Tuesday 30 September 2008

Broke Night In

Part one of: what to do when you don't have no money

As a student, I am painfully aware that if you don't watch the cash you are frequently left with few options on the entertainment front. However, as long as you have a couple of mates up for a laugh, an eye for trouble and a daring nature, there's no reason why you shouldn't have just as much fun as the next guy. Who needs wine tasting, wild parties and Domino's pizza when you can have a great time on very little.

Intended for wet, cold evenings, or at least ones where you can't be arsed to get out of the house. If you read this list and aren't impressed, GO TO BED EARLY you boring sod.

  1. Make hot chocolate. If you mix it right, the bubbles on top go shiny and weird colours. One thing I can do is make a mean cup of hot chocolate, so you can always invite me round and I'll make it for you. Slurp away to your heart's content and talk, watch a film, play a board game etc.

  2. Play toss the cock – invented when we stumbled back to mine after Beer Fest and Barry decided to draw a cock on a bit of paper. Throw the 'cock' and whoever it points towards has to do a dare. Below, what happens when you are dared to put a bin on your head.

  3. Do some baking, then eat it. Get corn flakes, melted chocolate, mix, stick into cake cases, wait for the chocolate to set again and ta da. Ready made munchies.

  4. My sister and biscuit mixture, below, my apron.
  5. Have sex

  6. Read a book aloud to friends, because it's actually incredibly relaxing being read to and/or reading to other people. Make sure it's something good, and you have to do the voices.

  7. Write a story between several of you. Each of you start one on separate bits of paper, then after 5 minutes you swap round with only the last line of what you wrote showing and write the next 5 minutes of someone else's story. Keep doing it until you've done about five turns, then read them out loud to each other.

  8. Talk about funny stuff you did together when you first knew each other

  9. Show each other Youtube videos or, if you get bored, Xtube videos

  10. Watch an old Disney video, yes VHS

  11. Share a shower, to add a bit of extra, uh, just try showering in the dark too. It's fun.

  12. Cut your friends hair

  13. Start a band, you don't need instruments, use kitchen utensils

  14. Give each of your friends a different edition of Guinness Book of World Records and compare notes

  15. Make paper chains – for any idiots or deprived children, that means cutting coloured paper into strips and dabbing glue one one end to join it and make a loop. Get the next strip and put through the first loop before sealing. You get the idea? It's more fun to decorate them with pens/glitter/pasta/cut out bits from magazines before putting the chain together.

  16. Customise your clothes using studs off of a studded belt, patches, badges, whatever.

  17. Paint, on paper, a wall, someone's face. Below, the 'black eye' I gave my sister when we were bored

  18. Decorate a room, or the whole house if you can afford paint

  19. Learn javascript in a weekend

  20. Try to remember as many funny Mock the Week lines as you can

  21. Play charades, I'm going to rashly assume that everyone knows how to play that

  22. Takes ages over washing and preening yourself. Have a bit of a pamper.

  23. Watch a DVD

  24. Argue over what DVD you would watch it you had time to after choosing

  25. See who's bravest. Have different crazy things to do and see who will go furthest, for example, light a candle (or use a lighter) and see who can hold their hands closest too or in the flame for the longest amount of time. For the sadomasochist in you.


  26. Get naked. Not just for the fun of it, I mean play strip poker, or naked twister. Below, my friends getting wild at one of my parties. Everyone always gets naked at my parties.

  27. Breathe on a window and draw in it

  28. Hold a vigil

  29. Play hide and seek

  30. Pierce your own ears – you will need a saftey pin and a flame. Put the safety pin in the flame, put the safety pin through your ear. Sorted.


  31. Graffiti newspapers/magazines lying around that aren't yours. Even better if you have a sibling/flat mate with posters of what they consider a cute celebrity, draw a moustache on the posters and see how long it takes them to notice.

  32. 'The Government are doing a good job of running the country.' – discuss.

  33. Count the hairs on your dog, scales on your fish, chips in the paint etc.

  34. Count all the gram markers on an old pair of scales to check there are the right number

  35. Choose a victim and draw all over them

  36. Draw round someone/thing with chalk/pen and fill the outline with related doodles

  37. Pull faces at yourself in the mirror


  38. Fill in your Dad's grey hairs with pen/highlighters

  39. Have a pillow fight

  40. Do yoga


  41. Draw pictures of what you think the other people there look like naked

  42. Go through the alphabet naming a cute actor/film/things to do if you're rich for each letter

  43. Tidy up, which should involve some sort of 'mission', e.g. pulling everything out of a cupboard/wardrobe/space under the bed and sorting it all out before putting it back again

  44. Build a castle out of cardboard boxes

  45. Slide down the stairs on pillows

  46. Look through old photo albums. Much more fun if you have other people with you and everyone swaps stories about what was going on in the pictures. If your photos are digital, do a slideshow. Below, an old photo of my little sisters at Christmas.

  47. Try to play 'ten green bottles' with glasses filled with different amounts of water

  48. DIY

  49. Read through all your old magazines, it's more interesting reading in retrospect because you think to yourself 'Oh I already knew that' and therefore feel pretty clever. Plus it's a great chance to rip out any good pictures/adverts you missed before and put them up, or scan in good articles so you can recycle the magazines if you don't want them anymore. Even better, take unwanted magazines/newspapers etc. to college/Uni/the doctors surgery because they never, ever have a good selection of stuff to read while you're waiting or making posters.

  50. Make junk models, pasta jewellery, toilet roll tube rain sticks etc. Junk models are easy, PVA glue mixed with a bit of water and, well junk, obviously. Pasta jewellery requires pasta, string, a needle or other hole making device, and some glitter or shiny paint (spray paint's good); spray/glitter up the pasta, make a hole in each end of it (unless it's macaroni) and string them together. Rain sticks: put an 'end' on one end of the tube using paper/card and sellotape. Put in pasta, rice, lentils or beans, seal up the second end and decorate the outside.

  51. Get some blue tac/Maltesers etc., make goalposts out of food packets and have a finger football tournament. Winner gets the rest of the packet of the maltesers, anyone who doesn't want to play can referee aka watching out for players munching on the 'ball' and it shooting off the table.

    And after all that, you'll be so tired you will be ready to fall asleep!

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