I have been getting merrily drunk on Friday evenings for the best part of 25 years, this is something I am neither proud or ashamed of if I am honest, it is the common action of the proletarian male at the end of a working week. During this time the venues for this behaviour have moderated from trawling night clubs in search of the last girl standing, to a stage where I am having semi coherent debates in country pubs about centre ground politics and how my children’s school teachers look so young, it will be dominoes next. My drinking habits have moderated too, mainly due to a morbid fear of the epic seventy two hour hangovers I seem to suffer when I over indulge in booze for longer than the Friday night norm. Five to seven pints of session bitter (3.5%) is about my comfort zone nowadays as this guarantees only a  mild hangover that generally clears by midday. As soon as I go beyond that, I run in to all sorts of trouble, including gaining the ability to rate myself as a potential winner of Masterchef, the latest incident being last Friday evening.

Living alone has many advantages, including being able to watch whatever you want on TV, walking around in boxer shorts and socks, having a whole sofa to lie on, playing your own music and choosing your own meal times, the list of selfish pleasures is pretty much endless. However, you are also in the situation where you do not have a functioning female to abort pathetic attempts at cooking whilst she pushes the cork back in to the red wine and sends you off to the spare room despite your slurred protestations. Fortunately, I do have a girlfriend and children, which means I am not left alone to carry out these these quite dangerous actions too often…….however, there is a window of opportunity every fortnight on a Friday evening when I can roll back the years with some cooking from the text book of drunken fools. Last Friday I seized the latest opportunity by downing several pints of Abbott Ale that weighs in at an impressive 5%. Quite what is in the the increased 1.5% of alcohol volume I am not certain, but boy oh boy, it sure does have the ability to turn me in to the bastard son of Frank Spencer.

When I got home I was at my ravenous best, however, because I was due to stay at Diane’s for the rest of the weekend, the fridge was pretty bare…..except two CHICKEN BREASTS……………BINGO!!! After much personal debate whilst I poured myself of a huge glass of vin rouge, I opted for the dish of under cooked paprika coated chicken breasts in a toasted sandwich…….two whole breasts of it. What makes the drunken cook more dangerous is the exaggeration of cooking techniques, as a personal preference, I love to put the gas hob on full blast as it has the added benefit of trimming my eyebrows and nasal hair………..it is lucky I have little head hair as otherwise every other Friday evening would be a re-enactment of Michael Jackson in a Coca Cola advert. Of course, we all know that what the intense heat does, it cooks the exterior of the chicken in seconds whilst the interior hovers  at around five degrees centigrade, but that doesn’t matter to a drunk armed with a pot of Schwartz paprika and two slices of toast to conceal the salmonella seeping from its skin. I demolished the sandwich in seconds, it was lovely too, if not a bit chewy, but it was well washed down with a nice glass of red.

As you all know, 5% bitter normally results in a coma within three minutes of  your head hitting the pillow, but  not this time, no Siree, this heady combination of bread, spices, chicken and alcohol that I had emptied in  to my gut meant serious business. Within seconds I was spinning my head from side to side an an attempt to find a cold patch on the pillow as my temperature began to rise alarmingly, but that was a picnic compared to the biblical storm brewing in that part of the stomach where there was a huge debate taking place to decide whether I was about to vomit or shit myself transparent, this was getting fucking ugly. The following six hours were a living Hell and at about 5.00am an hour when I always feel at my most vulnerable, I was thinking heart attack or possible stroke, it was a hideous night. It is not the first time I have made the mistake of thinking I can cook whilst drunk, but I have decided that it has to be my last. I just can’t go through that again, so I have composed a list to put on my fridge.

DON’T COOK WHEN…..

• You have drunk more than five pints of high volume bitter
• When you give the thumbs up and call yourself an “ol’ fugger”  whilst looking in the mirror
• When you have the Ipod playing and you are mimicking the bass guitar in your kitchen 
• When you are trying to watch late night TV with one eye shut
• When there is raw chicken near its “sell by” date in the fridge

I am hoping these five golden rules will stand me in good stead in the future and help me to avoid self inflicted repetitions of Friday evening. The only downside to adhering to these five commandments is that I will never be able to surpass the achievements of my elder brother Bruce, who at my parents house many years ago, made a chunky cheddar cheese sandwich coated in mayonnaise. It was only when his ravenous drunken jaws took a greedy bite in to this particularly large sandwich that he realised that he had served himself ECHO cooking margarine rather than mature cheddar cheese….YEUUURGHHH! He was still trying to spit the taste out an hour later as I rolled around the floor demonstrating my deepest sympathy.

I think I’ll just have ginger snap  and hot chocolate and get off to bed early tonight.