Half-eaten Kebab

Have you ever been drunk?

I have – quite a few times, but thankfully not in recent years. Don’t get me wrong – I do like a pint or two but these days I tend to take it easy so that when I do drink I know I can wake up in the morning feeling reasonably fine.

Sadly, in my youth I was easily led and I thought that I was indestructible, especially when it came to the demon drink. I was rarely so drunk that I couldn’t remember anything but I have been in that position in my youth.

When you are in such a terrible state, weird thoughts go through your head, the biggest one being “I’ll be fine! I can handle another pint!”

Wrong! 

If you are drunk, that is the thought that you should totally dismiss because deep down you know for a fact that when you wake up in the morning your head will feel like Satan himself is hitting it with a lump hammer, your mouth will feel like you have just eaten the contents of a vacuum cleaner bag and your stomach will feel like it is about to explode in a tsunami of half-digested food.  If you have the strength to crawl to the toilet your entire world will spin like a demented spinning top and you will almost certainly be uttering the Hangover Mantra which is:

“NEVER AGAIN!”

Of course when you are in the throes of alcohol-fuelled ecstasy, you have lots of bad ideas. Logic doesn’t seem to enter into your thoughts. If you were sober then you would almost certainly say to your brain “You want me to do WHAT?? No bloody chance!”.

But when you are drunk, your response is “WHAT A GREAT IDEA!!!”.

Before I go on, there is something that any foreign readers must understand. Pubs and drinking are a massive part of British culture (and to a lesser extent Europe too). For example, when I have been to the US, I have been amazed that hanging out in a bar for an entire evening seems to be frowned upon – certainly more so than in the UK where such behaviour is commonplace.

So what good ideas have I encountered when drunk that are really terrible ones?

Have another drink

This is bad because, as I said above alcohol gives you the illusion of indestructibility. In this state you think you are utterly fine until the first light of day brings you back to reality with an enormous crash.

Go for a curry

Indian food is massively popular in the UK and drunk guys will flock to Indian restaurants after a night out because they think that it will satisfy the alcohol-fuelled hunger. Now the problem with a post-drink curry is that first of all Indian restaurants offer even more booze to add to your already saturated brain but worst of all, the bravado of being drunk means that you will almost certainly select the hottest curry on the menu because you think it is a fantastic idea. It isn’t because a hangover with a curry nestling in your stomach is not a good idea. Remember, a really hot curry burns twice; once on the way in and once on the way out.

Chat up a woman

I have fallen foul of this “good idea” many times and have been ritually humiliated. Worse, on one occasion I was out with workmates, including a female friend of mine. While in a pub, she started talking to a lovely young blonde woman who happened to teach her daughters ballet. Sadly, my mind told me to complement this vision of beauty. I walked up to her, in front of my female friend and a lot of workmates and said (I am not making this up): 

“First of all, I’m not coming on to you at all. But having said that, can I just say that you are ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!!” 

Thankfully, she took it in good stead and said a polite “Thanks” before blanking me out completely. What followed was a tirade of abuse and piss-taking from my work colleagues and, worse, from my female friend who later said “What the phark are you on?” I am still reminded of this even to this day and it happened about twenty years ago!

Buy a kebab

 If you don’t go for a curry, you go for a kebab. Britain is filled with kebab shops, some better than others. When sober, I would never have one because I prefer healthier food. Yet when drunk, it has almost become the law. Kebab shops in the UK are filled with drunk people from around 11pm to much later and I am amazed that people know what to order. One of the problems is that your average kebab is huge and you are incapable of eating the entire thing. This has three possible consequences (and I have seen all three). 

Number one: you leave the half-eaten kebab on the sofa and crawl to bed, only to see it the following morning when your stomach is too delicate to deal with a now rancid stinking half-eaten mess. 

Number two:  Put the half-eaten kebab in the fridge to be finished off for breakfast. This is so wrong because the last thing you want to see when you go to the fridge to get a can of coke to help your hangover, is a half-eaten kebab stinking out your fridge with half-eaten fries that you felt you couldn’t do without. 

Number Three: you fall asleep while eating the kebab and wake up three hours later with your head resting in a mound of spicy meat, fries and rancid salad covered in spicy sauce.

Thankfully, I have grown up a bit and while I still drink, I no longer allow myself to have stupid ideas. That said, I have been known to indulge in a curry or a kebab but, thankfully, with a relatively sober head.

I’ll finish off with a song about a hangover from my collection. Check out the lyrics because they sum up most of the stuff I’ve said in this post.

Survival Of The Drunkest?

The human race is evolving and it is all down to alcohol.

You may think that I have lost my mind, dear reader, but if you read on you will find yourself agreeing with me.

I am certain of this.

Well, there is an element of doubt.

Okay – you may NOT agree with me and you might end up considering me to be a weird arse. Nevertheless, please indulge me because I know I’m right.

Well maybe – perhaps!

Picture the scene. You have been invited to a major event that will involve drinking, dancing and generally revelling in a night club, or some similar debauched establishment, and you are preparing yourself.

You want to turn heads.

You want members of the opposite sex to fall in love with you.

You want the world to be talking about you tomorrow.

There is only so much you can do, physically. If, like me, you look like a decrepit old grape, then the task is almost impossible. If you are a woman, no matter how wonderfully attractive you are, you will still want to spend approximately six hours perfecting your appearance.

