If you’re single, congratulations, you can leave parties whenever you damn well please. You can just get up and say, “I’m off!”
There’s no whispered consultation to be had, no negotiations, no, “OK, we’ll just stay for one more then”.
When you go to a party with a partner it’s a whole different ball game. You arrived together and common practice suggests that you must also leave together.
But here’s the thing - deep down, everyone knows that people in relationships hate and revile each other when they are drunk. It’s like watching your favourite person morph into an embarrassing, unsympathetic, gyrating lout before your eyes, or perhaps a weeping psychopath with unresolved childhood issues.
Unless you have both mastered that rare art of getting drunk at exactly the same rate, chances are, that on any given occasion involving alcohol, one of you will get to a point where you think, “He/she is definitely drunker than me. I have no desire to catch up. I want to leave within the next half hour.”
So, you make your way over to said drunken partner and try to subtly communicate your desire to leave. This bit has to be subtle because you don’t want everyone to know that you’re the bore of the relationship (which you obviously are, look at the evidence).
But your charming partner probably doesn't want to leave. They’re having the time of their life, and why shouldn’t they?
Inevitably, you spend the next two hours swaying back and forth, sipping a drink that starts to taste like tar and which crawls down your throat with all the ease of treacle, holding your eye-lids open and wondering if this relationship is the worse mistake you’ve ever made as you watch hubby/wifey slut-drop, cry, fight with people harder than them, flirt with the DJ etc.
You may well have a row in the uber home (in fact I'd say it's quite likely), a row which only you will remember and therefore provides no cathartic release whatsoever. As soon as you get into bed you find yourself wide awake, bullied to the edge of the mattress by the deadweight limbs of your beloved, planning the cutting speech you will deliver in the morning which usually begins with, “We can’t go on like this.”
But, I’m here to tell you - there is another way. (Besides a ruthless dumping, which is always an option.)
"What is this other way!?" you cry.
Well, I'll tell you. It’s called - the separate exit.
If I get tired or bored at a party, I turn to my party companion and I say, “See you later babe, have a great night, don't ring the doorbell when you get in.” (I actually never say babe, I just wish I did. But it gets to a point where it's too late to start that kind of thing.)
I’m being deadly serious when I say that some of the happiest moments of my life have been those times when I have arrived home alone and have sunk into a double bed that’s all for me. Utter, utter bliss.
The drunken one might turn up and start setting fire to things in the kitchen at four in the morning, but place an extra comfy sofa in a strategic position and they should remain outside of the bedroom.
Also, earplugs.
The result of my master plan for health and happiness?
I wake up refreshed and discover a quiet, hungover man on the sofa who I genuinely wish well in life, and we carry on our lives in harmony.
Seriously, this is the best relationship advice I’ve got. Don't waste it.
It’s half seven in the evening as I write this, and the only thing I have done today that could really be classed as an “achievement” is eating a giant steak and ale pie - with mash.
The only reason I can even count that as an achievement is because I was raised to believe that finishing a plate of food deserves high praise and cries of “Didn’t you do well!”. When in fact, I have performed an act of gross over-indulgence, deserving only of mild alarm.
But now, as the dark evening sets in, to rub it in my face that I’ve done nothing with the daylight hours, I feel ashamed.
Real Talk! (I've always wanted to say that.) My life is a constant battle between, on the one hand, wanting to be quite successful and have lots of people notice me and, on the other, constant boredom and tiredness.
Thing is, I reckon I could be pretty awesome if I put a bit of effort in. I don’t have a problem with underestimating my potential. It’s the execution that I find tricky.
I frequently daydream about winning an Oscar, writing the next Harry Potter, presenting Blue Peter, or outing a terrorist ring for a major newspaper - the usual.
But then, I remember - those things aren’t for the lazy and sleepy.
I blame TV. And sofas. And beds. If none of those things existed I’d be the prime minister, probably.
Oh, and alcohol - that goes without saying.
Sometimes, I think about my death-bed. What will I think as I lie there, contemplating my life?
(Hopefully nothing to be honest. I aim to be pumped full of drugs and then to drift off on a happy, delusional cloud. But that sort of honesty gets in the way of my point.)
Will I care about all the achievements that I failed to achieve? Will I look back and think - if only I’d tried a bit harder, been less lazy, I could have lived my dreams.
Or will I just think - sure, I didn’t get much done, but it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t hurt anyone, I went to some pretty good restaurants and had a few decent holidays.
I really wish I knew the answer because, if it’s the later, then fuck it, I’ll give up the minimal effort I put in now and attempt to live the easiest life possible.
But what if it’s the former and I die miserable?
Sometimes, I think I might want to have children and then foist my unfulfilled dreams onto them. Because, if you push something out your vaj, that’s automatically achieving something, isn’t it? And then I can chill out.
Or is that not how it works?
Sit back and relax. Put your feet up. Grab a cup of tea or, better yet, a glass of prosecco.
This is the 'Tale of the Bottomless Brunch'.
Brunch and prosecco - unlimited prosecco. That’s all it was, so simple, so sweet.
In the early days we truly believed. We believed we had found the answer to the empty weekend and its tired routines.
We asked, “What is happiness?” and we answered, “Excess. In all things, especially alcohol.”
That is how it began.
We discovered the joy of sipping, sipping, occasionally nibbling. Yes, we paid over the nail for a basic eggs Benedict, but it came with the security of unlimited alcohol and who can put a price on that?
We didn’t realise that the cracks had started to show.
Until we did.
We discovered that bottomless brunches were subject to rules and regulations. Gone were the carefree days of fizzy freedom. We struggled to comply. We fought back and things got ugly.
Yes, we could have unlimited prosecco but it could only be poured while we were still eating. Once the last morsel left our plates, the booze dried up. Brunch became a strategic game of small bites and staggered ordering.
We learnt that to nab the bottomless deal we had to order from a “special” menu and eat at least two courses.
“But it’s brunch,” we wept, “a famously one-course affair”.
We had to contend with the judgement of irritable waiting staff who became tight-fisted and absent, hiding in corners, clinging to open bottles like newly discovered treasure. Brunch became a constant battle to get their attention and an awkward aversion of the eyes when they finally deigned to pour.
"I’m not an alcoholic love, I just really want a seventh glass of prosecco at 11 in the morning - ALRIGHT!?"
The rest of the day passed in a hazy stupor. It seemed impossible to sober up and yet impossible to get any drunker. We were stuck in the dizzy limbo-land of the bottomless brunch, mildly anxious for no real reason. We were relieved to go to bed.
Soon we began to cry, “no more!”.
Never again will a Saturday afternoon be ruined by the morning’s excess. We will drink in the evening as god wished us to do and let sleep and darkness disguise the horrors of alcohol.
And that is how the bottomless brunch was laid to rest.
The End.
