Good and bad.............
Used to work in a mental hospital set in spacious grounds. Xmas started about 4pm on xmas Eve when we shoved all the loonies we could into bed (with an extra dose of sleepies) and started the serious drinking.

Handheld wagons were used to transport goods around the grounds and by midnight they were piled up with bodies soaked in urine and sick. All staff of course.

My last memory of xmas 1975 is of our ward domestic, plastered, dressed in a soiled, tattered Santa suit, waving a bottle as the truck he was spreadeagled across gathered speed down the gentle but long slope towards the mortuary. Legend has it that he crashed through the front door shouting 'Merry Christmas!' but I'd passed out on the snow-covered lawn seconds before so I saw nothing.

Xmas 1976, I was at an armaments factory and morale was low at that noisy, grubby place, so a crowd of us went for a few drinks and came back leathered and wrecked the joint. Funnily enough, nobody lost their jobs. I reckon there was too much management fear thet we'd expose the crappy working conditions.

NHS general wards are crap to work on nowadays at xmas but we have wild nights out. For some reason landlords are understanding about customers fighting and barfing if they're nurses!
(A kind of wild justice, Tue 21 Dec 2004, 20:33, Reply)