Many years ago, someone older and wiser than yours truly, said to me,“One day, Phil, boy, you’ll be able to walk into a chemist’s shop and they’ll be able to sell you a pill to cure just about everything, you mark my words!”
There are two reasons why I remember those words.
Firstly – because it was obvious that the person speaking them possessed tremendous foresight, years of acquired wisdom…and probably the worst case of raging halitosis I have ever had the misfortune to come across.
His rancid breath could scour six inches of congealed grease from the inside of two-dozen frying pans.
Secondly – it was a totally random, incongruous gobbet of information to come from a member of the lifeboat team sent out to rescue me after my dinghy capsized.
What I actually wanted him to say as he hauled my half-frozen body from the chilly, unforgiving waters of the Bristol Channel, was,“Climb aboard, matey! We’ll soon have ‘ee warmed up with a hot toddy and a steaming bowl of porridge. Oh, arr…oh arr!”
Well, we were on the Somerset side of the Channel. And the day before, I’d watched the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” film six times. I didn’t particularly want to, but my DVD player is on the blink and repeats films more often than ITV4.
So, when I read last week that scientists have come up with a pill that ‘cures’ hangovers, I thought to myself, “That manky-mouthed matelot was absolutely right”.
Some of you may think a hangover cure in the form of a pill is a great idea – possibly the scientific breakthrough of the century.
However, I do not!
Because hangovers are not supposed to be instantly cured.
They’re meant to be endured, sometimes for an entire, miserable, pain-wracked day (please pay attention all Wales rugby fans who ‘overdid it a bit’ after Saturday’s stunning win).
Otherwise we’ll never learn that, if we drink to excess or ‘mix the grape with the hop’, we’ll pay the price the next morning – in the shape of a herd of particularly clumsy elephants auditioning for “Strictly” in some hellish, concrete-floored rehearsal room just behind our eyes.
A hangover is Mother Nature’s way of telling you to lay off the booze for a few days.
It must involve a splitting headache, nausea, a feeling of guilt…and a solemn promise to yourself that you’ll never over-indulge again.
If you can take a pill that instantly dispenses with that – it’ll take all the fun out of it!
