My hangover without supermarkets

Walnut whip isn’t a traditional hangover cure – but it certainly gave me a lift earlier this afternoon.

I was out with my friend Anna in town last night and we were on a bit of a mission to let our hair down, so after a few too many glasses or red wine, mixed with a dash of Guinness and a few too many slugs of Jack Daniels, I was feeling more than a little delicate this morning.

Delicate is actually a polite way of putting it. When I woke up I felt like somebody had split my head open with an axe. My stomach was churning, my knees were wobbly, and I found myself sliding along the hall wall as I made my shaky way to the bathroom.

Possibly still drunk – never mind hungover!

So we had plans today to visit a huge farmers market near Sheffield, but clearly they were shelved in favour of lying on the sofa and whimpering. As a student this was pretty routine behaviour and many a happy day was lost to drinking endless cups of tea and watching daytime telly while nursing a sore head. But, 10 years later, hangovers really are debilitating because when you’re working full time you don’t really want to be writing off one of your weekend days to a self-inflicted illness! This is probably why I’m not normally a massive drinker any more – and probably why the hangovers seem to be getting worse when I do over-indulge.

Anyway, the damage was done and the farmer’s market was off. My hangover without supermarkets had begun.

After loafing around moaning and drinking Alka Seltzer, by lunchtime things were looking up slightly so I took myself off to the stables for an hour for a bit of fresh air and sunshine.

And here I learned an interesting fact. Apparently I’m gaining something of a reputation with this challenge and friends are starting to watch what they say around me, for fear of having an idle remark turned into blog fodder.

This is according to my friend Georgina, who told me this afternoon that she was sat in a horsebox with my mum the other day on the way to an event, reading the blog aloud and laughing because, as she put it, “the whole world now knows your mum has a small bladder”.

Thank you Georgina!

Well, yes. But I reckon this is pretty much common knowledge anyway. And with more than 100 entries already under my belt and another eight months of daily blogging left to go, I’ve got to get my inspiration from somewhere. I can’t just repeatedly write “good day – didn’t go to Tesco!”.

Georgina was kind enough to give me her last walnut whip for a much-needed sugar hit to help ease the hangover.

And here she is, with said walnut whip, becoming slightly unwilling blog fodder. Sorry Georgina, but at least it’ll give my mum a chuckle, and I’m sure you’ll be getting plenty more laughs at her expense as the year rolls on.

So now it's 5.30pm and the hangover is finally beginning to lift. I'm sat in the garden with my laptop on my knee enjoying the lovely late-afternoon sun and vowing never to drink again. Ha, I wonder how long that will last!