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My brother-in-law gave me a fine whisky for Christmas, but I drank two large glasses of it before bed (my own one and then I finished off my wife's when she didn't like it). It was very tasty but made the back of my throat burn and the first sip made me cough like a hoary old prospector in a Western film. It was a Glenlivet Nadurra and looked quite special. It was only in discussing it with someone on Twitter that I realised this was cask-strength whisky and around about 60% alcohol.
Given that this was not my only alcohol of the day it is not surprising that I woke up with something of a hangover (and pretty tired as I'd been on Ernie duty all night too). I thought that maybe today I would start my new regime of not drinking.
And I lasted to lunch, so well done me.
It was a really fun Boxing Day. We got the fire going in the snug at full strength (and it made the room uncomfortably hot - especially for me as I refused to move from my fireside seat - it was awesome) and I persuaded a slightly reluctant family to have a go at Richard Osman's World Cup of Things Book. It's a game for all the family, which also serves the purpose of creating rifts between the generations and the sexes and ultimately proves the redundancy of democracy. We played animals first, because we have a relative visiting from America who though originally British wasn't up on all the pop culture references. Whenever there was a stale-mate in the voting I asked Phoebe which was the best animal and she always had an opinion. The tiger was the ultimate victor, which might have been down to her influence. With chocolate bars she was less useful as when given a choice of two brands she would just say “chocolateâ€, though I decided that meant we should award the victory to whichever bar had more chocolate in it, so a Flake would beat a Crunchie. Some terrible decisions were made and Kit-Kat was the ultimate winner.
Once Phoebe was in bed we tried to argue out for the winner of any tied vote, but when we couldn't separate Thomas Edison and Susan B Anthony in the Best American round we came up with the novel idea of putting both through to the next round to make an historical Yankee three-way. This wasn't a bad way of doing it though did lead to some tactical choices. Later when ridiculously Hillary Clinton and Neil Armstrong were intractably and ridiculously tied (all the men choosing the latter and the women choosing the former, but I mean, come on and the genuine argument against him coming up, “Come on, all he did was walk on the moon") we put them both through and I realised that I could smash the feminist hegemony by voting for Tina Fey to be the opponent in the semi-finals (though to be fair I did slightly prefer her over whichever historical great she'd ended up against). But that meant that the ladies were split in their voting and the men stayed behind Armstrong and he breezed into the final. Only to find himself up against Michelle Obama who had somehow defeated Martin Luther King, and with the ladies out for revenge and the weakest male in the room switching allegiance, meant Obama was the greatest ever American. Which given earlier humorous suggestions that the more senior members of the family were voting on a basis of skin colour was quite a relief.
At least the vote between Hillary and Trump was on this occasion unanimously on the right side of history.
By now the family was so into this game that there was passion and anger, and huge laughs. I'd like to think Christmas Emergency Questions got half this reaction in some homes this Yuletide. I let Osman know how it was going and he suggested we attempted a podcast of the game. He may have been drunk and will have forgotten all about it by 2018, but what fun that would be.
The restaurant round threw up some awful choices of awful eating establishments, but Local Indian won out for us in the end, which was the only time my almost favourite made it (Nandos was slightly hobbled by half the room being veggie or semi-veggie) and Peep Show just about triumphed over Father Ted, after another deadlock between Father Ted and Fawlty Towers.
Someone in the room suggested it would be great to do a Champion of Champions when the book was completed and be forced to make Emergency Questions style choices between Tigers and Kit-Kats. But of course Osman is no slouch and at the end of the book suggests exactly that. Sadly we didn't get through every category so that will have to wait. I mean I guess I prefer Tigers?
If you want to save your Christmas next year (or any family gathering) then buy the book here (the first time I have seen a book where the kindle version is the most expensive option and the hardback the cheapest) 
