I went round my mate James’ house last night to stay up late and watch UFC 109. UFC didn’t start until 3am though, and the main event not until 6am, so it was a pretty long night.
Thing is, and we do this all the time when we stay up late for UFC or Boxing, but we started drinking early before the UFC had even begun. Well I say early, I started at 9pm, which I know isn’t early by most people’s standards, but it’s pretty early if you intend on staying awake until 6am.
The first rule when staying up late is No Drinking. Unfortunately we broke that rule quite considerably. Especially considering I wasn’t driving like usual, so we decided to make a night of it. I brought an 8-pack of Tuborg. Now, have you seen Tuborg bottles before? They’re quite amazing.. My mate David first opened my eyes to Tuborg, and once you’ve seen the amazing ring-pull lid, you’ve just got to show it off to other people. I’m constantly amazed by how well it works. In fact, I buy an 8-pack pretty much every time I go to a party just to show them off. Mind-blowing. Anyway…
The trouble with drinking when you’ve got to stay up late is, obviously, it makes you tired, but it’s not just that. Once you start drinking you’ve got to carry on through to the end otherwise you’ll start to get a hangover before you’ve even gone to bed. As it was, I was still drinking at 6am this morning just to make sure I didn’t get a headache before the UFC had started. Luckily though, even after 9 hours of drinking, I didn’t have a hangover when I woke up. Which was nice.
Typically, James falls asleep hours before the event is due to start, so the second rule of staying up late is that one of us has to wake him up so he doesn’t miss the start. This means that we’re the ones fighting the ZZZs when the match is on, whereas James is all bright-eyed and busy-tailed hoping it goes the full 12 rounds (if it’s a boxing match, obvs)
It’s not just late-night sporting occasions that James falls asleep at, oh no. Ask him what his favourite memory of Batman Begins is, and it’ll be the hospital explosion bit. And that’s only because it woke him up. Admittedly we decided to go to the cinema after we had been out for a couple of hours drinking beforehand, but still. I’ve had that happen to me elsewhere too; my mate Kip fell asleep at the start of the Two Towers Lord of the Rings film and woke up right at the end. Unbelievable.
Back to staying up late, our third and final rule when we stay up for a sporting occasion is that we always eat an Arctic Roll. I’m not even sure where this tradition started anymore. I guess it must’ve just been in James’ fridge the first time we stayed up late and now we’ve got used to eating it each time. Usually we have it with a nice cup of tea but I was such a bloody lad last night that I had mine with the last Tuborg of the pack, just minutes after I’d showed everyone how clever the ring-pull on my bottle was.
——————–
If you haven’t had enough of me quite yet, I also appear on the SPOnGcast each fortnight. Visit SPOnG.com to download or iTunes to subscribe.
Big Brother may have finished but our last Big Bother podcast – Episode 8 – is now out. Just over 90 minutes of good old Big Brother chat with David Turners, Capone_Adam and myself. Download directly from the Big Bother site or subscribe on iTunes.