Someone pretending to be hungover (image: perfectoinsecto)

Today is Ash Wednesday, so a lot of people – perhaps waking up hungover after a heavy night of chasing pancakes with a suitable dessert wine – will be thinking about giving up alcohol for Lent. As a Dry January veteran I recently experienced the highs and lows of trying out a temporary alcohol-free social life, and it became clear that, unless your friends and family are all joining you, you need a strategy. Allow me to share some tips…

The Risotto Exception. Are you going completely alcohol-free or just giving up drinking? If it’s the former you’re going to need to warn anyone who might be planning on cooking for you, to prevent either a) causing offence by refusing their delicious penne vodka or b) eating boozy food to be polite, and then finding yourself thinking “well, there’s sherry in the mushroom paté, so I’ve already broken the rules for today…might as well have a glass of wine now and start afresh tomorrow.”

That brings us on to The Excuse Anticipation. When I started Dry January I wrote for this blog that I could already imagine which events in the month were going to be ‘triggers’, but actually you need to be more specific than that. Make a list of all the excuses you might find yourself – or anyone else – making, and make it very clear to yourself that none of them are good enough. “Yes, but I’ve had a hard day”, “Yes, but I’ve been ill”, “Yes, but it’s my birthday”, “Yes, but my sister is here unexpectedly and we want a proper night out” – anticipate them all, and then when they happen you can just put the kettle on.

The Party Proposition. Are you still planning to keep up your usual social life while staying alcohol-free, or are you prepared to turn down offers of the pub and spend more quality time with your pets, your to-do list, your great unwritten novel? I’d recommend the latter – it makes for a productive month, you’ll save money, and you’re less likely to find yourself staring resentfully at your friends over a pint of tap-water – but you might still get dragged out for a special occasion, in which case you’ll need to do…

Waking up knowing you’re not hungover is great, and having a clear head every night is strangely addictive in its own way

The Beverage Reconnoitre. Find out good alcohol-free venues near you – if you live somewhere with an excellent choice of watering holes, like my own Manchester, this will be easier. I tried to get into the habit of inviting people to meet me in my favourite frozen yoghurt shop, rather than a bar, but that’s not everyone’s cup of tea – or pint of lager – so I also became familiar with the soft drinks lists of Manchester’s drinkeries.

As I noted in a previous post, ginger beer was my salvation on many nights, and a lot of pubs and bars serve tea and coffee – but my favourite, crowd-pleasing hangout was Home Sweet Home in the Northern Quarter. It advertises itself as a ‘gourmet bakehouse and coffee bar’, so while it stays open late to provide wine and beer to those who drink it (including the hipster staple of Red Stripe), the most delicious thing on its drinks menu is the Ultimate Hot Chocolate, a veritable vat of creamy deliciousness that comes with cookie and brownie bits and takes both hands to lift. They’re not paying me to say this: it really makes wine drinkers feel like they’re missing out.

If you’re also from Manchester, you might have noticed V-Revolution, a new arrival on the Ancoats end of Oldham Street – if you’re not a vegan or a fan of vinyl you might understandably have walked straight past it, but it’s worth noting that they also sell bottles of non-alcoholic beer, which can help you stay dry without feeling unsociable (as I did when drinking tea while all about me were glugging Budweiser in my living-room).

Home Sweet Home

Wherever and however you go alcohol-free, enjoy it: waking up knowing you’re not hungover is great, and having a clear head every night is strangely addictive in its own way. Your house will be tidier, your wallet will be heavier, your skin will be better (pints of tap-water and a month of early nights will do that).

I can’t pretend to have stuck at it into February – in fact, I can’t claim to have managed the whole month, I’m afraid. I made it as far as the 27th and then cheated, due to a combination of some of the excuses listed above: after a few miserable days of being ill, my sister paid an unexpected visit, we went to a bar, she asked if I wanted a beer, she was paying…I cracked and had one. And then another one. And then…that was it. Just two. The bottles (American lager) tasted OK, but not as delicious as I remembered.

“Want another?” asked my sister.

“Hmm…”

We went to Home Sweet Home and had a hot chocolate instead.

Grace is 26 and lives in Fallowfield, Manchester, with too many cats. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/msgracefh

There are Alkos everwhere in Finland. Yeah, I know - sorry. (image: Earth-Bound Misfit, I)

In Finland, we mostly drink to get drunk, and drinking is not necessarily a social event. There’s even an informal expression for drinking at home alone (or with a friend): kalsarikännit, or ‘getting drunk wearing only long underwear’.

