By Aliya Whiteley

On The Bottom of the Glass

The Blue Pootle does not have a lot of Resolve.

I’m not talking about the ‘firmness of purpose or intent; determination’ kind of resolve that one finds defined in dictionaries. This type of resolve can most easily be observed in physical form in the faces of large men engaged in tests of strength, such as Geoff Capes attempting to move a large truck to which he has been attached by a girdle type setup that looks suspiciously like a set of baby reins. No, forget the whole Capes thing – don’t think about his shot-put prowess, his love of budgerigars or the fact that he stood in for Dave Prowse (who was suffering from an elbow injury) as Darth Vader during several scenes of The Empire Strikes Back. Instead concentrate on the other type of Resolve – the kind that comes in foil packets and is advertised with a ‘plink plink fizz’ catchphrase.

I’m not a great believer in Resolve. It never worked for me personally; possibly because I never really understood the concept. Is it aspirin? Does it have caffeine in it? Or maybe morphine? How is it different from the three thousand other painkilling products on the shelf, and what makes it so darned good at conquering that most fearsome of beasts, the hangover? Not that I have hangovers any more. I’m a mother, you know. I have small sips of port and consider myself naughty. At least, that’s the official line. So, entirely in the past sense, I’ll relate what is considered to be good advice in treating a hangover, and why these treatments don’t work.

• drink lots of water.

I always wondered how much water, exactly, because as a drunk person I never had a smidgeon of common sense to help me out. I either did a shotglass or a swimming pool of water, and ended up with a dry mouth or wet clothes. And when should this water be drunk? Before bed, when I’m trying to operate the grill to make fish finger sandwiches, or before I set out, when I’m trying to operate my sixteen-speed hairdryer without blowing myself out of the window? Blame it on modern life, but I never found the time to do the water thing.

• eat a big, greasy meal before you go out.

I have no actual problem with this approach. There is only one metaphorical hiccup, and that is due to the fact that I always get non-metaphorical hiccups after a drinking binge and if I’ve eaten a sausage pizza I will invariably get to see it again. If, however, I haven’t eaten anything at all, then I won’t be revisiting anything at all. And that is a good thing.

• take painkillers before you go to sleep.

I’m at a loss as to why this would work. I’m not in pain when I go to sleep after a gallon of beer. I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum – I’m singing tracks from Boney M’s marvellous 1978 album Nightflight To Venus and giggling to myself about the fact that I put my pyjamas on back to front. Why would I even remember to take painkillers? Do you remember to take your umbrella with you when you go sunbathing?

• alternate alcoholic drinks with soft drinks.

Yes, obviously this will work, but who wants to be the kind of person who religiously alternates their drinks? That’s about as much fun as watching what you eat or exercising regularly. Booorrrrring. (How I wish I was still young enough to actually get away with this approach to life – however, if I was, I wouldn’t be suffering from hangovers anyway. Those only kicked in when I started worrying about what I drank, oddly enough.)

• use Resolve in the morning.

And we’ve already ascertained that Resolve is just too vague a product to work. One needs faith in the power of the painkiller, don’t you think? Give me the little red target of Nurofen any day over that wishy-washy plink plink fizz.

So what can a person do to stop the dreaded hangover? What realistic measure is there that a bender-seeker can take?

Here’s my secret weapon.

Lucozade Sport.

I know, I know, you thought it was going to be some pithy remark that would prove to be no useful help whatsoever, but instead of making a joke about such a serious ailment, I’ve decided to share the only interesting piece of information I’ve discovered in relation to drinking alcohol. Lucozade Sport really does work. You can drink before you go out, after you wake up reeling, or even as a mixer with your vodka or gin. It stops the hangover dead. I’m only revealing this because I don’t get the opportunity to drink any more and so I won’t be searching for much needed bottles of the elixir on supermarket shelves on a Sunday morning – bottles that you can now buy in my place.

Of course, this could be down to a triumph of marketing. I may not believe in Resolve, but those Lucozade Sport adverts get me where it hurts. Plus, when I was a little girl my grandmother always bought me Lucozade (the traditional orange kind) when I had tonsillitis, so I tend to think of the stuff as on a par with penicillin.

It’s all mind over matter, I suppose. You need to find something that you think will work on your hangover, and lo and behold, it will. Placebo-tastic. I wish I’d realised this back when I still had the time, energy and freedom to drink. Then I could have chosen a different cure and avoided all that sodding Lucozade. It might aid a hangover and fight tonsillitis, but I never said the darned stuff tasted good.

Word of the Day: Veilleuse. A small and well decorated nightlight.

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