That is a given and has nothing to do with evolution. That is human pride and the need to be loved. And we all need to be loved (well, apart from Piers Morgan or Sarah Palin perhaps).

The evolutionary part is the way our bodies have developed to cope with the effects of imbibing too much alcohol. Some of these evolutionary traits are harmful - so I guess maybe you could say that there is a paradox here – we are evolving and regressing at the same time.

Of course, not everybody goes out planning to drink a lake of beer and wine. Most people know their limits and can enjoy themselves responsibly.

However, there are those who opt to break the record for the largest amount of alcoholic beverages ever consumed and there are also those who forget about responsibility and simply go with the flow without realising that they too are consuming a small river of beer.

And this is where evolution kicks in – and also regression.

The evening has started and you are surrounded by your friends. Everybody has had a couple of beers and the conversation is flowing. This is when the first evolutionary trait suddenly kicks in – the Beer Brain.

The Beer Brain is responsible for unleashing that inner potential that exists in all of us. When the Beer Brain is activated, entrepreneurial ideas that exist in a dusty old chest within our minds are suddenly released. The fact that this chest has a sign on it saying “DO NOT OPEN – EVER!!!” is completely ignored. Alcohol gives us the ability to shatter that lock and unleash all of our potential on the unsuspecting crowd. There will be those who are sceptical about this – but I am certain that in that chest there is a massive idea waiting to be implemented.

Something like, perhaps, the spaghetti mask. When eating spaghetti and you slurp it up, the end flies around spraying tomato sauce all over the place and, more importantly, all over your glasses (this is painful for me I can tell you). So you wear a metal mask with a mouth hole that takes all the spray as you slurp.

What about a homing sock? Each pair of socks comes with a remote control and an in-built locator device. When the button is pressed on the remote control, the sock comes to you – you will never lose a sock again.

Maybe a pair of underpants that you can turn into a toilet at the push of a button (something like this would be useful for me on my forthcoming trip to China).

How about an ironing machine? All you have to do is throw you clean but frazzled clothing into a machine, wait a while and extract the neatly ironed product. Some men may say that they have a device that goes the whole hog – called a washing basket. All they have to do is pile their dirty washing in the washing basket and, hey presto – in a couple of days it is hanging up crisp and clean in your wardrobe. Sadly, I don’t own such a basket and have to endure the full manual cycle – including the ironing.

After the Beer Brain, comes the Beer Ego. The Beer Ego transforms you into the greatest person who has ever lived – all it takes is a little more beer. Suddenly, when the Beer Ego detonates, you are the world’s greatest dancer, the world’s greatest conversationalist and the world’s most attractive person – all rolled into one. You can do no wrong. Eyes turn whenever you hit the dance floor and every member of the opposite sex wants to have your babies.

What about this poor fella?

Yes - that is me under the influence of the Beer Ego playing my guitar to the Drifters at New Year.

And, of course, there are the Beer Goggles that help you to select an equally attractive mate. The most hideous creature known to man can in an instant become the most attractive person on the planet:

Somebody once told me that Beer Goggles help ugly people get partners. It clearly didn’t work in my case, because Mrs PM really is lovely (mind you – I think she wears her Beer Goggles permanently).

Anyway, having solved the world’s problems with your Beer Brain, charmed everybody with your Beer Ego and used your Beer Goggles to grab yourself a date with a member of the opposite sex, it is now time to go home.

The amount of beer it takes to activate the Beer Brain, Beer Ego and Beer Goggles does take its toll and here, dear reader, is where the final evolutionary miracle occurs. You have two choices:

(1) The Homing Device – this is a built in six sense that somehow manages to inform your addled brain that you have, perhaps, consumed just a little bit too much alcohol. This fabulous mental device guides you in the direction of the exit, fending off all cries of “You can’t go yet, Dave,” with a dismissive wave of the hand and a heartfelt “OMGUWINUM”. This ingenious evolutionary part of your brain can direct you out of the pub or club and start you off on your way home. Mind you, it isn’t totally dependable, in which case a second ingenious evolutionary advancement comes into play:

(2) The Beer Scooter – The problem with the Beer Scooter is that nobody knows exactly how it works. The Beer Scooter is a miracle. Why?

(a) The Beer Scooter obtains fuel automatically (usually in the form of a large Donner Kebab).

(b) The Beer Scooter gets you home, no matter how much cash you have left after your night out on the town. Some sceptics say that taxis or The Nutty Bus are involved – but I don’t buy it.

(c) The Beer Scooter not only gets you to your front door; it gets you in the house, undressed and into bed. Some advanced humans sometimes even find that the Beer Scooter has provided water to help minimise the inevitable cost of your depraved evening.

So there you have it, dear reader; my theory of evolution due to alcohol and in the past, I have taken advantage of all these evolutionary enhancements. Sadly, they have dulled with age – even my Beer Goggles have stopped working.

Alas, so has my Beer Scooter, though I have found a half-eaten Donner Kebab in the fridge on occasion so perhaps it still works - a bit.

Actually, thinking about it, why on earth would anybody put a half-eaten Donner Kebab in the fridge? If anything is going to induce a violent reaction when you have a hangover it’s going to be a cold half-chewed scraggy lump of unidentifiable meat wrapped in cardboard and covered in “all the dressings – especially the monster strength chilli sauce”.

Perhaps we are regressing back to being apes after all.