Finns like to drink along with every feeling and occasion: celebration and mourning; beginnings and endings; periods of stress and periods of relaxation. Alcohol is certainly the main focus in every party in Finland – it’s as if we´re unable to have fun without it. Friday nights actually look similar to those in England, only less busy.

Normal policy on a night-out is pretty much the same as in England. Everyone brings their own drinks to pre-parties and it’s not very common to share. This is because drinking is like a performance, the object of which is to get drunk, and sharing might mess up your master plan. Of course, if somebody has brought some new liqueur from the ferry, they might offer you a sample – Finns love going on alcohol runs to Sweden or Estonia. But when buying alcohol, the main criterion is usually “will I get drunk with this?”

Drinking is like a performance, the object of which is to get drunk, and sharing might mess up your master plan.

The only place you can buy spirits, liquor and wine in Finland is the state-owned monopoly store ‘Alko’, whilst beer and cider can be bought in supermarkets but only until 9pm. Why us Finns are so fond of booze, I’m not sure. Perhaps because we’re a nation of shy people and being intoxicated makes it easier to socialise. Others theorise that it’s to help cope with the long, dark cold winters. Whatever the reason, it’s also implicated in a lot of problems, such as accidents, premature deaths and domestic violence.

Not drinking in Finland

People in Finland are becoming more health-conscious, so not drinking at a party won’t raise too many eyebrows. People will almost certainly ask why you aren’t drinking, but you won’t be forced to partake. If you are a foreigner in Finland you are fundamentally interesting and just this on its own means you can get away with not drinking. Not that you won’t miss out in some way – a sure-fire way of making yourself popular with Finns is to try one of our national peculiarities, such as salty liquorice liquor.

Drinking in Helsinki (image: wili_hybrid)

When us Finns are drunk we can get very affectionate because we normally don’t express our positive feelings. This means you might even suddenly be the best friend of somebody you just met in the toilets. At this point it can be slightly offensive not to accept a shot as a token of friendship. Still, it’s very easy for a non-drinker to blend into the happy crowd, just as long as you don’t knock over somebody’s pint: Finns are also eager to fight.

When it comes to drinking and driving, Finns are quite responsible, and don’t tend to have even a sip. This means that one of the main risks of going alcohol-free is that you might be expected to drive. Another is that, since everyone gets so totally wasted, you might feel like you’re obliged to take care of their bags and generally look out for them.

Alternative activities

Due to the climate, Finland is a country where people spend a lot of time at home. Café and restaurant culture isn’t on the same level as in continental Europe, though it is improving. Cafés don’t stay open late and it’s more common to meet friends in bars. During the week, pubs and bars are increasingly offering activities such as pool, board games or pub quizzes, in an effort to make customers stay, and on these occasions, it’s totally fine to order a coffee or tea.

A popular way to spend time in a cold country like Finland is the sauna. Friends and communities commonly organize sauna evenings and this can be a great way to bond with people. Even in the sauna, some people still like to pop open a chilled beer or cider, though you can just as easily bring a bottle of soda – an especially good idea given that alcohol and saunas may be a dangerous combination.

Alternative drinks

In the shops you can find several non-alcoholic beers, ciders and wines, and in bars you can usually get plain soda or fruit juice. Non-alcoholic beers tend to be imported, although there is at least one domestic variety: Ukko-Pekka (0.0%).

Conclusion

Finland may be known for heavy drinking but it’s not expected from foreigners. As long as you can stand the excesses of others, you should get on just fine.

Katja is a well-travelled Finn who doesn’t mind a nightcap but prefers to leave the hangovers to others. She blogs about the slow life at The Little Red Book.

Common (Image: Sebastian Matthes)

On Day 2 of Dry January, a group of us descended on one of my favourite bars in Manchester’s Northern Quarter – Common on Edge Street – for a friend’s twentieth birthday. I bought a pint for my friend Chris and asked for a glass of tap-water for myself. I was revelling in the thought of the money I had just saved when another friend joined us with a bottle of something new – “Espresso stout!” he said excitedly. “I’ve not tried it before.” Espresso. Stout. Two of my very favourite things, together in one tempting bottle.

“Urgh, coffee-flavoured beer?” said Chris. I slouched over my water, trying to pretend that coffee-flavoured beer wasn’t the sum of all my hopes and dreams.

This has been a big challenge every time I’ve tried to cut out alcohol – since my friends are still going to be hanging out in bars, and I want to hang out with them, what do I drink while I’m there? J2O is a horrible substance, and ordinary fruit juice comes in overpriced, tiny measures. Asking for lemonade makes me feel like a child (especially since I often have to stand on tiptoes to see over the bar). Coke is marginally better but I can feel it rotting my insides.

