King of Excellent (according to Scaryduck)

Monday, December 13

On Christmas Parties

It was Christmas 2001 I last went to a Christmas party. Pontardawe College's Christmas bash was in a pub in the town hysterically named "The Other Place." This wasn't the only hysterical feature of the party. The "excellent" food was laughable. Cold, small and miserable, it was pathetic. I left at 7pm, and stopped at the chippy on the way home.
Before that, the last Christmas party I'd been to was in 1997. We ended up in a cafe bar in the village, myself, Sharon and the boss all sat together whilst the other boys of the main shop floor had a competition to see who could drink the most vile concoction quickest without blowing chunks. Meanwhile, the 3 of us left and headed to a pub no longer in circulation. I've only ever been there twice in my life, and all I will ever remember is the smell of feet. Big, sweaty feet, worse than mine, and definitely worse than TDT's.
So, Friday saw me returning to the land of the drunken office party, with the office joker trying to get off with the office bike in the gents toilet. TDT had a real bee in her bonnet, I had to make myself presentable. I got a new pair of trousers (TDT left my smart ones back in Wales), a new shirt (TDT left my smart ones back in Wales) and a new tie (TDT left my smart ones back in Wales). I also had to get my jacket dry cleaned. We got me a haircut, nice short and tidy (ish), a good hot shave, eye brows decluttered, ears cleaned, and even that horrible gooey yellow stuff out from between my toes. The pic above is the result. I have also got an amazing picture of us both made into a keyring, but as yet have not got it scanned in. Apparently I scrub up well. TDT always does anyway, as you can see.
Anyway, we had a great night. I won't go into details, but needless to say we ate, drank, and got very merry. We played a large game of Guess who, and I went out in the first round (apparently the Red M&M is male, who'd of thought it?) TDT won a voucher for somewhere, for some amount. But neither of us can remember what happened to it, where it was, or how much. I won a scratchcard for the lottery. I nearly won €10,000, but didn't. I embarrassed TDT by having a really good conversation with the big big boss, and he was genuinely interested in our story.
Unfortunately this would be the last time the whole company will be together for Christmas parties, redundancies are starting next year. In the meantime, another work related festivity will be chalked up to experience. Maybe next year it'll be TDT coming to mine, not the other way round. I do hope so.