The morning after
JOHN CLARE PHOTO
The Poles wake up to what they say is a howling of kittens. The French greet the morning with a wooden mouth and a hair ache, while the Danes get carpenters in the forehead.
English speakers the world over call that mix of mortar-blast headache, queasiness, Sahara thirst, uncertain recollections of the previous evening – I didn’t, did I? – and a brooding sense of of guilt as simply a hangover.
Just as there are many descriptions for hangovers, there are as many so-called cures.
According to American writer Joan Acocella, Africans suffering from too much hilarity eat peanut butter, Germans eat pickled herring, the Japanese eat pickled plums, Russians go for pickled brine (perhaps to put them off drinking forever), Moroccans do penance by chewing cumin seeds and if you beg for help in Vietnam they’ll give you a nice helping of wax-gourd juice.