I was pleased to discover that another favourite bar, the appropriately named Dry Bar on Oldham Street, serves coffee until late, but as I explain below, caffeine presents its own problems. I like fizzy water, but resent how much I’m being charged for what is essentially a glass of water and air. That tends to leave tap water, which is tasty and healthy and free, but somehow feels a bit rude to everyone else I’m with: “Not only am I not prepared to let my hair down by joining you in a ‘proper’ drink, I don’t even want to invest the price of a soft beverage in this evening”.

My evening at Common started looking up when a friend spotted non-alcoholic ginger beer on the soft drinks menu. I love ginger beer. I also love ginger biscuits, gingerbread and everything on Earth that involves ginger, with the exception of Danny Alexander. Now I know that ginger beer is an option, I’ll be ordering it next time I go back to Common – even if that’s after Dry January is over.

Asking for lemonade makes me feel like a child (especially since I often have to stand on tiptoes to see over the bar)

That week passed in smug fashion, as I got home every night sober and early enough to do things like take my make-up off properly and pack lunches for the next day. On Friday, to celebrate a visit from my sister, Chris suggested a big night out. I suggested, instead, that the gang come over to my house for tea. The gang – and my sister – promptly rocked up with a box of beer each, and worked through them while I made four pizzas from scratch. I might have felt more left out if I hadn’t found a bottle of ’0% Bavaria’ non-alcoholic beer someone had left in my fridge – it turned out to taste more or less the same as the real thing, and I ended up wishing I’d stocked up on more. Unless you enjoy feeling like the den mother – which I don’t – it’s hard to get in the party spirit when everyone else is glugging from frosty glass bottles and you’re clutching a mug of tea.

Grace (Image: DC Sterne)

The third and most recent occasion I’ve been tempted to leap off the Dry January wagon was last Tuesday when, in accordance with age-old tradition, I went to the City Arms after a meeting in Manchester Town Hall. The main reasons I wanted a drink were because: 1. the meeting I’d just left had lasted over two hours; 2. Chris had got bored of Dry January Grace and had thus taken to drinking pints of real ale in front of me with exclamations of “It’s like there’s a party in my mouth and everyone’s invited!”; and 3. after five cups of black coffee at work, two more cups of black coffee in the Town Hall, and two Cokes in the City Arms, I was so saturated with caffeine that I was emitting a faint buzzing sound. It wasn’t as much fun as it sounds – especially that night when I tried to sleep.

The following night I walked halfway to the City Arms with Chris before deciding against it, turning on my heel and heading home. Unsociable?

Yes. But hey, at least I got an early night.

Grace is 26 and lives in Fallowfield, Manchester, with too many cats. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/msgracefh

IKEA's Glögg Alkoholfri (Image: Neil Bennion)

So that’s us all limping collectively into 2012 bearing our collective hangovers, if not of the alcoholic kind then the financial. My own Christmas and New Year involved me practising a whole lot of what I’ve been so preachy about – alcohol-free festive drinking.

Christmas morning started the same as my relatives around me: with bacon sarnies and Buck’s Fizz, the only difference being that mine had sparkling grape juice in lieu of some slightly more potent.

In the future we’ll all be cyborgs with specially adapted stomachs, capable of compacting food sufficiently to fit in an entire Christmas meal. But for this one, I had to make do with just eating continuously until I felt uncomfortable, and then carrying on for a while more anyway.

My sidekick on ‘project gluttony’ was a rather tasty alcohol-free wine from Sainsbury’s, which did a good job of filling in what miniscule cracks might have been left. Though lacking the robustness of a port, it complemented the cheese rather well, and felt like it was staining my mouth too, which somehow seemed important at the time.

Come the lazy, fat belly-stroking afternoon, I was being kept company by loved ones. By this I mean both my family, and cans of Bavaria’s far too-drinkable alcohol-free beer.

Mmmmm cake (Image: Janis Callister)

By Boxing day, and that curious cluster of days before New Year, my stomach  had finally managed to regain enough real estate to accept some of the wonderful Christmas cake that my sister made, which turned out really great.

As a household, we also collectively had a go at IKEA’s Alcohol-free mulled wine, aka Glögg Alkoholfri. It was hot, sweet and spicy, which means it was as it should be, really, given that that’s pretty much the definition of mulled wine. The lack of tanins – it being based on fruit juice rather than de-alcoholised wine – meant that my brother-in-law enjoyed it too, despite his being a drinker. Enough of a drinker, in fact, to try and alcoholise Horlicks.

