God Rest Ye (very) Merry Gentlemen

Top 10 Most Outstanding Moments at our Christmas Party:

1) Being greeted with free champagne on arrival, and the ensuing free-for-all mosh pit at the bar as people dived in to get the coveted - and limited - second glass.

2) Lunch being served an hour late, and the kitchen running out of turkey, causing a half hour delay while they defrosted some more. This was followed by same kitchen then ingeniously running out of strawberry roulade, causing an uprising as the peasants revolted and hurled abuse at the waiters, who hurled far more colourful abuse back (I'm hoping our reaction was reflected in their tip).

3) Drinking for free all night, after finding myself sitting next to Farhana at lunch and discovering she doesn't drink, and filching her tokens off her.

4) The "surprise entertainment" - salsa dancing lessons on a dancefloor the size of a postage stamp. Reminded me very much of that scene in Dirty Dancing where the guests are learning the side to side bunny hop. Unecessary and deliberately painful.

5) The Company's Got Talent - the shit PA system meant you couldn't hear the lyrics, the horseshoe shaped bar meant that only the 30 people gathered in the front could actually see anything, and sure enough, a group of semi-drunk girls thought it would be cool to get their karaoke on to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive. Well done guys, this was clearly a roaring success.

6) Finding out a rather scandalous bit of office gossip about who's shagging who..... my lips are supposed to be sealed, but I may have to drop a hint to the person in question, it's just so good.

7) Finally revealing my tattoo to those in my team who've heard of it but never seen it (before you get any dirty ideas, it's across my lower back). Many compliments followed.

8) Spending the rest of the night running away from one particularly over-enthusiastic middle-aged male fan of my tattoo who decided it would be fun to a) try and touch it (read: major grope) whenever I walked past and b) look for other possible hidden tattoos on the rest of my body. There's always one.

9) Dancing. First with a group of people, then on my own when said group disappeared, then doing the tango (or trying to) with DB, the company's own perpetually pissed Don Juan.

10) Leaving with two of the guys on my team, and having everyone ask what time I kicked them out this morning. Juicier than the reality, which was a rather grumpy boyfriend shattered from a night of no sleep due to my excessive drunken snoring. Payback's a bitch!

Oh Come All Ye Faithful

Today is the day of my office Christmas party. We have two parties - the big company one today which most of the staff body attends, and our team party on the 18th. Of the two, the team party is the one that we are all looking forward to. That should be great fun - we're all pretty friendly, there's a certain level of close-knit camaradarie and we can get plastered without worrying about the Directors looking over our shoulders.

The party today, on the other hand, seems to have inspired a lot of grumbling and reluctance among the masses. Apparently if it's anything like the parties from years gone by, we are all going to be bored stiff by 8pm and only the hardcore (read: frowned upon losers) stay on to get well and truly pissed and create the few juicy stories that actually exist in the lore of these events. So I am feeling ever so slightly ashamed for being excited, but seriously? Grumbling about the chance to take most of the day off work and spend it eating, drinking and chatting? Who cares if no-one pukes in the pot plants? So what if people don't fall over on the dancefloor? I do enough of that when out with my mates, so a civilised Christmas gathering is quite attractive to me. And there is always one who defies tradition and causes drama. I can sit smugly assured that this time it will not be me.

The celebrations officially kick off at 12pm, when everyone is allowed to abandon their posts in the office and make their way to Sugar Reef Bar in Piccadilly. You might remember from a previous post of mine that Sugar Reef is the most expensive bar we've yet been to in London. As our £10 ticket covers the three course meal and 3 drinks throughout the course of a very long afternoon, I have already targeted the non-drinkers at my table with every intention of begging off their extra drinks tokens.

Lunch will be served at 2pm, whereafter there will be some sort of surprise entertainment, and then, horror of horrors, an event which is sure to inspire derision among the troops: The Company's Got Talent. A talent show inspired by Simon Cowell's Britain's Got Talent, complete with our very own Mrs Nasty judge. As much as this could be a rather hilarious and enlightening event if done properly, our staff have shown considerable stubborness in refusing to drop their oh so important "too cool for school" airs and graces, and I believe at this stage we only have one entrant - a rather eccentric Director who is doing a nasty and disparaging song/rap about another Director who recently left (ok, so this should at least be controversial, if not down right funny). I think overall it's a cool idea, but you need everyone on board with 100% enthusiasm to make it work. A half-hearted production will fall very flat.

To make things worse, because of the lack of entries into the contest, they have now extended it to include karaoke. So what's going to happen is, at about 6pm when most of us are pissed and some have a little Dutch courage going on, we are going to be subjected to some atrocious wailing to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, and any song from Grease by those whose Dutch courage leads them to believe that other people will actually be impressed by their attempts at singing.

As it's starting at 6pm, and many people with families will end up leaving around normal end of work time of 5:30pm, this stage might send at least another 50% packing, and so leave the few who actually want to kick back and get pissed before the disco starts at 8pm. We just have to somehow get through the preceding earache.

Anyway, it's a welcome change from the drudgery that is my daily routine, and I for one will enjoy myself, whether or not I have any comrades with me. I'll report back tomorrow morning as soon as I can sift through the thoughts in my no doubt addled brain.