We are trying to decide where to have our annual Christmas party. No shortage of restaurants, no shortage of opinions. Sle is intransigent in her penury. Yes, we know Sle, you think that twenty quid a head is too much, we all have commitments at Christmas and the round system is the invention of Satan to corrupt the innocent. Consider the fact that Sle brings her own pack of supermarket own-brand plain biscuits to work while we leather into the Kit-Kats, and you'll start to get the picture.
The cultured end of the table is edging towards haute cuisine as the preferred showcase for their knowledge of all that is culinary. Considering that there seems to be some sort of unspoken rivalry as to who can produce the most cultured sandwich at break-time, their choice is not surprising. Foccacia or ciabatta, darling? Hold the chives and heavy on the sun-dried tomatoes.
A plain old booze-up in a noisy, sweaty establishment, far from the watchful eyes of parents, sounds very attractive - but food must be included, it appears. Otherwise we're left with nothing to absorb the dreaded drink - a mistake that a few of us learnt to our cost three or four years ago. Too many G & Ts and we threw caution to the wind and ended up in a nightclub that was throbbing and grinding and strangely surreal. Especially when we spotted two fairly-recent past-pupils snogging lustily on the dance-floor. That's one way of instantly ageing a decade.
Our demure Deirdre became strangely animated when Ronan Keating started crooning Nothing at All and threw "The Boss" totally by grabbing him in a nonnegotiable vice around the waist and telling anyone who could still hear anything that it was all a load of cobblers that he was too authoritarian and that she alone understood where he was coming from. Oh, Deirdre, in vino veritas, you poor sucker. He'll never look so good to you again, trust me!
We managed to lose two of our number in the midst of the melee and to this day they can't account for the missing hour. A blush too many accompanies their claims to have met a mutual acquaintance and gone outside to chat properly. Yeah, right! We believe you if that's what you want!
Happy Christmas.