“Is there any room for a guest entry on your blog where I just take perfectly acceptable non-alcoholic drinks and add amaretto?” he asked.

Finally came New Year’s Eve, and time to celebrate another year of pretending I don’t feel superior to drinkers. And it’s true – I don’t (good at it, aren’t I?). A friend  mine was holding a fancy dress party around the theme of heroes and villains, and some might argue that I was both: I came as  the Simpsons character Duffman, effectively a Duff Beer version of the Malboro Man.

Well, actually it was Duff Zero Man, based on the alcohol-free Duff beer that came out during prohibition in Springfield, and arguably reversing the groups I was a hero and villain to. It was an outfit that took far more work to make than I’d thought it would. I even had to enlist parental help when I realised that, left to my own sewing skills, I was just going to look like I’d been assaulted by an angry pile of blue and red fabric. Dogsound’s design for a Duff can label came in handy, too, after some minor alterations to de-alcoholise it to Duff Zero.

Despite all that work, one person (a child, admittedly), still seemed disappointed by the fact I wasn’t yellow. I’m going to presume she meant that as a Simpsons reference, rather than cirrhosis of the liver.

Duff Zero Man brings home the plastic

To my complete surprise, I actually won the fancy dress contest. Rather than give a speech (which would only have consisted of the words ‘Awww Yeah’ anyway), I was asked to do my performing seal bit and dance for those gathered. There was a time when I’d have needed a few drinks to even consider doing something like that. But these days (following my dance mission to Colombia in 2010) I recognise that dignity on the dance floor is a luxury, not a right.

Besides, I defy anyone to tell me a better way to see in 2012 than dressing up as a cartoon character and dancing with Batgirl to Bohemian Rhapsody.

Happy New Year!

Grace (Image: DC Sterne)

I’d say my drinking habits are about average for someone from my age and background. In other words: inconsistent.

I don’t really drink at home – I’m much more likely to be found with a cup of tea than a beer or a glass of wine – and my family don’t make a habit of getting the booze out for special occasions, so Christmas, for example, wasn’t a particularly drunken event.

Weekends and special (and not-so-special) occasions with my friends are a different story. Friday nights at O’Sheas in Manchester means a good few pints of Guinness. Saturday nights dancing on Canal Street mean shots, lager and more shots. Even a couple of hours playing pool on a weekday evening usually means taking advantage of a special offer on a carafe of wine.

I’m five foot one, not especially heavy, and I’m usually drinking with men – which means trying to keep up with drinkers who are bigger and more practised than me. And I’d be the first to admit that I don’t always handle it very well. What’s more, as I get older, the hangovers are starting to take up more and more of my time.

I know that, like a lot of women my age, I probably go over my recommended number of units of alcohol on one or two nights a week. And I know, too, that no matter how many nights in you have with a cuppa, you’re not allowed to ‘save up’ your units and carry them over. After a pretty heavy night just before Christmas, I woke up with one clear thought in my fuzzy head: I’m twenty-six now. It’s time to think about the drink.

I’ve tried ‘dry spells’ before, with varied success – I’ve done ‘detox January’ a couple of years running, did a similiar ‘sober October’ this year to recover from a party-heavy September, and once gave up drinking for Lent. I found both up- and downsides: the feeling of waking up and knowing, before I even open my eyes, that I definitely don’t have a hangover, was quite a winner. Being the only person sipping tap-water while everyone else is necking cold bottles of beer or iridescent cocktails brought a novel feeling of virtuousness – at first. But before long I was feeling more resentful than smug. And every time I’ve tried it, I’ve been queuing up at the bar a good few days before the scheduled end date.

I woke up with one clear thought in my fuzzy head: I’m twenty-six now. It’s time to think about the drink.

So this year I’ve got a good idea what to look out for when it comes to triggers and temptations. Do I really need to go to the pub after meetings? I have a Muslim friends in politics (some of whom have been trying to persuade me to cut back the drink for a while), so it must be possible to be a dry politician (well, some people might say all politicians are dry, but I think that means something else…)

Probably the biggest test is going to be around the 20th – my friend Lou’s birthday. Lou is 1. one of my best friends; 2. a vodka connoisseur; 3. pretty knowledgeable about white wine; 4. the person who provided over a hundred vodka jelly shots for my housewarming party back in September; and 5. (this may go without saying) not a fan of this whole Dry January project. I don’t want to turn down any invitations from Lou, and I certainly don’t want to be a spoilsport on her birthday. Can I stay dry and stay sociable too? I hope so. Am I going to have to sit near a pot-plant to dispose of wine without causing offence? Maybe.

