Not much playing on my mind today, or at least, nothing I can really share. My mind could get me arrested, I believe. But anyway, I did hear on the morning television show today about a man being reinstated at his place of employment following dismissal after inappropriate behaviour at a work Christmas party. It seems the employee got stonkered, told the boss to 'fuck off', and made inappropriate remarks to female staff. You know, I would have thought it a no-brainer. Don't go getting drunk at your work Christmas party because in vino veritas, and if you're the type of person who drools like a palsied bloodhound after a few drinks, and lets everyone know your opinion, and gropes like you're rock-climbing, then stay off the grog. Simple. There's a simple maxim: don't shit where you eat. Hey, I know the feeling. There are work colleagues upon whom you'd love to impart a few home truths, but here's the thing: you can't. One problem if all Christmas parties go dry: it will lead to less work for photocopy machine technicians because the machines won't get wrecked by drunken morons photocopying their own bum.
And yes, I know sometimes it seems you have to be oiled to tolerate these functions. I always disliked them. Not the barristers' chambers' functions where I've attended as a guest; those are different. But other work functions, where you're subjected to the most bitter Chardonnay ever. Seriously, how can people drink this? Why do people rave about it? It always tastes to me as though the grapes were crushed with the vigneron's feet. It's these functions where you get stuck talking to senior management, who want to show how genial they are and talk to the plebs after spending most of the year snarling at you anyway, and they are blissful in their own ignorance of the fact you'd swim across a torrential river of shit to avoid speaking to them. They are functions that often end up kicking on at some nearby pub, and a flabby solicitor decides everyone wants to see him do a strip tease, labouring under the misapprehension he's ripped like Channing Tatum, and not white-bellied and wobbly like a freckly, ginger blancmange. I guess it's better than the party I heard about in my home town where a blob of a woman stripped naked, stood on a hay bale, and sang, 'Oh, Come All Ye Faithful'. I've usually left these work things early because I had to catch a bus to my home town, and missed the spectacle of drunken imbeciles falling into a taxi cab, and one girl puking like a demonically possessed adolescent all over the other occupants. You know what? I'm glad I didn't see that.
I recall attending one Christmas lunch under duress. I'd had a fight with the office administrator, a perfumed gorgon nobody liked. I do not know if this old shit is still alive, but if not, Hell got a fuckload worse when she arrived. I told one of the partners I didn't want to go because of the blue we'd had, and he said she'd take it as a 'slight'. I said she could take it how she fucking wanted. Anyway, I went to the lunch and behaved as petulantly as I could get away with. Sometimes I hate office politics and expectations to attend functions when you'd quite frankly sooner set your hair on fire.
But the moral to my story is, don't get pissed at work functions. If you feel you have to be pissed to tolerate it, maybe just don't go in the first place.
Tonight I have been listening to 'Soley, Soley' by Middle of the Road, a sweet song from around 1971, when I was a little thing in kindergarten. I kind of like this song. The singer, Sally Carr, has a voice that is a campanologist's dream. It's so sweet. It's kind of like having your hair stroked. By someone you like, not that creepy cretin with halitosis and dangly nostril hair that corners you at the office Christmas party.
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