Here comes the girls.....and boys

It’s the work Christmas do tonight and they roped me into decorating the social club this afternoon, buoying up the Head of Communications Malcolm who is worrying that he’s mislaid his “Best of Kylie Minogue” CD and “someone is bound to ask for Spinning Around” and pouring peanuts into bowls.

They’ve spent literally pounds on the decorations and, what with everyone’s random decoration donations, it’s a very bohemian effect. “Cheap” as Charlie pointed out when she rang me earlier this afternoon. I’ve donated the hated tinsel and have draped it around the stage area where Malcolm will be giving us his all. Other donations include a broken bell, some white baubles and two motheaten Christmas stockings. I've put them up on either end of the bar.

Charlie is coming as my guest tonight as the hospital she works at has banned their Christmas party altogether. “No official Secret Santa, no party, no half day shopping annual leave – Scrooge is alive and well and working in our Finance Department” she grumbled during her call to me – she was asking me how “posh” she should dress. I watched as my colleague Karen scaled the height of the mangy Christmas tree to put the rather bedraggled fairy atop it and suggested she dress for comfort rather than glamour.

The peanuts arrived in huge bags, they’ve obviously fallen off the back of a lorry somewhere and I gave the bar manager a very frosty look when he suggested that I add salt to them to “force everyone to buy drinks all night”. I shall be steering clear of all nibbles, especially those on the table to be inhabited by the porters. I’ve seen the state of their office.

So. I’m about to get ready. A tidge early maybe but I want to test drive my skirt that Auntie Ivy has declared “too short”, David has decreed “too long” and Mac has stated it’s “pretty”. It sits on my knee, black and white tartan with a little ruffled underskirt and I plan to wear it with a relatively plunge top and 70 denier opaque tights so no-one will glimpse anything they’re not supposed to. I need to do standard things in it: sit down, stand up, lean (on the bar), bend down (to pick up drunken colleague if last year is anything to go by) and have a quick boogie.

I left my colleagues doing their own version of the Boots advert – it should be a good night!