I’m not convinced I’ll keep up the alcohol-free lifestyle after January 31st, or even that I’ll get through the month without a moment of weakness – but I’m going to enjoy the opportunity to give my body a break, and to observe the changes I have to make. After all – how hard can it be?

Grace is 26 and lives in Fallowfield, Manchester, with too many cats. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/msgracefh

New Year is just a blur for some (image: scottchan)

Christmas comes with all sorts of traditional drinks, most of them alcoholic. Some people think if you’re not drinking alcohol, you might as well walk inside a cupboard and turn off the lights. But, whilst this can be fun in the right company, there are alternatives.

It’s still important to feel like you’re part of what’s going on, and the tastes and scents of the drinks are a major part of that, so here is a glut traditional Christmas drinks, and some ideas for what to have instead.

Mulled Wine

Mulling in the wine sense means combining with spices, typically things like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, often also heating it. The exact preparation varies from country to country, though it’s present in some form throughout most of Europe.

Alcohol-free mulled wine is a bit of a gift for non-drinkers, because the complexity of flavour from the spices allied with the warmth mean that it’s got a lot going for it, with or without alcohol. There are three main options for preparing your own alcohol-free mulled wine:

- Make your own in a pan, like in this Delia Smith recipe.

- Add pre-prepared mulling spices, which often come in syrup format to your red grape juice or non-alcoholic wine. Maybe best not to pick a sparkling , as that might be a bit weird.

- Buy it ready made, as with IKEA’s ready-made Swedish Glögg Alkoholfri or Rochester Mulled Berry Punch.

But if that’s all still too much effort, and you’re not prepared to operate anything beyond a kettle, buy some Mulled Wine Tea.

Buck’s Fizz

Christmas morning is about Buck’s Fizz. Well okay, it isn’t – it’s about people trying to read the expressions of each other as they open their respective presents, like some weird game of poker. In fact it’s a shame there isn’t a second phase in which everyone gambles their presents. Though what you’d do with a doll that cries real tears and a bottle of flavoured vodka I’m not quite sure. Pair them off, perhaps.

Anyway, back to the drink: Buck’s Fizz is traditionally made up of two-parts orange juice with one-part Champagne. Alcohol-free Buck’s Fizz is made by simply substituting sparkling white grape juice for the Champagne. With there being no alcohol around, the flavour and texture becomes more intrinsic to the ‘specialness’ of the drink. So get one with juicy bits so the bubbles chase the pith about like an orange snow globe.

Port

Port is a Christmas staple, in the UK at least, and is often drunk with cheese during the fill-any-remaining-gaps-in-your-stomach ceremony. But this Portuguese fortified wine poses a problem for non-drinkers, since an alcohol-free port is a difficult thing to find (unless you live near Holyhead).

Whilst you’ll struggle to match the depth of flavour of port, a good red grape juice or non-alcoholic red wine will at least give you something to complement your favourite milk-based foodstuffs.

Whisky

You might think that spirits are irreplaceable, but there are actually alcohol-free whiskies out there. There’s the Spanish drink Whissin and Black Zero for a start, although the Scotch Whisky Association is less than enamoured with the idea.

The problem is that it’s probably not a good choice for vulnerable former-drinkers, certainly if it’s any good at its job. In fact, forget clever titles like Whissin (sin is Spanish for without) it should just have ‘RELAPSE’ in big letters on the bottle. Furthermore, there can be better routes than trying to directly copy something whose flavour fundamentally relies on the presence of alcohol.

So, if you’re looking for something non-alcoholic but with a short sharp bite of flavour, a better bet might be something with the zing of ginger, like Great Uncle Cornelius’ Finest Spiced Ginger or Rochester Ginger.

Champagne

It’s New Year’s Eve and people right across the world are lining up for the competition of who can break their unrealistic resolutions the fastest. But what to drink instead of Champagne?

Our recommendation is for a sparkling white grape juice, made from the Muscat grape, with ASDA Extra Special Sparkling White Muscat Juice a particular favourite with this writer.

Get a good one, and the wonderful Muscat aroma means you won’t miss the alcohol. Plus many manufacturers produce them in that mixture of skin-lacerating foil and lightbulb-shattering cork that we associate with celebratory drinks.

And remember that just because your drink is alcohol-free doesn’t mean it should be served in some cast-off glass – drink it from a flute. I mean the glass. Actually, what the hell – drink it from an actual flute. I mean, it’s only once a year, isn’t it?

Living in the present (image: stock.xchng)

Wondering what to get that non-drinker for Christmas now that a bottle of scotch is out the question? Here are five ideas to get you thinking.

