So how did it go?

How did our summer party go?

I was well nervous on Friday afternoon. On the tube to the venue we were talking about how we thought it would end up in a big fight between our group and the group from downstairs (where the women are from). Not being a violent bunch though, instead of knives and guns, the whole fight would be played out in interpretative dance and song, like some sort of grand West Side Story production, with high kicks, singing and some chorus line work.... Obviously after laughing, joking and talking about people from our company for 30 mins, we only noticed another group of people from work on the same carraige as us as we were getting off the train....

If you're in London I'd definitely head up to the Roof Gardens for a night out! The gardens are on the top floor of the a large building in Kensington, and looked amazing. Our dining tables where under a big marquee with little lights dotted everywhere, and there was a classical guitarist playing for our pleasure. The food was really, really good too.. BBQ's sea bass, prawns, squid, chicken, lamb and ribs.. Grilled veges and proper, nice, salads. And some really yummy puds for afters (the boys apparently where trying to decide which desert was more manly: the cheesecake or tiramisu... I don't think there's a clear winner in any of those options). But I'll spare you the details of how cool the venue was and skip right on to the bitchy bits.

We were all standing in one of the gardens before dinner, drinking our extremely expensive beers and wine, and I nervously waited for the group in question to turn up. 1 1/2 hours later, and we were seated for dinner (because I told the Maitr'd that I wasn't their mother and if they couldn't turn up on time, that was just too bad, but the rest of us where eating now!). When they finally did turn up the two women made their grand entrance through the middle of everyone. Having never really seen them before but only hearing lots about them, I was not in the least bit surprised that they looked like Samantha wannabes from Sex and the City. Our entire table watched them walk in and sit down, and their entire table watched us walk past them to get food. Evil stares from the two blondes I was used to by the time desert came round!

Though other than that, nothing really happened. No fisty cuffs, not arguments, nothing. The only real incident with them happened when one of the women were in the toilets and apparently asked her friend for some lipstick. One of the girls I knew was in the toilets as well, and she told me she said to her "yeah, you look like you need it"..

After dinner our group just sat around the table chatting. We then went and danced to the live band in the gardens, and finally made it to the dance floor where at one stage I found myself half moshing to Jump Around by House Of Pain. In high heels. My feet were well and truly fucked by the end of the night (I'm a flats girl myself).

The only other incident occured when we were all leaving, and one of the girls we were with was calling for a cab home. Not realising this, we hailed her a black cab and told her we had a cab for her. Only after hanging up on the cab firm did she notice it was a black cab, and she then yelled at me "YOU KNOW I CAN'T AFFORD ONE OF THOSE, NOW YOU'VE MADE ME HANG UP ON THE CAB FIRM. THANKS A LOT". To which I got really pissed off at (come on by this stage I was well quite soused) so on the way home I got myself more and more angry about it, so when I got home I called her to give her a piece of my mind... when she didn't answer I thought "oh well that's mature", so I called again... No answer. So I thought "I'll text her what I think", but thought better of it.. then called again... and again.. and again.. no answer, no answer, no answer. So I left her this text "can you call me or I'm calling the cops". No reply. No call.

I woke up on Saturday morning with a horrendous hangover. Still no call back. So I called her again. No answer. (You're getting the general gist of this at this stage right?). Eventually I get through a recorded message: "This number is not connected". So then my over active imagination starts to work quick smart, double time: What if we put her in the wrong car? What if it wasn't a mini cab at all? What if the mini cab was one of those dodgy ones with a serial killer or rapist driving it? What if she's in hospital, or worse: lying dead, naked in a ditch? What would I say to her cousins? What would I wear at her funeral? Do people still hats for a funeral these days? Hmm.. where would I get one of those from? I imagined her family crying and accusing me "why didn't she just get in the black cab? Why didn't you make sure she was ok?", and me sitting there saying "If only we'd given her money so she wouldn't have had to get into that cab of death."

In the end, like a pyscho bitch stalker, I'm ashamed to say I called her 21 times in the space of 16 hours.
When someone suggested we call another friend of ours who might know, again, I still got no answer. After he didn't return my call for 2 hours I thought "oh my god. He's at the morgue identifying the body isn't he??". When he did eventually call me back, he said all casually, whilst I was on the other end of the line all frantic on the inside, trying not to let people see the crazy come out: "Oh her? Oh yeah, she lost her phone in that cab we put her in last night". Oh.


In the end, like a pyscho bitch stalker, I'm ashamed to say I called her 21 times in the space of 16 hours. And let me tell you something: when people hear you've called somone 21 times like that, no matter, how good your intentions are, people just sees you as a crazy freak. A stupid, stalkering, overly paranoid, dotty, crazy freak.

To draw to a close this saga of woe that has been our company's Summer Party from hell, the only thing that is left to retell is this: what happened to the two wicked witches? Did they get their comupance?

Our head of HR dragged one of them into this office on Monday and gave her a bit of a 'talk'. He called me up to tell me what had happened, and what he'd said and he told me "she was extremely contrite about the whole situation". I would have given him the sort of response he was looking for, but I was desperately trying to find out the meaning of the word 'contrite' on the internet (I did do 2 unit related English at school... it is my first language,... you'd think my vocabulary would be a bit better wouldn't you?). When I found out it was "remorseful" I became all benevolant. However, when she called me to appologise, and say how she didn't mean to make me feel so bad, instead of feeling victorious, I just felt, well, embarrased. I couldn't wait for the phone call to be over quick enough. When she asked me if there was anything I'd like to say to her, so I could make myself feel better, my mouth dried up and I just said I wanted the whole thing to be done now, and just start again. I'm not sure if that's what she was hoping for, but I guess it was what I was hoping for. And the second woman? The one who called me up all those times, and yelled and bitched? I've not heard from her at all. Not that I'm going to hold my breath on that either.

So there you are. Hopefully another drama finished and done. I'll probably keep organising events for our company. But I'll be damned if I organise a nice one any time soon. All parties from now on will be upstairs in the crappy pub down the road, with beer nuts, sausage rolls and deep fried everything. No glam parties, no celebrities, no dressing up, nada. Lager and crisps only. You know, I'm not half sure if that isn't what people really want anyway...