On Your Marks… Get Silly

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow London residents and revellers, can you hear that sound? That’s right, what you can hear is the lolloping approach of the time of year that we all love and hate in equal measure: Silly Season.

For those of you for which this phrase rings no bells, I salute you. You are clearly too grown up, sensible and mature to get caught up in the shenanigans of this time of year. Or… perhaps your eyes have not yet been opened to the month ahead and the things that you will encounter. If you fall into this category – I bid you good luck.

Silly Season is just as it sounds… the time of year when your ‘drink two nights a week’ rule gets aggressively ejected from the window. The time of year when you accept every invitation extended your way with a joyous ‘why the hell not?’ no matter who it is that is offering. It’s that time of year when even an innocent suggestion of an after work pint of bitter or glass of wine can descend into debaucherous madness which finds you propping up the bar at 5am over another round of tequilas with James from accounts, despite the fact that you know you have a 9am meeting and that your morning will be spent making a mad dash to Primark for a new outfit because your current one smells like mulled wine, fags and bad behaviour.

Londoners tend to approach this time of year with a degree of nervous anticipation. You know you’re about to have A LOT of fun but you understand the effect that it is likely to have on your sanity. The fact of the matter is… there is NO excuse. It’s Christmas. Therefore, we must all eat, drink and be merry. It is as ancient a law as ‘Thou shalt not steal‘ and ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery‘. Whichever Wise Guy (Jesus?) it was who took the time to carve these rules into stone should have added a footnote reading ‘All Ten Commandments are null and void between Mid-November and January 1‘. With the exception of the one about murder – obvs! During Silly Season, all sense and morals can join your life rules out of that window I mentioned earlier.

Your bank balance had better have been recently plumped up, you better have been downing vitamin C like a champion and let’s hope that your immune system is at its peak because you are about to take it down. Way down.

There will be no mercy, no excuses, no time for eight hours sleep. There will be no time for reasoning when you are considering whether or not to have another glass when you know you should be hopping on the last tube. Sense will be nowhere in sight when you drunkenly stumble over to the dude you’ve been lusting after at work to tell him you like how his eyes sparkle only to vomit all over his feet.

That’s right. It’s going to be tough. It will be expensive, not to mention exhausting and hugely embarrassing, but the vital thing to remember is that you have the ultimate excuse; it’s Silly Season. No one will judge you, they know, they understand because they are going through it too. It’s like the city has changed into the Wild West and normal rules of society no longer apply. You have permission to go crazy.

So, let’s do this London. Let’s be ridiculous.

Let the games commence.

Image by Will Mitchell courtesy of Flickr