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// 15th December
Saturday night I went as a friend’s ‘plus one’ to her work Christmas party. Which is mighty nice, ’cause if provision is made, you’d be wasting a decent meal by not taking anyone just because you’re single. And a decent meal it was, the whole shebang would have cost upwards of ten grand to put on.
The meal was prawns and salad, followed by chicken with pine nuts, and a dessert of chocolate fudge and fruit. Not bad, but also far from amazing. There was, of course, free beer.
The evening panned out much like an episode of The Office, right down to the company name having suspiciously similar air to ‘Wernham Hogg’. This is a tribute to the genius of the television series, I guess. The occasion was dinner, with a ghost tour in what used to be a quarantine station between the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. People arrived on a company bus and in taxis, dressed in smart casual–perfectly middle class. I was introduced to various people, however people seemed not to know the names of folk who didn’t work on their floor or in their department. I sat on the table of receptionists so conversation wasn’t the sharpest, but equally it was never dull. Everyone acted according to script. Half of middle management got drunk and loud, while the other half remained invisible. The factory boys were all matey and down-to-earth to start with, but soon started groping any lady they could while simply pretending to be matey. The plebs all seemed to enjoy themselves, but made sure they didn’t do anything outrageous.
The ghost tour was awful. The crowd was split into groups of 25, and our guide was a big scary looking man, who was funny and did his job well and would have been great had our group not been such a bad audience. As we walked around we got the back story–how many hundreds of people died and where and why, plus specific stories at each area (the shower block, the morgue, the galley, et cetera). After going through each area the guide would tell us stories of ghost sightings within the last year (“Hey, I’m just telling you what people who live here have said”), and times when people have ‘felt unwelcome’ in certain buildings. Highlights included stories of ‘The Matron’ and ‘The Doctor’, and the wandering Chinese man with a lantern, however I did not manage to spot any ghosts. At one point our guide told us a story of young girl who had been spotted standing against the wall of the kitchen, and as he did he shone his torch at the wall, only to illuminate a chef chatting on his mobile phone. The obvious jokes ensued–”Oh yes, I see the ghost!”, followed by laughter. Similar incidents made the tour more amusing than scary. The other problem was Will (from marketing), one of the members of our group. He was tipsy enough to be making up stories about hearing noises and feeling ‘like there’s someone watching’, but at the same time he would burst out laughing at the end of each story the guide told, effectively ruining the spooky vibe the guide was trying to create. At the last stop on the tour we could hardly hear the guide because they had started pumping Billie Jean back in the function room…
With danceable music like Brown-Eyed Girl and I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) playing, the middle management demographic were in their element. The inebriated half thus entertained the factory boys, by then beyond embarrassment and otherwise thoroughly bored. Outside on the grass the teetotaller middle management and the plebs chattered in the cool and ghost-free fresh air. Exactly how such a Christmas party is supposed to end.
I think it is well within one’s capabilities to legitimately crash at least two or three Christmas parties each year. I think the office Christmas party is an essential.
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