of energy for the next day. When the parties start piling up, maybe do every other party alcohol free?

Next Best Preventative

Sparkling water. No one can believe a trick this simple but it works. For every alcoholic drink you drink, have a glass of sparkling water. Ideally shop bought. I love my SodaStream more than my own child but I think it’s the (very small) sodium content of a bottle of Pellegrino that does the trick here. Also, it fills your stomach and kills thirst so you do less swigging overall. Whatever it is, all I know is that I get to feel merry and have no hangover the next day.

Next Next Best Preventative

Dancing. If the music comes on, I don’t drink anymore – I just want to dance the night away. If your guests are getting a bit loud and unruly, turn up the volume. (And by the by, even at a house party – neighbours permitting – beg, borrow or steal two giant amps so that the music feels proper nightclub loud and you can feel that thrum beneath your skin. It improves every party beyond measure. No one can resist dancing when the music is proper. And if they can resist dancing, you won’t mind if they go home at this point anyway. Next best thing: Silent Disco kit.)

But if you’re going to go for it:

Take two activated charcoal tablets at the start of the evening (and eat a proper meal – don’t begin the party on an empty, or even half-empty stomach). When you stumble home, take two more. Without being too revolting about it, they sort of bind everything together so that the toxins are expelled nice and fast the next day. (Don’t bother taking any of your expensive vitamin tablets in between as they will also get expelled.)

Don’t drink sticky, sugary cocktails or Prosecco – the sugar is what makes the hangovers so killer (but also the drunkenness so high). Champagne is fine, ditto very dry white wine, red wine, white spirits. If you stick to ‘skinny bitches’ or ‘skinny Mexican bitches’ all night, you’ll get drunk and have almost no hangover. Skinny bitch: vodka and soda or fizzy water, ice and masses of lime (a whole lime per drink). Mexican bitch: swap the vodka for tequila.

If you ignored all the above and hit the Prosecco followed by espresso Martinis then there’s not much to save you but when you get in, you need to consume: a sachet of Dioralyte in a pint of water, a banana, two digestive biscuits spread with Marmite or peanut butter, an ibuprofen and a paracetamol. Try to drink a cup of tea too. If you can hit the pillow having sobered up a bit, I do think it helps.

Whatever you do, don’t: drink whisky.

But sometimes, there’s nothing like going wild, doing many regrettable things and giving in to a hangover day – pyjamas, sofa, bad telly and a bacon sandwich.

A few more quiet pleasures….

Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast.

I’ve only just started this but I love it. I think Skinner is clever and thoughtful, but also has the ability to be quite basic and somehow it all adds up to an unpretentious, insightful look at poetry. This one is about Dylan Thomas but there are lots and lots in the back catalogue. I get the feeling he’s pursuing a private but well-informed passion here, and there’s something very life enhancing about that.

Hotel breakfasts

I don’t know how it has taken me half a century to figure this one out. I’m not a big fan of staying in hotels particularly. I mean, I don’t mind it but it’s not where my money goes – I’d rather get somewhere cheap and clean, and spend my cash at a great restaurant. But I do love a hotel breakfast. I do, I do, I do. I don’t even eat breakfast at home, though maybe I would if my husband put out a buffet with small bowls of nuts and different compotes, a choice of Greek or coconut yoghurt, four different types of bread, mini pain au chocolats, silver platters steaming with scrambled eggs and confit tomatoes, Portobello mushrooms and crispy bacon. I mean, come on!

I realised this week – in a proper slaps-forehead moment – that you can have the hotel breakfast, without the hotel. Just drop in to a hotel, as schmancy as you like, let them know you’re not staying there (you could chance it and say you’re in Room 101 and sign the bill…but I’m not paying your bail) and for a tiny fraction of the cost of staying at the hotel, you get to enjoy the very best bit of it. Hot coffee with proper frothing milk, freshly squeezed juice, white tablecloths, starched napkins, pats of butter… This week I’ve had breakfast (and no bedroom) at the The Mayfair Townhouse (£25 for a comprehensive buffet) and Cliveden (£25 for buffet only, £35 if you have porridge or anything cooked). I recommend them both.

The Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott

This novel seems to be having a bit of an Instagram moment (I saw it recommended by the lovely Hannah Betts, who writes The Shit – and if you are someone who was irritated by my post above and all the alchohol, she quit drinking several years ago and writes both movingly and pragmatically about it, highly recommend). Anyhoo… this book was a bestseller in 1929, set in New York a few years earlier, and it’s depressing and funny and very modern. Sometimes I can’t bear to read it but I can’t quite wrench myself away from it either. It’s got wonderful detail about the time – the clothes, the cocktails – and because it was written about a contemporary moment, it feels very fresh and new.

That’s it for now… I’m going to do something about books and writing next, memories that float up through the wintry haze… Have a lovely weekend and if you enjoyed this post, please click on the heart. It’s so nice for me to know you liked it, and it helps other people find it too. Everything is staying free to read for a bit.