Two days a week off the booze? It’s nannying like this that drives a chap to hit the bottle!

AS YOU read this, I will be embarking on 2016 in the condition in which I’ve found myself at the dawn of every new year since I was 18. That is to say, I will be nursing a thumping hangover, half in love with easeful death, peering miserably at the world through jaundiced, puffy eyes and racking my addled brains to remember who I offended last night.

I hasten to say that as I write this, before the Hogmanay festivities have begun, I’m stone-cold sober and have no intention of getting drunk, let alone of insulting anyone. But after all these years (I’m 62 now), I know myself well enough to realise that my hopes of conducting myself in a civilised manner at our kind neighbours’ annual party will prove as fruitless as ever.

Indeed, with six hours to go before the fun starts, I can predict exactly how the night ahead of me will pan out, just as surely as if I had been given an advance copy of the script.

After finishing this column, well past my deadline as usual, I’ll resolve to race straight from the office to the party, where I’m to meet my wife. But then I’ll weaken and slip across the road for just the one before I head for the station, assuaging my conscience by trying to convince myself that I ought to hang around in case the sub-editors have any queries.

Irritation

At the pub, I’ll work myself up into a fever of irritation at finding my beloved local heaving with amateur drinkers, bagging my favourite perch and queueing six deep at the bar. These are the people who emerge only at this time of year, never to reappear until about a fortnight before next Christmas.

At this point, one of two things will happen. If the landlady spots me at the back of the throng, she’ll break off and pull a pint of my usual, surreptitiously beckoning me to the front of the queue (bless her heart, she knows how to treat her regulars). I’ll then squeeze apologetically through the crowd to claim my drink, while the once-a-year pub-goers glare at me, muttering ‘Oi! We were here first!’.

Otherwise, I’ll just have to await my turn, as one ditzy amateur after another struggles to remember what her eight friends are drinking before the machine rejects one of her wretched credit cards and she starts rummaging in her handbag for another.

Worst of all offenders are those who reach the front of the queue without knowing what they want, launching into lengthy discussions with the harassed bar staff about the relative qualities of the various wines on offer, before plumping for a rum and Coke. ‘Oh, and a cappuccino, please.’ Meanwhile, I’ll be suffering agonies of impatience, with far too much blood in my alcohol stream.

From bitter experience, I know just what will happen next. When I’ve finally secured and downed my just-the-one, and I’m leaving to catch my train to the party, a friend will hail me and say: ‘Tom! I’m just getting in a round. Will you stay for one?’

I’ll then look at my watch (a sure sign of an alcoholic, that — we invariably consult our watches when we’re offered a drink, before invariably accepting it, no matter what time it may be). ‘Oh, well,’ I’ll say. ‘Perhaps just a quick one, seeing that it’s New Year’s Eve...’

So I’ll sink my second pint and buy the next one for my friend (a chap must stand his shout, after all) — with another for me, of course, since it would be very bad form not to keep him company.

And so, eventually, I will move on to stage two of my rake’s progress through the night, arriving slightly tipsy at the neighbours’ house. There, I will apologise profusely for being late, explaining that I had to hang around at the office in case the sub-editors had any queries. I know. Shameless.

As I accept my first glass of wine — and every subsequent glass as the night goes on — I’ll make the same little speech: ‘Oh, well, seeing as it’s New Year’s Eve. But I must go easy because I’m working tomorrow...’

Sozzled

Next, as I’m getting pleasantly sozzled, will come the moment that always brings out the worst in me on New Year’s Eve. This is when our host will announce that it’s time for his quiz of the year.

The truth is, as my poor wife will testify, I’m a ferociously competitive soul and always look forward to our friends’ quiz. Indeed, though I hate to boast, I tend to excel at it (as of course I should, since it’s my job to keep up with the news).

Just one problem. Among our fellow guests every year is a Left-wing teacher, of progressive views, who believes that competition and grading are inherently wrong. To put it kindly, she is extraordinarily lenient to herself when she marks her answers, awarding herself points for getting things almost right (writing ‘Brussels’, for example, when the answer is ‘Paris’). To be more frank, she’s an outrageous cheat.

So it is that, every December 31, I suggest as lightly as I can that perhaps this year we should swap papers to mark each other’s answers. But I’m always overruled — and made to feel contemptibly childish for distrusting my fellow grown-ups.

Thus, every year, the Left-wing teacher declares she has come top in the quiz, with about 30 per cent of her answers correct, while I come second with about 80 per cent.

Now, I like to think I’m not one of those people who become belligerent when they’re drunk (I have a friend who suffers such alcoholic rages that once, when a minicab driver asked him where he wanted to go, he snarled furiously back: ‘I’m not telling!’). Nor do I ever throw up, unlike many of those amateur drinkers all over the country who make a disgusting mess of our pavements on the last night of the year.

But I have to confess that I can get a little ratty when I’m in my cups — and never more so than when I’ve been cheated of victory once again in our friends’ New Year’s Eve quiz.

Awkward

The worst of it is that my rattiness always takes the same form at that party, where our hosts and almost all my fellow guests work in the public sector — or did, before they took early retirement.

At some point before midnight, I absolutely know that one or other of them will make a mildly critical remark about government cuts. Stung by the injustice of the quiz marking, and rather the worse for booze, I’ll snap back: ‘It’s all very well for you to whinge. Some of us have to go to work in the morning, to keep you in your luxury retirement.’

An awkward silence will fall. utley will have made an embarrassing fool of himself again. It’s the same every groundhog year.

Oh, why do so many of us go on drinking too much? We know it’s not good for us. We know we’ll regret it in the morning. And yet on and on we go.

All right, it’s mostly weakness of will. But isn’t at least part of the explanation that alcohol is the perfect anaesthetic to take away the pain of life in this boring, riskaverse, increasingly bossy nanny state?

Speaking of which, this paper reports today that the Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, will be welcoming 2016 by announcing ‘the biggest shake-up of alcohol guidelines in 30 years’.

Apparently, she will be reducing the recommended limit for men from four to three units a day, or one and a half pints — the same as for women — while urging us to take at least two days off a week to give our livers a rest.

Is there a drinking man in this country, I wonder, who will take a blind bit of notice and cut out that extra half, on Dame Sally’s bossy say-so? Not I, certainly. Indeed, nannying like this is enough to make anyone hit the bottle.

With that, I must dash for my train to the party, pausing only to wish all my readers a very happy New Year. On second thoughts, perhaps I just have time to nip up the road for a quick one before I go...