Sherry?

It looks like this year we will have a proper Christmas party at the office. Or, to be more precise, at some venue to be determined, where employees and spouses will be invited to come and make merry in a seasonally acceptable manner. This will be the first time in more than fifteen years that any company for which I work will have had a "real" party. Most of that time I've been in the States and I get the impression that these events fell out of favor because of the high risk that someone would either get frisky in the coat closet, drive drunk into a lake or vomit on a senior executive, none of which are really conducive to long term career aspirations.

In fact, the last party I remember was the first year I ever worked, at a small company in the UK. The party was held at a hotel close to the office and the entertainment consisted of drinking, eating, drinking, dancing, drinking, singing, drinking and staggering to the toilet. I had to get dressed up in a tux, which immediately made me feel like a prize dick, precipitating much initial drinking to dull the shame.

I have few memories of the dinner itself; I can picture the room, and some round tables. I can still see the size of the last glass of brandy that my boss poured for me (about three inches deep) and I can recollect walking in a perfectly straight line to the bathroom (although colleagues the next day swore blind that I'd been bent over unsteadily). Nevertheless the evening passed off without incident; I did not vomit, I kept my penis inside my trousers, I failed to insult anyone with the power to end my career, I avoided dancing with anyone's wife and resting my head on their ample breasts while staggering around the room and I left at a somewhat reasonable hour to return, in a taxi, to the house that I shared.

Unfortunately that's where things started to go wrong. The psycho bitch landlady from next door had gifted us a bottle of sherry for the festive season (she was not above fucking with your head by bestowing odd gifts, even as you imagined her standing at the end of your bed with a meat cleaver, ready to dismember yout still-twitching corpse). Now sherry is one of those drinks that sits in the cupboard, lurking, regarded as basically undrinkable until some fateful moment. I remember someone pointing out once that if you ever get a bottle of sherry you should throw it away immediately, while you are sober; otherwise what will happen is that you will arrive home slightly drunk and someone will suddenly think what a great idea it would be to have a glass of that sherry. You will then get sick and undergo a near-death experience.

On this occasion I got home to find one of my housemates still awake. Ths sherry sat ominously on the sideboard. We needed a drink, but only the sherry was available. How bad could it be? We had a small glass, and then a larger one. The next thing I remember is waking up on the sofa with my tongue stuck lopsidedly to the roof of my mouth, a near-empty bottle of sherry next to me and the feeling that I'd just licked a long-haired cat, followed by the bottom of a hamster's cage. I went to bed without further ado, but was rewarded the next morning with the third-worst hangover of my life. (Yes, I do remember the top two, as well as numbers four and five, simply because they distinguished themselves on the basis of frequency/quantity of vomiting, desire to die and length of time before I could face food again.)

The moral of this story is that sherry is the drink of satan, poised in some forgotten cupboard somewhere, just waiting for a moment of drunken weakness to overpower you and force you onto your knees to repeatedly drive the porcelain bus. If you find it, throw it out now, before it's too late. On reflection I'd have been better off staying at the office party and conducting an impromptu "who's got the ugliest balls" competition with the sales team. It could hardly have had worse long term career implications for me than the loss of all those brain cells I sacrificed to the sherry bottle...


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison