The Office Party

I wasn't really in the mood for the office party. We had been busy all day. My two bosses had had some kind of disagreement and you could almost cut the atmosphere with a knife. The woman next to me was still twittering on, something about her black cat being blacker than my black cat. Nobody else from my section was even planning to go to the party. I'd already paid for my ticket so I decided to tag along with another department, intending just to show my face, have my free drinks allowance and then leave at a respectable hour. It doesn’t ever work out like that does it?

I downed the first 3 Kir Royales in quick succession and then we found a place to stand strategically close to the door where the canapés came out so that we could have first pick of the meagre offerings. More than half of the people were strangers from the other bank that we are due to integrate with in a few weeks time. I was glad to see that it was the geeks from "our" technology department that started off the dancing and soon "our" teams were all joining in, dancing madly and having lots of fun. I'm not sure what sort of impression we made on our stuffy future colleagues, nor do I really care.

Too soon it was past 11.00pm and Cinderella had to leave if she was going to catch the last train at midnight. I had found my way out of the alley and onto a busy road when I realised two things at once. My legs weren't working properly and I had no idea how to get to the train station. A few steps forward, a step back, a few steps sideways and a crash into the wall later and I decided I had better try and hail a cab. Now my eyes weren't focusing properly and I couldn’t distinguish which of the passing cars were taxis so I stood in the middle of the road with my arm wobbling wildly in the air hoping maybe a taxi would see me – and stop. Luckily a taxi driver took pity on me and after several attempts at composing an intelligible sentence I finally managed to communicate to him where I wanted to go. In my head I was feeling completely sober, why was it so hard to get my body to follow instructions?

Somehow I must have made it in time for the last train. I don't remember the rest of the journey but I was tucked up in bed with a thumping headache by the time the alarm went off next morning. Once again I had been successfully guided home against all the odds by that mysterious homing device in my head.

A very GOOD night