Barclays Christmas Bash

Going back a few weeks was the Barclays Christmas Party held in The Ballroom of The Pavilion theatre down by the waterfront in Bournemouth. It was a sit down dinner for some 800 people followed by drinking and dancing. There was a band, a DJ, casino tables and a ‘fun room’ full of all sorts of weird stuff like a horizontal bungee, inflatable sumo suits and those funny oversized boxing gloves.

Entry was only a fiver, including champagne reception, so you can’t complain too much about the average meal but the events afterwards were classic.

All of the elements of a good work Christmas bash were there:

- Co-workers not being able to handle their drink and doing silly and embarassing things (eg. putting Sheryl’s lip gloss on and posing).
- Lots of dancing, lots of crazy new dance moves.
- A massive congo line at the end. An absolutely must, surely.
- Inappropriate smacking of the female boss’ bum including by Sheryl, and later inappropriate mooning of the female boss by three co-workers in the car park.

All in all we had a really good night out. But every silver lining has a cloud and for us that was a hang over the next morning. Why on earth we volunteered to go into work the next morning I’ll never know, but it was only for a few hours and the time went pretty fast.

I should also point out at this time that I did wake up to the biggest UPW (Unidentified Party Wound) I’ve ever had. It took me a while to figure out how on earth half of my right wrist was black and purple from bruising. It later came to me that I had attempted to high five Bobby from work and missed and hit each other. Bobby is an amateur volleyball player so I can only imagine the impact on my wrists was like that of a ball he was smashing over the net. Still, it healed up fine about a week later and no damage done!