1 January

New Year's Day

Bloody Mary (Difford's recipe)

So we are drinking a...

Bloody Mary (Difford's recipe)

If Auld Lang Syne left your throat dry? And dancing left your feet sore? And drinking left your head fuzzy? Then resist the temptation to curl up in bed and grasp the nettle, drink plenty of water, grab some breakfast (preferably an English fry-up) and mix yourself a Bloody Mary.

So appropriate is this brunch cocktail on New Year's Day that our American friends have deemed this to be National Bloody Mary Day and (not to be left out) by extension, everwhere else it is World Bloody Mary Day.

Having enjoyed your fried breakfast and Bloody Mary, then complete your restoration with a Corpse Reviver No.2. It offers plenty of Vitamin C for health and even a dash of absinthe for, umm, quite the reverse. And should you have plans for tomorrow, please note that "four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again."

Some crazy folk around the world have a very different regime to kick start their New Year with thousands of the foolhardy swimmers jumping into freezing cold water for a brisk, restorative swim.

One of the oldest organised New Year swims is in Vancouver where the Polar Bear Club has been meeting since 1920. And as part of a tradition that started in the 1960s, around 10,000 people will charge into the icy North Sea from the beaches of Scheveningen in the Netherlands for the annual Nieuwjaarsduik. West, across the same sea, in South Queensferry in Scotland, folk turn out to enjoy the annual "Loony Dook" in which cheery souls in fancy dress parade through the town acting like "loonies" and then take a "dook", in the ice cold sea.

If you're joining them, there's only one thing more to do today, mix a Hair of the Dog.

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