how to wet lunch

a beginner's guide

Wet lunch (verb, noun) to enjoy a lunch with a pleasant amount of alcohol in a guilt free, carpe diem, manner.

In order to wet lunch the appropriate way:

• It really should happen on a weekday, ideally a Friday, but I understand that this can be difficult for people with jobs and responsibilities beyond ‘write jokes? hehe’. Tuesdays are my other favourite Wet Lunch days because nothing good ever happens on a Tuesday. (edit: this was originally a Thursday, but I subsequently found out I was actually born on a Thursday)

• Extra points awarded if you skive off work.

• Sit in the window of an eatery with good people-watching windows. Personally, I like the Old Compton Brasserie in Soho, but I could just as enjoyably Wet Lunch in a Beefeater.

• Pre-book for god’s sake, and do not pick an ironic location. I know it may seem like I picked a brasserie ironically, but doing things ironically is for the youth/chronically insecure. I love brasseries because, for me, they’re fancy; the service is often good; they can make most cocktails and often have a nice wine list.

• Aim for two hours minimum, and avoid restaurants with strict time slots. A waiter pointing out the mortality of your lunch is not relaxing. There’s a reason we don’t set alarms for the end of dinner parties. Or why, when you get a massage, the masseuse doesn’t scream a countdown while hitting your buttcheeks with wooden paddles (I’ve only been for one massage and it was very intense).

• Wet Lunch with one other person. Only Wet Lunch with two people if one person cancels, so you ask the other person on your Wet Lunch List, and then the original person says they can now do it, and it turns out both people are friends. For example.

• Drink whatever you like, provided it can be savoured rather than chugged. For me, this means extra-dry, extra-dirty vodka martinis. White wine is off limits, because I drink it at the speed of light and then wake up behind a book case trying to communicate with someone via dust patterns (this is a reference to the film Interstellar).

• Eat food, obviously. We’re not wetting. We’re wet lunching. There are no rules about what food to have or how many courses to go for, other than: knock yourself out. With a wooden paddle.

• No small talk is allowed at a Wet Lunch, only good hearty conversation. Why did you fall out with your brother? Did you really call Miriam a wanker? Have you ever cried in a bakery? Etc.

• Don’t bring your children or a dog. If someone turns up with their partner unannounced, then it is your duty to perform a citizens arrest.

• No dress code.

• No phones on the table.

• Drink lots of water alongside the alcohol. The aim isn’t to get battered, but to walk back to the train station feeling expansive. After a Wet Lunch I want to whatsapp everyone I know to tell them they have good skin and that maybe we should go on a short trip to Prague. Sometimes I become so enamoured by the colour of the sky I take a picture, only to look at it the following day and discover that it is simply grey clouds. This is what I mean by expansive.

• Harbour no guilt about the Wet Lunch. Unless you have difficulty with alcohol (arguably most people who drink alcohol have some difficulty, but you know what I mean), there is no reason why getting pleasantly day drunk with a friend in a brasserie/beefeater should be anything other than delightful.

• Split the bill for god’s sake.

• I dedicate every Wet Lunch to a good friend who introduced me to the concept in early 2023. We’d lost touch over the pandemic, so he suggested a Wet Lunch and I found out more about him during those two hours in the brasserie than I had the previous ten years. We decided to make this a regular thing, to (as he put it) ‘keep the flame alive’, but then he died. Sorry to abruptly throw death in there but hey, I said no small talk allowed. So every time I Wet Lunch, I sit at the same table as we did in early 2023, I raise a little toast to my friend, and I keep the flame alive. And I remind myself, just like I remind you, that we should always do these sorts of things, these frivolous pointless things, because life is too short. It’s too short to be ironic, it’s too short to opt for a Brazilian Pantalas massage because it had the word ‘pant’ in it, and it’s certainly too short to deny yourself the pleasure of drinking three martinis, expanding, and finding out why Miriam is a wanker.