If your festIve celebrations mean making the pilgrimage to your parents’ house – you might even be reading this en route, sandwiched next to a man who’s been drinking ‘festive’ lager since 10am – you’re not alone. We travelled 5.6 billion miles last year to visit our families at Christmas, according to Onepoll.com (and here’s betting most of us then spent a few nights on a lumpy put-you-up bed in the box-room that’s now ‘mum’s gym’). And yet, one of the greatest traditions of the season is revisiting the local pub – aka the one you threw up in after your A-level results. Here are the people you’re definitely going to run into there..
The Now Really Rich One
The son of your parents’ neighbours-but-one, he’s been in Dubai for the past four years selling gold-lined swimming pools (or something). Drenched in an asthma-triggering amount of aftershave and braying about his maid (a fortnightly cleaner who picks up his pants), he’s an assault on all the senses as he tries to order vintage champagne in Wetherspoons.
The One Everyone Fancied
As a 14-year-old you’d have given up your Heather Shimmer lipstick for a few seconds of eye contact, and your friendship group never recovered after one of you snogged him at a house party. Will seeing him again give you that same lurch in your stomach? Well, yes, but for different reasons... one marriage down, a second on the way and a third-trimester beer belly.
The Swan
You didn’t give this one a second glance in school, but more fool you. Maybe they are now a Hollywood star (sounds far-fetched, but it happened to me) or they’ve had the ultimate glow-up. Is it too late to crawl?
The 'Friend' You Avoid
She might have snogged your boyfriend when you bought him home from uni; perhaps she smashed your parents’ lamp at a house party and never admitted it, or maybe she just ends all her social media posts with XOXO. Whatever the reason, you’ve avoided her for a decade, until now... and an awkward prosecco-fuelled ‘catch-up’ is coming your way
The One Who Has Given Birth To A Litter
You defriended her on Facebook after she posted the picture of baby number two’s gastroenteritis nappy, so you had no idea she’d popped out another three since then. If you have any less than six o spring yourself, she’ll look down on you for your lazy, materialistic life – but not before she’s shown you a 936-strong album entitled ‘Making memories’ on her cracked iPhone.
The Ex
You haven’t thought about them for years (aside from that 2am ‘You up?’ text you sent in 2013 after a nostalgic FB stalk), but there they are again. It’s almost certainly the combo of the ghost of teenage sexual-frustration past and several freely- poured Baileys. Will this be the year you succumb? Who knows..