Spa treatment

For many people, alcohol is a pleasure; an indulgence. Spa treatments provide something similar, except without the bruises. Well, fewer bruises. Well, okay it depends on your masseur. Anyway, it gives people something they sometimes forget to give themselves: permission to relax, forget the worries of the day and generally get prodded with sponges. And if you buy someone a voucher, they can choose their specific treatment or treatments that suit them best.

Cheaper: Something spa-like for the home, like bath bombs
Cheapest: Squeeze their shoulders for four seconds and say “there you go”

Coffee

Alcohol is a very social drink (well, when it’s not busy being a very anti-social drink) but it doesn’t have the monopoly on that. Coffee is a great excuse for people to get together and develop fixed stares in a relaxing environment. It’s also one of the few non-alcoholic beverages that has a connoisseur element. If someone loves coffee, giving them something like an espresso machine is giving them an excuse to invite people round.

Cheaper: A stove-top espresso maker and/or some good quality ground coffee
Cheapest: A sachet of Nescafe and a plastic spoon.

Chocolate

When people give up drinking, they often end up swapping one vice for another, but at least chocolate doesn’t have links with violence. Well, unless you’re depriving someone of it. There’s a whole world of chocolate to discover, and some are truly works of art, like Maribelle’s amazing (and amazingly expensive) chocolate handbag collection. The truly decadent could even buy two tickets to Bruges to go from one chocolatier to the next.

Cheaper: Buy some retro sweets and be transported back to a time when you weren’t concerned with things like alcohol. Or tooth decay.
Cheapest: Give them a bite of your Mars bar.

Alcohol-free drinks

The selection of drinks at bars for non-drinkers can be fairly dismal, especially when it comes to beers. But if you get someone a selection box of alcohol-free beer such as those sold by the UK’s Alcohol Free shop allows someone to try ones from all over the world. NB alcohol-free beer may cause relapse amongst some alcoholics, whilst others still consider it a relapse in itself.

Cheaper: Many supermarkets do sparkling alcohol-free wine in champagne-like presentations.
Cheapest: Serve them up a glass of tap water, with a straw as a flourish

New clothes

Given the calorific nature of alcoholic drinks, if someone has given up drinking fairly recently, there’s a good chance they’ll be losing weight. Unless some idiot’s bought them loads of chocolate of course. Reward them with clothes that fit their new-found frame.

Cheaper: A gift voucher for their favourite retailer to go towards new clothes
Cheapest: A piece of string makes an excellent adjustable belt.

The office christmas bash is important. It can be the one time of year when everyone in the office finally gets to let their hair down and forget about TPS report cover sheets. Bonding, (of all varieties) can occur that just wouldn’t happen in the workplace in normal circumstances.

But they’re volatile situations. You’re surrounded by friends and enemies; potential lovers and potential haters; people who can get you promoted and people who can get you fired. What better to do in this situation than to lose any semblance of self-control?

Of course, it’s also often the time when the secret Santa presents are handed out. Is that one for me? Oh look, it’s the alcohol-driven truth of what you think about me! You shouldn’t have. No, really.

Going alcohol-free

So, as well as all the good reasons for not drinking in general, the office party is certainly a good place to consider being sober, regardless of whether you normally drink. However, there are definitely some things to think about if you do.

Firstly, it’s a good idea to think about your answer to ‘the question’. Because at some point in the evening, someone is sure to ask you “why aren’t you drinking?” It helps to know in advance how much you’re comfortable telling them.

Plus, of course, people can feel uncomfortable hearing too much personal information about a co-worker. And remember, it’s meant to be a fun, light-hearted evening – not everyone necessarily wants to be taught the Serenity Prayer or be led through the minutiae of intra-hepatic surgery.

Secondly, if it’s important to you to have something interesting to drink then mention it to the organisers in advance. If you’re going to a pub then they might not have much choice, but if it’s an in-office bash then they’ll need to know to buy something other than crates of lager and Pinot grigio.

Thirdly if the posters and emails are describing it as the ‘Annual Xmas Drinkfest’ then you might want to consider whether you really want to be there at all. By all means challenge that culture if it’s important to you, but there are definitely some workplaces where you could find yourself as King Canute facing an incoming tide of alcohol.

Finally, do remember to enjoy yourself – that’s the general idea, after all. If you’re having a good time, few people will care whether you’re drinking or not, yourself included. And when it feels like it’s getting too lairy, then leave. Simple. The great thing about not drinking is that you do actually know when the night is over.

