Work christmas do
We were well chuffed. Our head office had agreed to pay for us northern monkeys to come down to London, stay in a fancy hotel in Islington (remember this, you'll need this information later), and go out and get pissed on the companies account. Which, naturally we did. Everything was going swimmingly, until someone on the table next to us ordered a jug of something pink. Being well past the point in the evening where drinking more and more seems like a good idea, we called over a waitress, pointed at the jug and ordered several (to this day, I still don't know what was in it).

Upon leaving the club (which was in, roughly, Picadilly Circus), we realised that getting a Taxi in London on a friday night without booking was not something that was likely to happen. So, our boss, who had once lived in London, convinced us that he knew the way back, and that it wouldn't take long to walk.

Which, to be fair, it wouldn't have done, had we not somehow managed to end up walking down Oxford Street, heading west (non-Londoners - Islington is north-east of Picadilly Circus).

On the way back, at least one member of the party redecorated the front of Freeloader.com's offices with technicolour vomit, and we very nearly got into a fight with some local lads over a traffic bollard which one of us had walked into and knocked over. It took us several hours to get back to the hotel, and the minibus journey home the following day was quietly subdued.

The following year, we decided to use the bricks from the giant Jenga set in the bar to spell out the name of our studio (we're a games developer) on the floor, only to have someone from senior management come and dance all over it. This felt oddly appropriate in a way. One of our guys spent the rest of the evening telling the bar staff in the club to get themselves drinks and put it "his" tab, whilst pretending to be the director of marketing. I think I tried to breakdance to Cypress Hill at one point in the night.

We didn't get a Christmas party this year.
(parm, Fri 19 Mar 2004, 12:08, Reply)