Surviving After-Work Drinks

Some things are a little too obvious to bother blogging about. Don’t walk in front of cars, don’t drink bleach and don’t hurl four-letter abuse at senior work colleagues until you’ve all had a couple of beers.

So, no, this isn’t about social mobility. This is about survival. About being able to get up in the morning without thinking “Well, that was a bloody disaster”. Humiliation is not good for the soul, unless you’re a struggling comedian, so it’s worth averting if possible. But the after-work drinks area is a potential minefield of pain, humiliation and vomit.

Advice? Well, I’m probably more a cautionary tale than a source of advice…

Eat something

The most important advice I will ever give you. I’m serious, if you ignore everything else on this website (and who could blame you?), at least heed this one: Eat something. It’s all too easy to wander to the pub straight after work, skipping the final meal of the day and then never quite getting round to slotting it in.

And then, of course, you start drinking at about six in the evening, rather than seven or eight. And then you knock them back until closing time. And then you fall over. And vomit. And barely make it home. Or you do make it, stagger into your room, then decide to go to the toilet. Only to fall asleep in the hallway on your way back.

Happily, at least where I come from, a lot of drinking establishments will provide you with the chance to buy food, in a bid to stop their patrons from keeling over and hurling. Because, believe it or not, they find people getting paralytic and emptying their guts just as unpleasant as you do. So, y’know, eat something. To be honest, I could kill this entry now, having dispensed the key point, but I’ll keep going…

Always leave them wanting more

Does the grand showmanship rule also apply here? In my experience, kinda maybe possibly. (And that’s the sort of confident, authoritative advice that you expect from me.) I’m ladling out advice that I can’t say I often follow. Because, yes, it’s probably best to leave early, rather than be left straggling.

But I never do. Once, I was actually tricked into staying until last. There were three of us left, and one guy announced he was going to the bar, and came back with only two drinks. Before we had performed the necessary arithmetic, he was out of the door like a bat out of hell. On those occasions, you just have to sit back and accept that, yes, you were outmanoeuvred by a superior mind.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE

One more thing. So, you’ve left the pub, looped your way to the station without getting stabbed or walking into a wall. You board a bus or train to get home. (I am assuming that you wouldn’t attempt to drive home whilst paralytic, as that would be wrong.)

Then you lean your head against the nice, restful chair, and fall into sweet unconsciousness. There’s a nice dream about walking through a field, ponies and electric sheep floating by. Then you wake up. You’ve missed your stop, your wallet has been stolen and you’ve probably been molested.

You may have guessed my point. Try not to fall asleep on public transport. It is the final humiliation, the coup de grace, the emphatic kick in the nuts when you already know you drank too much. And if you’ve missed the last train, you’ll have to get a taxi or something, which will cost thousands.

My personal trick is forcing myself to remain standing whenever I have to get a train alone whilst drunk. Yes, your struggle to stay upright will make your state fairly clear to your fellow travellers, but at least you won’t end up stranded in Nowhere-Under-Thames, fighting tramps for pennies.