Five ways to get through alcohol-free evenings

HAVE you started having alcohol-free nights for the sake of your health and waistline? Here’s how to make it through these grim evenings from Hell.

Practise being bored

Build up to an alcohol-free evening with regular boring activities such as playing tiddlywinks or pontoon, or a film that is superficially exciting but actually grindingly dull, like most of the Fast & Furious series.

Consider dumping your partner

You might discover you only get on with your partner because you’re both p*ssed every night. If you suspect this is the case, try to have someone new in place before your no-booze evening. Who knows, your kids may even grow to love ‘Sober Less-Emotional Mummy’?

Drink enough in the afternoon to see you through the evening

Alcohol leaves your system quickly when you don’t want it to, so you’ll need to start caning it at about 3pm. Drinking a bottle of vodka at your desk used to be frowned upon, but modern bosses are more understanding because they’ve probably been through a dry night too.

Knock yourself unconscious

If the tedium of not drinking is too much, simply knock yourself out cleanly with a punch to the face or a blow to the head with a piece of wood. This always works in films, and in the morning you’ll be right as rain after shaking your head confusedly a few times.

Find something incredibly exciting to do

Get a tech-savvy friend to build a large, complex bomb and handcuff you and your partner to it. Deciding which wire to cut will be incredibly exciting and a lovely bonding experience. Just don’t be tempted to race to Sainsbury’s at 10.50pm for a celebratory few bottles of Merlot.

Consider subscribing - so we can write more funny content. .js-article{ display:none;}

The bluff Northerner's guide to ignoring six-foot floods

HARDY Northern folk aren’t scared of a few feet of cold water and collapsing bridges. Here Northerner Roy Hobbs explains how to carry on as normal.

Count yourself lucky

Northerners – particularly grans – are extremely good at making irrelevant comparisons to worse situations. So even though your home is a waterlogged wreck, reflect on the fact that at least you’re not in a wheelchair, or prison, or both.

Remember you don’t feel the cold

If you’re up to your chest in cold water, don’t fret because Northerners are genetically impervious to low temperatures. If you’re starting to go numb from hypothermia, you are not a true Northerner, so bugger off somewhere posh, Southern and la-di-da, like Wolverhampton.

Under no circumstances change your daily routine

Show some Northern pride and make no concessions to the floods. Take your dog for a walk to the newsagent’s as usual, even it means wading through four feet of water towing the terrified hound behind you in a washing-up bowl.

Have a Northern flood survival kit ready

This should contain: Eccles cakes; 120,000 tea bags (not Earl Grey); a shit, parochial local newspaper for reading matter; some nice lamb chops for tea; and a car battery to power the telly so you won’t miss Corrie, even if you’re stuck on the roof of your house.

Rely on the famous Northern sense of community

In an emergency, Northerners will immediately visit their neighbours with hot meals, flasks of tea and bottles of ale, although this may just be an excuse to sneer at the cleanliness of their net curtains.

Stop being so bloody soft

So you’re trapped in rising flood waters with a rapidly decreasing chance of survival? Get the kettle on, you big daft apeth.

Next story ›