The aftermath

The great news comes when you’re back at work, where you won’t get drip-fed information about things you may or may not have done. Although, on the downside, you won’t get to be part of the stories that last all the way until the next one, possibly even becoming enshrined in company legend.

Though even if you’re not drinking, you might still end up part of a rumour. As has been pointed out to me, “If you’re a woman and you go to the office party and you don’t drink, everyone thinks you’re pregnant.”

Do go easy on the after-party gloating – you won’t endear yourself to anyone. Besides, you now have a library of indelible images to draw to mind any time a colleague is being insufferable. There are some things that can’t be unseen.

So here’s to a Christmas party that doesn’t end with your goose being cooked. Or even marinated, for that matter.

Not the actual cake. Photo: Ross Angus

As a scientist, I often have to evolve my experiments, adapting them change.  The cooking analogy is well used in the lab, and with good reason. The approach is familiar: finding tried and tested methods, then adjusting them for your own use with your knowledge of the ‘ingredients’, depending on what you wish to achieve.

I am lucky enough that those close to me have always gone out of their way to make sure the things they buy, bake or cook for me are completely free of things I am allergic to. My aunties have made Christmas cakes and puddings in the past, carefully omitting all nuts, just for me. Every one was appreciated and delicious; probably extra tasty because of the thought and effort put in, and because they could be enjoyed by the whole family.

For that reason, I’m making my first christmas cake as a gift for my family this Christmas, and we’ll all share it with my brother, who doesn’t drink alcohol. Now you may think this is no big deal – there are plenty of alcohol-free Christmas Cake recipes – and you’d be right. But I like my festive fruits with alcohol, and I’m pretty sure my brother Neil (whose site this is) used to as well, so this can’t be any old orange-juice substituted cake.

Depending on how much alcohol you usually ‘feed’ your Christmas cake, this could well be a better cake to give to your guests who may be driving too: the number of units in a piece of cake is highly variable, and they soon add up over the festive period. Besides, the point of this is cake is that it will be delicious, and no one will ever miss the loopy juice.

With many traditional fruit cakes, alcohol is often used not only for added for flavour, but also to moisten and preserve. The subtle flavours that come from distilled spirits are due not simply to the ethanol, but also esters and other alcohols that are collected during distillation.

For this reason, I’m upping the subtle flavours in my cake by adding tea-soaked fruit (a la Dominic Hopkinson), but spicing it up with Chai, and adding a nod to Temperance Bars with sarsaparilla, but you could easily substitute with a little Manchester Magic (a more readily available traditional temperance drink in UK supermarkets). As for the moisture and preservation, I’ll detail that in the recipe, which is based on the tried-and-tested Delia great “The Classic Christmas Cake”.

I’ll update this blog with photographs of the finished cake (and maybe us stuffing our faces with it), but it is important to remember that however these things turn out, the thought, time and effort put in to them alone makes them a wonderful gift. Take that from someone who knows (thanks aunties!).

Chai Spiced Christmas Cake

Ingredients

1 kg Mixed dried fruit (I used around 750g ready mixed fruit {rasins, currants, sultanas and mixed peel}, plus 150g chopped ready-to eat dried apricots, 100g cranberries)
2 Chai Teabags
2 tablespoons Sarsparilla Cordial (Stockists of Mawsons, which is great, here)
1 tablespoon vanilla syrup (the kind you use in coffee)
225g butter
225g soft dark sugar
225g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground mixed spice
1 Piper longum (long pepper) bashed (subtitute with a few peppercorns)
1/2 teaspoon of salt (only if using unsalted butter)
4 large free range eggs, beaten
1 dessert/soup spoon/blob of treacle
50g chopped walnuts

Method

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius.

Place the fruit into a large bowl, and steep the two chai teabags in 25oml of boiling water for five minutes, then remove the teabags and pour the tea over the fruit, following with the Sarsparilla cordial and the vanilla syrup.

Cover and leave for about two hours (but no more, as the lovely rich colour will drain from the fruit). Drain the liquid and reserve. Add the walnuts and mix in.

Cream the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Sift flour and spices separately in a large  bowl. If using a stand mixer, use a low speed (Kenwood- speed 2).

Gradually add the beaten eggs to the creamed butter and sugar mix with patience, adding a small amount at a time until they are well mixed in. Take this mixture and add half the mixture to the flour, folding in gently with a big metal spoon. Add the treacle.

Next add half the fruits and nuts, and fold in. Follow with the remainder of flour, and again the remainder of the fruits. Check the consistency, and add some of the reserved tea mixture strained from the dried fruit so that it has a soft dropping consistency, between 1-3 tablespoons (if you fruit was very thirsty and took it all up- brew a little more!).

