The D Party.
It was decreed by the powers that be in my
place of employment, that we were all going out for pizzas and beer to
celebrate/commemorate D Day. It had been decided that a night out would “do me
good”. How kind of them, how thoughtful.
Sure wouldn’t it do us all good to have a night out…?
So, accordingly, I found myself squelching up Dublin’s
Dawson Street on a balmy summer night – the rain was torrential. I’m always
amazed by how we grow potatoes in this country, and not rice. What with the
wetness and us being called paddies- we could be rice paddies no problem. My
light summer shoes, my feet and the legs of my jeans, were all soaked by the
time I got into the restaurant. I tried every contortion I could in the Ladies Loo but
unfortunately was unable to stand on my head on the tiled floor, the
only position from which it would have been possible to hold my feet and legs
under the hand dryer. There was only one thing left to do. Warm myself up with
wine and ignore the squelching and gurgling from my footwear...
The Office Party were all squashed round one
big table, in the Italian tradition. Beer and wine flowed; the conversation
flowed as we waited for our first course. No one mentioned the D word or the
reason for our night out. One of my colleagues who had not been in work for a
while came to the pizza party. She’d been out for a fortnight, having surgery.
Cosmetic surgery. As a result of which, she overshadowed the condiments on the
table. Everyone was trying not to look but it was a bit difficult to avoid…There
was much talk and laughter about the procedure, and it’s after effects, do’s
and don’ts. “Is it true that you can’t fly for three months?” asked one person.
It was. “What else can you not do?” asked another. “Well, I can’t go on fairground rides” was the
reply. “I can’t bungee jump either”. We were in hysterics, with suggestions
that she might knock herself unconscious in a fast elevator and similar
remarks. The hilarity grew. One colleague decided that she just had to rise
from the table and sing Beyoncé’s “If you like it put a ring on it” with
accompanying actions. Shortly after
that, it was time to leave. We left the pizza joint and headed to a late night
drinks venue. A young female colleague challenged a much older, bigger, male
colleague to a drinking contest. Possibly not the wisest idea. A good night. Numbed by tiredness and wine, I
headed home and left them to it. After all, it was a Thursday and there was work
in the morning…
Friday.
It seems that one person tripped in her
skyscraper heels and fell under a taxi but was uninjured; one person got out of
a taxi when the driver refused to give her his details; one person insulted a
guy she thought was trying to pick her up but who had only wanted to return the
cigarettes she had dropped on the dancefloor – and the piece de resistance?
In the late night place, she who had been
enhanced invited two female colleagues to “feel the difference”, so to speak.
Whereupon two strangers had approached them, introduced themselves as two
happily married men, asked them if they were 3 lesbians and then asked if they,
too, could “feel the difference”. I gather the aftermath of that encounter was
not pretty.
The final encounter relating to the “D Party”
was not pretty either, although excruciatingly funny. Female Colleague X, who
had challenged Male Colleague Y to the drinking contest, had been charged with
the task of bringing a birthday cake for Colleague Z into work on Friday
morning. Accordingly, she had stopped off at a large supermarket chain store to
buy a readymade birthday cake. Unfortunately, she felt very unwell Friday morning.
With the consequence that she was unable to venture as far as the cake section,
due to the fact that she was puking into a plastic bag grabbed at the cash
desk. The supermarket insisted on scanning the plastic bag at a checkout and she had to pay for it -and presumably
had to take it home with her, which is where she went and phoned in sick from.
What can I say?
When you work with people like this, life isn’t
all bad. J
