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I do enjoy being in on Christmas Eve. Travel is easy because so many people have stayed at home, and the office is quiet for just the same reason. And so we spent the morning eating chocolate cake and drinking gallons of tea while we listened to Abba and Christmas tunes.

Slowly the few of us who were in emptied out until by half one the only two left on our floor was Julian and myself. We walked together to HMV - heaving with last-minute panic buyers - and then said our goodbyes until the new year.

For a reason I don’t entirely understand I thought that would be a good time to have a last look around the festive shops. Ugh. Horrible experience. Big mistake. Far too many people dithering on pavements and making stupid queues at checkouts that snaked right the way through the stores.

I quickly gave up and retreated to Dean Street for drinks for Vinnie, Ross and Mark in a deserted All Bar One, then on to Sanctuary, which had promised carol singing around the piano from noon until it closed some time tomorrow morning.

Major disappointment: no pianist until half past ten.

Now there were two reasons why I wasn’t going to still be there at half ten for the singing. First was the fact dad was waiting at home and I had to cook dinner. Second was the fact that by six I could barely walk as far as the loo without going straight into a wall.

I don’t have a clue what we were drinking. Some of them were minty, and had grit mixed in with the mint leaves. Some were banana flavoured, and some were like a thick strawberry milkshake. Some came in cone-shaped glasses on long elegant stems, some in tall heavy glasses. Some were in tumblers filled with ice, with raspberries perched on the top.

All were mainly tequila. Some had vodka mixed in for good measure, and they all went down far too easily. By half six it felt like midnight and I was slowly sliding down towards the floor, along with everyone else. We decided then that we should call it a day, until a new round of gloopy yellow drinks arrived and we started all over again. It was another hour and a bit before I finally left the stool and weaved home (quite literally).

I wasn’t driving, of course, but I think the walk from the station did me some good. Still, I didn’t make it to the pub by ten to wish everyone at this end of the line a merry Christmas, but that’s probably for the best. I had no way of getting there, and no way of getting back, and if I’d made it at all, there’s a good chance I’d have seen nothing of tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2003 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.