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lloydhenning
26th September 2011

Hanging and cotching

Prepare for a day of nothing
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TLDR

You’ve fallen asleep on the gungy rim of a club toilet, drenched your clean clothes after mistaking your wardrobe for a urinal and have woken up next to a sentient being you can barely identify as human, let alone remember its name. And after all that it’s time for the grand finale, the pièce de résistance, the Death Star trench run – the hangover.

I would categorise the hangovers into three types:

Type A: the cranial violation. Searing pain as soon as you gain consciousness usually dealt with a few more hours sleep. Often due to dehydration from believing that if you can’t taste the sambuca any more then it’s probably not having any effect on you. In this state one can be subject to small fits of blind rage, especially when confronted with complex questions such as: “you up to much today?” , a typical response would be along the lines of “GO EAT A BOUQUET OF GOAT’S PENISES!”

Type B: the rotten leftover. When you initially awake you feel fine, joyous almost, free of inhibitions and enjoying a relaxed outlook on life. This is a trap – you are still drunk. In an hour you will be curled up like a defenseless, blind, placenta covered puppy fresh out of a bitches womb.

Type C: the hollowness. No pain felt in your body, only emptiness in your soul. You refuse to deal with any of your responsibilities such as lectures or coursework, they all seem fickle and petty compared to the infinite vacuum within you. A few episodes of South Park later and a nice long nap and you begin to once again accept the possibility of compassion and purpose in life.

I’d like now to just get this out there : there is no cure to any of these, life’s not that kind.

My recommended method of dealing with the situation that your unending thirst has put you in is to toughen up, grab your actual or metaphorical balls and get on with it.

Then there is the other school of thought, ‘cotching’.

‘Cotching’, a plague that seems to sweep the student population after a “heh-vee night”. It is the activity of not doing much activity.

Waking up after an evening exhausted from running around picking up traffic cones after a few too many vodbulls, ‘cotchers’ shuffle to the toilet, whilst dealing with their business, they call up their associates to and ask “Mate, what happened last night?” On the other end of the line, Freddy, Theo or whatever cotch name they have replies, also sitting on their respective lavatories, with their tales of “epic messiness”, how “Big C was all over it” and then ending the conversation with “Yes mate. Today. Proper cotch sesh.”

They pull up their Jack Wills jogging bottoms and head for the kitchen with their frosted tips wrapped in a condom hat. The treat themselves to a massive bowl of coco pops, have a proper lush smoothie, then open up their laptops to watch some inane BBC3 comedy on iPlayer.

As their energy levels decrease, sweat begins to secrete out of every crevasse in and around their body – but that’s what the Hollister hoody is there to soak up. They slowly begin to close their bloodshot eyes and take a late morning nap to the soothing sounds of Family Guy.

Lunch is no doubt some form of takeaway. Replenishing your vitality with Dominos or worse, far worse, the middle class KFC – Nandos. Of course the proper attire to wear in public during a period of ‘cotching’ is the pyjamas they are already in and flip flops are perfect attire for traversing the streets of Manchester in all seasons.

Late afternoon features a trip to Sainsbury’s to grab “bare munch.” With Carrier bags full of chili heatwave Doritos and meat feast Goodfellas pizzas our cotcher plods home. Dinner is wolfed down in front of a gloriously low resolution film off the Internet.

The results of the cotch day? Nothing done, but at least it felt nice.

Having a hangover means total non-function. A day of diarrhea and self loathing. Maybe the only option is to embrace it and just do what your body wants to do and cotch. Chill out and forget about all that education that is being offered to you in your privileged position – whatever, this is what the first world is about.

Lloyd Henning

Lloyd Henning

Lloyd Henning is columnist and web editor for The Mancunion. He was once an olive connoisseur, he now works towards one day creating the real Jurassic Park. You can follow him on twitter @lloydhenning

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