A simple plan

Today is Sunday Painter's birthday, so like all good Germans she celebrated last night. (The idea is that you party into the birth-day, the company standing at midnight to drink a toast and sing your praises.)

I should explain before continuing, that dinner parties in my usual circle of acquaintance start late: meeting at nine to dine is not unusual; and further that an evening invitation is assumed to include food unless the host explicitly states otherwise.

So I turned up at nine with a present (Arvo Pärt's Berliner Messe because I think SP could use some calmness in her life) and a raging hunger, and found the table decorated with carrot sticks, dips, and massive quantities of beer and wine. Good, I thought, get started on the appetisers. I took a beer to accompany the carrots, thinking that I'd switch to water with dinner.

Gentle reader, there was no dinner. Obviously SP's social circle has different conventions to mine.

Now, at this point I should obviously have followed Plan A and switched to water anyway. That would have been pretty sensible, considering my well-proven low tolerance for alcohol. Did I? No

Did I therefore get raving drunk on an empty stomach? Yes

Did I therefore start puking at 2am, and continue every 45 minutes until daybreak? Yes

Am I now therefore in an utterly miserable state of hungover exhausted dehydration? Yes

Will I nonetheless make the same stupid mistake next time, knowing as I do so that it is a stupid mistake? Probably