For the cake tin, use an 8 inch (20 cm) round cake tin or a 7 inch (18 cm) square tin, greased and lined with silicone paper (baking parchment). Add two layers of parchment on the outside to above the level of the tin too.

Transfer the cake mixture to the tin, spread well to the corners (if square!) and add a small indent to the centre to encourage a flat bake.

Finish by covering the top of the cake with a double square of silicone paper with a 50p-size hole in the centre (to protect it during the long slow cooking).

Bake in the oven at 150 degrees for 2 hours, then drop the temperature to 140, and bake for a further hour and a half.  Check it is baked by inserting a cocktail stick.  If it doesn’t come out clean, continue to cook until it does so. Making christmas cake is a slow process, enjoy it!

Once finished, let cool for 30 minutes in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack until completely cool. Store in an airtight container and allow to mature for at least a couple of weeks.

You can then ‘feed’ the cake once in a while,  if you wish. Traditional cakes would be fed with Brandy or a similar spirit – the alcohol helps to preserve the cake. Adding too much non-alcoholic liquid, however, may have the opposite effect. So if you would like to feed the cake I recommend using a very small amount of a sugary liquid, with some extra flavours added. I’ll be feeding mine with a small amount of strong black chai tea boiled with some dark soft brown sugar to make a syrup.

Once you are content with your cake, you can marzipan and ice it. This aids in preservation and to lock moisture in. It is recommended that you do this a couple of weeks before you want to eat / give your cake, so early December is ideal for a christmas cake. See here for some tips on icing your cake.

Update (Neil): Christmas cake was received and duly scoffed – brilliant thanks Jan! See below with hand of said scientist creeping into shot. 

They’re a curious thing, awareness weeks, and Alcohol Awareness Week is one of the most curious, if only for its name. The thing is, we’re all aware of alcohol. In fact, I can just hear the odd joker saying “Oh, I’m aware of it alright!” I wish he’d shut up – I’m trying to write. He’s drunk again, too.

When I first went alcohol-free I would get annoyed by a particular question: “Are you sure it’s just coincidence you gave up drinking when it was your round?” No, wait, I mean “Why don’t you drink?” I hated this question, primarily because of its central presumption of drinking alcohol as normality.

Nowadays it doesn’t bother me because, as long as it’s not framed in a critical ‘get with the programme’ kind of way, I see it as a fair question. After all, we all have a relationship with alcohol, even those of us who don’t drink it. For a lot of drinkers, the idea of not drinking alcohol is a confusing one (why wouldn’t you if you can?). Mind you, after a few drinks, so is a toilet door that says ‘push’, but has a handle.

Anyway to return to the point, that’s not awareness means in this context: it means awareness of the negative effects. Funnily enough, I think most people are aware that alcohol is largely unhealthy. You can’t dispute the message that health organisations give us: that alcohol causes damage to [insert long list of organs here], with the liver being the star turn (and the one people reference jokingly).

There are other medical issues, of course: it’s not for no reason, for example, that the mnemonic for determining the cause of acute pancreatitis is I GET SMASHED (Ideopathic, Gallstones, Ethanol etc…). And that’s without going into the social – or should I say antisocial – effects.

Even when a night out does end badly, it’s usual for it to be framed as a joke. What you did is not shameful – it’s a funny anecdote.

The awareness week is led by Alcohol Concern who have a long list of alcohol-related facts on their website. But when you go out drinking it’s a very different world to the one of statistics. I don’t recall ever standing at the bar, back when I was a drinker, thinking “Maybe I won’t drink – what about cirrhosis of the liver?” My thoughts tended to be more on the subject of crisp-flavour dilemmas or pint-carriage strategies.

They seemed like two separate worlds: the theoretical world of dangers, many of which would take years to develop and even then I assumed probably wouldn’t; and the real world of those crazy nights out you have when you’re drinking, when everyone’s having a great laugh. And even when a night out does end badly, it’s usual for it to be framed as a joke. What you did is not shameful – it’s a funny anecdote.

Then there’s the other gap in awareness – between how you think you behave on a night out, and how you actually do. Current TV is exploring this idea with What Did I Do Last Night in which they film participants on a night out and then show them the film. Although if I’m being honest, it does look kind of fun at times.

Perhaps it’s only when such gaps are closed that we have a true awareness. I’m told the Accident and Emergency department of any UK hospital on a Friday or Saturday night can have this effect. Although personally I’ve found just waiting in a taxi queue in a city centre in the early hours whilst stone-cold sober is as good an insight as any. In fact there have been many such times when I’ve wished I could have dulled my awareness.