Happy hangover day – things to do when you’re hungover around East London

It’s my birthday tomorrow. Thirty five feels like a millstone milestone, and so, determined to enter it positively, I decided to front load my hangover by having drinks with work colleagues on a Thursday night and have Friday off with Tom, to sketch around our ends while the kids are at school, the one day of the year we get to ourselves. It was just as well, having hit a wall at 10.30 pm and narrowly avoided being sick on the number 8 bus. But after a reasonable night’s sleep – in which I had a brilliant idea for a new novel (I do find hangovers most inspiring) – we got up bright and early, patched up the damage to my face, and got the kids to school on time by the skin of our teeth.

Healthy hangover breakfast at the Pavilion cafe

With an hour to kill until Ava’s “achiever’s assembly”- I was pleased for her when we found the note in her bookbag that she was being presented with an award, and though I was happy we could both attend, it did mean altering our plans on our precious day off – we wandered through Victoria Park for a bite to eat to carry us through the worst of our sore heads. The Pavilion breakfast at the cafe in the park is wholesome enough to feel like it’s doing some good as it mops up last night’s zambucca – all mega mushroom, halloumi and homemade baked beans. And with a cuppa to follow with Reprobate Kate, who was having a minor breakdown over boiler issues, we were just about sober by the time we bowled into the assembly hall for some very cute certificate giving, which veered between congratulations for not being naughty and backpatting for always being good – either way, as we parents were encouraged to join in with the opening lines of Heather Smalls’ surprisingly tuneless “what have you done today…” I did feel a healthy touch of pride.

Substandard massages at spa London at York Hall

We followed up our parental duties with a booked massage at our local spa, which is located in the old Victorian baths at Bethnal Green, a location that means it obviously struggles with the same crumbling infrastructure of the rather bleak swimming pools above. Billed as an affordable spa, we’ve used the facilities on several occasions, and it has a good array of sauna, steam and plunge pools, and the weird local custom of old Jamaican men whipping themselves with towels. Today being Friday, however, was the rather sexist women only day, meaning we couldn’t spa, so opted to have deep tissue massages instead, which at £60 for 50 minutes, didn’t seem all that affordable. I had the rather lovely Genevieve, and I was secretly pleased that lucky Tom had a hatchet faced matron who looked as though she could lug barrels for a living, so sorting out his ropey shoulders should be light work. Yet, much of the massage felt like a gentle stroke, which frankly, I can get for free and get a happy ending too, so when I asked for a little more pressure, she went to town with her elbows. None of it really hit the mark, and like many massages,  I ended up feeling more frustrated than relaxed- though if anything, my hangover had eased up a bit by the time she’d finished.

Sunny side up at Hurwundeki,Cambridge Heath Road

But now with oil in my hair, and coated in grease, my daydream of skipping straight out to the Bethnal Green Town Hall for lunch – the poshest local establishment in the area – was rather scuppered. So we decided to try out the rather more low key environs of Hurwundeki, the Korean restaurant my step-sister Jess, who’s moved in with us while she gets herself established in the big smoke, chefs at.

When we arrived, she looked tired and harassed – the split shifts she’s been working are fairly brutal, and mean we’ve barely seen her since she moved in back in September. But she lit up when she saw us, and I was pleased that she’s in an open plan kitchen, rather than cooped up out the back. The place itself is a unusual, and therefore typically East London, mix of cafe, restaurant and hairdressers, which gives it a lovely, informal atmosphere, located as it is, across the road from the strip club when I first met Tom.

Needless to say, it makes for a good place for people watching. Tom and I ordered dumplings, kimchi – Korean pickles, and chicken fried rice, which arrived topped with a perfectly fried egg and spring onion slithers, while the dumpling were piping hot and delicious, served up with some icy cold and addictively spicy kimchi. It really was tasty, and at less than £6 each for a decent plate of food, a terrific bargain. It safely saw off the rest of my hangover, especially when followed up with a hours’ bed before we picked the kids up from school. I say we, I mean Tom. Well, it’s only one’s birthday once a year… even if it doesn’t properly happen till tomorrow. But with Reprobate Kate threatening to bring round a bottle of prosecco tonight, I might well look another year older by the morning.