The Hangover

Swigging cider seem like a fine idea on a Friday evening when you find yourself in a warehouse that seems to have been decorated by somebody's kitsch-hoarding, but oddly stylish, grandmother. The best of Motown and the 80s (and a strange collaboration between Norah Jones, Sesame Street's Elmo and the letter Y) plays on a dozen televisions around the space, garden gnomes with bare and voluptuous breasts leer at you, you find yourself sharing a floral armchair with three other people, and then a live band starts up on in a stage space so pink that even Barbie couldn't have dreamed it up. What's a girl to do but to take part in the delightful madness?

Somewhere between the delightful madness and being woken this morning at 8am by a friend keen for a yoga class, a troupe of devilish sprites must have crept in through my ear and had a roller disco inside my head. So this morning, I found myself thinking about all of the possible ways to undo the pain.

There are no pretty pictures on today's blog because, let's face it, there is nothing pretty about a hangover. Instead, I have pulled together a list of different strategies for coping. Obviously, none of these are good medical advice, rather the rantings of people, fictional or otherwise, who have found themselves in the foetal position more than once after a night out.

1. The traditional favourite of the masses: lots of water and a huge greasy fry-up, with extra grease. I'm told this may leave you feeling nauseous at the time, but it will be worth it.

2. My personal food cure: Toast any kind of bread you can get your shaking hands on. Butter liberally, swipe with vegemite. Pile on as much avocado as the toast can possibly hold. Squeeze on some lemon and a good grind of salt and pepper. This is a good one if your backing up for work, because it looks respectable enough to eat at your desk.

3. 'Fizzygoodmakesfeelnice'. Follow the lead of serial offender, Bernard Black, and guzzle down some fizzy good (a.k.a. Altza Seltzer) straight from the packet. Alternatively distract yourself from your own hangover with the comedy of his, here.

4. A little more hard core than Bernard? Is Withnail more your style? Do you find yourself saying things like 'I feel like a pig shat in my head', or knocking back lighter fluid when all of the drinkable alchohol is gone?. Then you will probably subscribe to the 'hair of the dog' theory. This only works if you plan to continue the bender - the new alcohol that you are taking in blocks your liver from breaking down the methanol in the alcohol that you drank last night; the break down of the methanol is what leaves you feeling so rubbish. Try a Bloody Mary for the vitamin content.

5. If you're a fan of the liquid cure but can't stomach the alcohol, the sugar and fizz in a bottle of Coca-Cola should kill the grouch in you.

6. For those bent on revenge, go the way of the voodoo. Haitian voodoo people apparently suggest sticking 13 black pins into the cork of the offending bottle to rid you of the pain. If nothing else, this should be mildly entertaining.

7. Late author, Amis Kingsley, has the last say. ' Immediately on waking, start telling yourself how lucky you are to be feeling so bloody awful. This recognises the truth that if you do not feel bloody awful after a hefty night, then you are still drunk and must sober up in a waking state before hangover dawns.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1101964/Distilled-Kingsley-The-late-great-author--prodigious-drinker--gives-advice-beating-hangover.html#ixzz0Osy201X4

The filth wizard

Anyone who has spent any time in a sharehouse will know about the dilemma that is cleaning.

The first approach is pretending - or hoping - that the house is self-cleaning. This state of blissful ignorance usually lasts a week and ends with something that resembles Bernard Black's kitchen. 'Dirty'. Flatmates can be found eating food directly off the table with the cat litter scoop to avoid acknowledging the teetering pile of dishes in the sink.

You don't want to be the first person to crack, because that makes you the cleaning nazi. Inevitably, the first person who writes the scathing email and sticks up a roster is the baddie. Alternatively, you can be the martyr. Vacuuming around your flatmates as they watch television, scrubbing the toilet whilst they shower and collecting all of their stray items and hurling them at their bedroom door in the night (I actually know someone who did this) will all earn you this title.

This evening, however, I found a new solution. My flatmate's boyfriend. A genuinely cool guy who we all like to hang out with, he had a sudden case of guilt this evening about all the time he spends here and wanted to give back to the house. He started by re-arranging the glasses, cups and crockery according to size and frequency of use. I thought it was an odd place to start, but wasn't about to discourage the man.


The result is rather pleasing, and makes me want to embrace my inner cleaning nazi and ban my flatmates from using anything lest they ruin the display. A hostile post-it should suffice.

Moral of the story: there is an inner cleaning fairy just waiting to be coaxed out of your flatmate's boyfriend. All it needs is occasional kindness, a guilt trip and a pair of pretty pink dishwashing gloves.