Nevertheless, there we were clutching our tacos and tequila slammers at the ringside of Lucha Libre at the Roundhouse, within splatter distance of such Mexican legends as Mystico de Juarez and the Blue Demon... Where outside of a gay fetish club are you going to get cross-dressing exoticos in high-cut leotards, or muchos rudos oiled-up muscle men in very short spangly shorts wearing bondage masks that tie up the back of the head, rolling around on the floor together?
Ding-ding-ding.
Back at work one of my projects was postponed until next year together with a nice chunk of my projected income but as I was getting up from the punch, blearily trying to look on the bright side (weekends off - meaning a renewed relationship with Strictly Come Dancing; novel resurrected - meaning I now have to write the damn thing; thirty hours of transcribed taped conversations - meaning that by the time the project kicks off again next year I will have to redo all the work: yippee a real win-win situation all round) there was a small ray of consolation. One of our starriest authors was coming in and, indulgently, I was told I could sit in on the meeting, just to bathe in the reflected glory.
Silver lining? I don't know. I mean looking gormless at a meeting where I have no function might not be everybody's idea of a good time, but pathetic drone that I am, I was really excited.
And then the fateful day arrived. I wore mascara - that's how prepared I was. I cancelled my own appointments in the afternoon and then, since I was staying at work all day, the MD invited me to the Alliance Christmas Party that evening at Faber. All this and heaven too, huh? That mascara wasn't going to waste.
I got back to my important job of organising the office Secret Santa. This had, in fact, been done the previous week while I was off doing my version of Extreme Home Makeover - Party Edition (which basically consists of hiding the mousetraps). Unfortunately the envelope with the unpicked names nestled in its depths had been left on the desk of an unsuspecting member of staff who had then filled it with manuscripts and sent it off to a reader. The reader then opened the envelope sprinkling staff names around her study like confetti and since she didn't plan to buy novelty gifts for the rest of us, we had to repeat the draw.
I was just on my third pick to find someone I could palm off the wind-up nun that someone gave me for my birthday (oh don't you just love the jokey present that costs the same as a perfectly nice box of chocolates) when a Chief came shooting out of his office in his customary Tasmanian Devil rush and announced in the kind of booming voice perfectly honed for public speaking: 'Did I ask you to come to this meeting today?'
Me (uncomfortably aware that Indians all around me had fallen silent and were hurriedly whittling arrows out of pencils): 'Yes...'
'Why?' he bellowed.
It was a good question, and one I had also asked myself but, being unwilling to look a gift meeting in the mouth, had left unanswered. 'Erm, I think you were just being nice?' I stammered uncomfortably (well so much for that idea.)
'Well, look don't come, because...' and he gave a perfectly good and plausible reason that I didn't properly hear because by then I was back on the floor, out for the count - crushed.
It occurs to me that office life isn't actually so different from wrestling. There you are standing in the middle of the ring when a man leaps on you from above and flattens you in front of an audience - except that in the office none of the men wear sequins on their pants.
Ouch!
Guess who's getting the wind up nun from their Secret Santa this year.....
