Sorry folks, beat you to it before you've even ironed the doilies.

We staged a battle between Delia and the laws of metaphysics to create an epic banquet from our geriatric Whirlpool oven and kitchen the size of the boot on a Fiat Panda.

We broke new ground in the arena of root vegetable experimentation and answered the age-old conundrum: How many students does it take to flambé a Christmas pudding?*

We found out that, contrary to previous belief, the ability to roast an entire chicken is not the sole preserve of people with mortgages and their own carving implements, but, actually, that we can do it, too, and it's dead easy.

Sorry, Mum.

I've always believed it is the duty of the idle student body of Britain to offer up themselves as service to the state, by pushing the boundaries of the physically possible where human beings are concerned.

This weekend was a noble research venture, selflessly turning ourselves from lithe, bright-eyed youngsters into a lowly species of sofa monster, our colossal bulk moored in front of X-factor because, in our indiscriminate bout of culinary expedition, someone may have eaten the remote control.

With cream.

It got to the stage where you confuse "not physically going to be sick any more" with "hunger", so the day becomes a big game of digestive Jenga, keeping yourself "topped up" lest your belly deflate and start asking for salad.

"I think the mince pie's gone down a bit now Brenda — quick, pass me that selection box."

This, of course, is what those nibbly cocktail snack trays were invented for — their varied range of shapes fitting into even the smallest of crevices to ensure no stomach space is wasted.

The long wiggly ones, the little puffy ones that look like snail shells, the herby wheels… thought you were full? Ha! The cocktail snack tray laughs in the face of "full".

Special recognition needs to be given to my flatmate Pete, who exhibited his own breed of "tummy Tardis" by putting away two whole platefuls, and myself, because I bravely, and at great personal expense, chose this weekend as the weekend to start drinking again.

I have spent five weeks as a smug teetotal (for "smug", read "bored", and for "teetotal", read "except mulled wine, which is clearly not alcohol but actually two of your five-a-day fruit portions"), in an effort to save money, dignity, and calories that could be better spent on going round German Christmas markets eating all the samples and pretending I might actually buy something.

I have worked my way through the whole range of those little Britvic mixer bottles and conducted a survey on varying soda water prices in North London pubs.

I have smiled the deranged, sober smile of the only person who doesn't understand why the lamp-post is funny, and I have woken up the morning after feeling sprightly and amazing to find there is nobody to gloat to because they're all in bed feeling like this:

"He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider crab on the tarry shingle of the morning.

"The light did harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.

"A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse.

"His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.

"During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been beaten up by secret police. He felt bad." Lucky Jim, 1954.

Thanks there to Kingsley Amis, poet laureate of the hangover, for writing what I never could because I'm too busy feeling distinctly unsprightly and unamazing after making up for lost time.

The leftover nibbly snack box is sure to soothe matters, though, and at least now I understand why the lamppost was so funny. Smugness can wait until New Year.

*The answer here is directly proportional to the number of smoke alarms in your respective buildings that need to be coaxed into a state of muteness by gentle tea-towel wafting.

Allocate two per alarm, one to pour the alcohol, three to lick the excess booze off the plate and at least five to make "ooh" bonfire night noises before it's revealed that nobody likes Christmas pudding anyway and you'd have been better off with the trifle.