Attack of the Wooden Mouths (or, how hangovers are different in your 30s)

By ori2uru - originally posted to Flickr as champagne tower, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5236607

On Sunday morning, I opened my eyes very slowly.

I was expecting the terrible sensation when your eyelids are stuck together and you forgot that they might be, and then you realise they are and your body half-heartedly tries to prepare itself for bright lights and the onslaught of gravity, while your brain attempts self-preservational shutdown by refusing to find out what might be going on behind all the blurry vision-fog and eye-glue.

You see, on Saturday evening, I went to two parties. Two parties. This is not the sort of social gallivanting that I generally get up to (query to self: have I ever done it?).

The first was my Work Do (very Parisian, in the sense that there was very nice free champagne until it all ran out and was replaced with questionable white wine), and the second was the Christmas party of my lovely Italian/Canadian friends (very Parisian, in the sense that there was very nice champagne all night. The sort that comes in the incredible extra-large bottles that are my favourite, but that are also very heavy and difficult to pour out of, so it’s altogether better if someone else does it).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t sink 15 glasses of champagne and get completely hammered, as the Jen at Christmas Parties of Yore would have done. These days I am (mostly) civilised and a grown-up. (NB. We won’t mention the Negroni-fuelled fiasco the night before these same Italian/Canadian friends got married in July).

But over the course of a delightful evening, I did drink quite a lot. And I probably deserved at least a bit of a hangover. Or, as the French so aptly put it, a gueule de bois, a mouth of wood.

Yet on Sunday morning there was not a headache or a spinning room in sight. I got up, ate porridge with seeds and goji berries, and smugly went about my day. This is fantastic, I thought; I’ve finally cracked it. Champagne is my drink. I’m never going to drink anything else again.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of my story.

It turned out the gods of the Wooden Mouth had other plans for me.

First up, I went to a lovely fancy oratorio choir concert that my friend Pam was performing in. I sat with two other friends, we enjoyed the beautiful music, and then we all went off to get the Métro together, feeling wonderfully cultured and stuffing our faces with mince pies as we discussed which station we hate the most. For me, it’s Châtelet Les Halles, hands down, which was ironically the station we were heading to.

And that’s where my troubles began.

My magical Métro pass, which I love and which makes my life reasonably-priced and easy, didn’t work. The gate didn’t slide open when I beeped, so when I re-beeped, I initiated the angry-sounding DOUBLE BEEP ALERT noise. Leaving me trapped on the wrong side of the barrier to my friends.

My brain could not handle this unexpected development at all. It was Sunday, so naturally all the ticket booths were closed, and there was not a single staff-member to be seen. My subconscious started heading towards a group of camo-wearing machine-gun-toting soldiers as the only available figures of authority in the vicinity before I stopped it. What did I think they could do, shoot the barriers down to let me through?

I wandered aimlessly around the station for a bit, and then sent a pathetic ‘Save yourselves. Go on without me’ message to my friends, before realising I no longer had any idea which of the 94 different barriers I was supposed to be trying to get through (there are many excellent reasons why Châtelet is the worst station).

Eventually, I beeped my way through 3 different barriers at random and I think the system let me rejoin my friends out of sheer pity.

To recover from all this, we went to have a festive drink and a welcome sit-down at Starbucks. Where I forgot my own name.

I was busy practising saying ‘gingerbread latte’ in my head in a French accent so that it would be intelligible for the nice French barista (it didn’t work; I had to repeat it six times before we got anywhere). And when she asked my name, poised to write it on my cup, I went completely blank.

Most of my students believe I’m called Jan or Jane, so part of me was excited to rectify things ever so slightly and get this right. And then I heard my friend Jo somewhere to my right declaring that her name was Hélène, and I realised it would be simpler to just say a more normal French name. But I couldn’t think of any of those either.

I said Jen. She wrote Jan. I said, No, no, with an ‘e’. So she wrote Jane.

My friends went on to have dinner that evening, but I decided to quit while I was (not at all) ahead. As I was walking home, a group of people asked me the way to the Opera House. They spoke French, but with Spanish-sounding accents, so I was overjoyed to not only understand but also to be able to answer their question. Of course, I declared confidently, it’s down that street. About 10 minutes’ walk. You’re welcome.

It isn’t. It’s precisely the opposite direction from where I so airily pointed. I’m sorry, Spanish tourists. Please google a picture of the Opera House; it really is beautiful, and well worth a visit.

I’m self-imposing a one-party-per-night limit from now on.

Destination Laughterville

I had a miraculously quiet few days this weekend, which afforded me the opportunity to do a little self-evaluation. (A more accurate description might be that I went out on a ridiculous and semi-accidental Friday night drinking spree which resulted in a level of hangover I haven’t had in years. It left me inert and utterly sofa-bound, capable only of moving every couple of hours to locate another packet of Salt & Vinegar Hulahoops. Plenty of self-evaluation was carried out, even if the majority of it emerged from an ‘I’m absolutely positively never ever drinking again’ sort of a place).

You see, I’ve felt somewhat fraught of late. Retraining for an entirely new career, and starting a ridiculous merry-go-round of applications, interviews and several new jobs, will do that to you. It’s also left me with a residual feeling of permanent guilt and panic that I’m late for something, that I haven’t written or planned everything, that I’ve missed someone’s wedding or birthday, or that I’m developing a stomach ulcer from being stressed, broke and sourcing vitamins solely by eating an unnatural amount of Aldi frozen peas.

Here are 4 of the ludicrous things I have started to fret about:

·         In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been raining a lot recently. And while not exactly tropical out there, it has been fairly warm. Which leads to one of the most dreaded words in the vocabulary of any fringe-owner, especially one newly in ownership of her fringe: humidity. These days, I am essentially sporting a small fuzzy curtain hairsprayed to my forehead. Not ideal.

·         I have been feeling guilty about not going to the gym frequently enough. Which meant that one day last week, I found myself improvising a kettlebells class in my kitchen by swinging heavy things manically around while lunging. This is not normal, it is not medically advisable for anyone, and I nearly took my eye out.

·         I have been worrying that the French classes I took last year were a complete waste of time and money because I’ve now forgotten everything. So I downloaded 2 French newspaper apps that constantly beep and alert me when anything newsworthy happens. Except that my knowledge of French verbs is limited, so I’m never sure if things on the world political stage are being combatted, exacerbated or thwarted. The sheer uncertainty is giving me a nervous breakdown.

·         My lunch last Thursday included cherry tomatoes cut into halves in a salad. Lovely, you might think. Except every tomato-half was seemingly stuck to the plate by its own juices, rendering it impossible for me to get any purchase with my fork to lever them into my mouth and eat the bastard things. I could actually feel my blood pressure getting higher with every tomato-less mouthful. Pathetic.

This shit has got to stop. Life is just too short.

And so in the interests of sanity and self-preservation, I present you with my excellent foolproof theory of happiness: Bloopers.

Yes, it’s that simple. I watched Friends bloopers on Youtube for 3 hours the other night, and felt incredible. Refreshed, light-hearted, totally devoid of crows’ feet. I’d forgotten how much I love outtakes. Back in the days when I actually bought things on DVD, it was the only Special Feature I ever gave a shit about. It’s like You’ve Been Framed swoops in through the window of my favourite TV shows and dials up the laugh-o-meter. The actors burst out laughing, the audience piss themselves, and it’s like we all share a hilarious private joke together.

And it’s all just sitting there on the internet waiting for you. So there you have it; just make your blooper selection, wait for it to buffer, and off you go. A one-way ticket to Laughterville. I’ll see you there.