The 'Friday Brunch'

Bleary eyed and sweaty, a lady stands on the table, her blouse torn and covered in red wines stains and the back of her skirt tucked into her knickers. Her friends – equally inebriated – clap and cheer, the table littered with empty wine bottles and discarded cocktail glasses, as she swigs the last dregs from a champagne bottle. It’s 2 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Welcome to the “Friday Brunch”.

A once classy and culinary affair, where one might enjoy a lazy lunch with a glass of champagne, has morphed into the ‘drunch’ – or ‘drunk-lunch’ – where the food plays second fiddle to the free flowing alcohol. You won’t find an eggs benedict or orange juice in sight; instead, you will find binge drinking, bad singing and Mojitos. For four hours, on the holiest day of the week, hoards of expats succeed in creating their own “Mini-Magaluf” as they run a mock in the grounds of five star hotels. And, while there are those who are able to enjoy simply having a few drinks and a nice lunch in a luxurious setting before taking a taxi quietly home, plenty of others use the four-hour brunch, which runs approximately from midday to 4pm, as a license to get plastered. Come 4pm, sozzled expats either head home or head onwards, bravely navigating the city’s night life. Many are still standing (just!) come 3am, wrecked but resilient.

Brunches range widely in prices and quality, from burgers and ‘Budwiser’, to cavier and ‘Crystal’, but,  after a few hours, though, it doesn’t really matter, as come 4pm, many won’t be able to tell if they are drinking ‘Bollinger’ or bath water…