Umbrella, ella, ella…

Welcome to Part 2. Friday afternoon and the end is in sight. This has been a bloody long week and I’m ready for my 1st pint of cider now thank you very much. Didn’t touch a drop at lunch today, went for a chokey cola and was very good – not sure why, maybe my liver was sending messages to my subconscious “Please no more! Just give me one day without the booze!” Won’t last though as I’m on my way out tonight for what will probably be a fairly drunken affair. And I’m damn well looking forward to it, even if Liver isn’t.

But I digress, this is a blog about my working world not the social on goings on Nancy Clueless and I’m afraid that is the way it will stay you nosey parkers. Unless play happens to encroach on work in some way, which it does on the odd occasion. But you’ll have to wait for those.

So back to this week. So far I’ve undergone 2 ½ days of some of the worst training experiences of my life, almost bludgeoned an old fat twat of a man to death with the arm of my chair (which I have ripped off through rage) and ranted a lot about people who er, rant. Now on to the fun stuff, the non-working work stuff, I am of course talking about the annual work rounders competition / BBQ. Last year I missed this event for some reason, much to my annoyance. Apparently it pissed it down with rain so there wasn’t much rounders and the focus was more on the BBQ and drinking side of things which sounds fine to me. This year (namely this Tues just passed) we were more fortunate and the weather held out at least for the rounders match so we managed to fit 3 innings in. The chose playing field was a local park located very conveniently next to the pub we moved on to afterwards.

Beer was supplied during the match so as you can guess the rules were a bit shaky and there was a bit of rugby tackling at 4th post going on in order to stop any ‘rounders’ being made. All in good spirits of course. There were about half of the netball team (not currently injured) playing as well so I warned everyone not to get hurt as we had 2 matches the next day. Famous last words. About 1 inning in one of my team simply fell over his own feet as his Achilles went snap and he literally had to crawl to the side lines. He was soon after taken over to the pub for some bandaging and ice packs. Then during the last round another one fell foul to a hard rounders ball smack in the face. Right on the cheek bone. Being a Scottish lass she claimed she was fine and stayed on for about 5 minutes before almost passing out and being dragged off by concerned First Aiders. Again, another one packed off to the pub for some sugary drinks and an ice pack.

For fucks sakes.

Anyone else for an injury? Anyone else more to the point, on my netball team who wants to bash themselves up?! Ah well, carry on. I think possibly our company and sport are not a good combination, I’m glad we get free health care here.

We lose by 1 rounder (I think the other team were lying about their score and the ref was easily led after 3 cans of Becks) but it’s all fun and frolics and I’m impressed by the amount of people up for a game. There must have been 20 odd people playing and another 20 on the sidelines. One of the guys from Finance is particularly good, hitting a rounder and running the whole thing in his socks carrying a beer. Impressive. He was on my team.

With the game done we all walk/limp/blindly stumble over to the pub where there is a tab behind the bar (no spirits mind…) and food being handed out. Must be about 50 of us in the beer garden which shows that when it comes to work socials you can forget the high brow theatre or tickets to the ballet, all we want is a burger and some free booze. Gunner is already fairly inebriated after the 5 cans he had in the park and some other people are well on their way. The cripple and smashed face chick are both sitting waiting at a table with the first aider who is also getting plastered. Self administering alcohol seems to be the chosen prescription for the evening for them. I managed to get quite a few pints I before the tab got used up (which was at about 10.45pm) but managed to get drunk but not dunk enough that I wasn’t able to enjoy watching all the wasted people around me.

Some highlights of the evening:

Gunner. Just Gunner in general, he was mahoofinated by about 9pm and turned into the right old Saaaaaaf Laaaandan geezer he is. Very good value for money and managed to pack away 2 of the massive burgers off the BBQ too.

The Finance Team. These people are serious drinkers and when they drink they are excessively funny. In particular is the massively camp South African guy who ends up coming on to anything with a todger in the bar who he works with and had me promising to make a secret pact with him to get people ‘talking more’ at work. I promised because I was a little scared. I will try but I can’t promise anything. There’s also the little Ozzy girl who works with him who was out on the infamous Netball drinks last week too. She’s always “I’m just staying for one” and then one of the last to leave and one of the only people I know who actually likes Chardonnay. There is a long running joke about how she pronounces ‘decking’ ‘dicking’ so we have many an hour of fun with that. “I got some great dicking at the weekend….”

The pub staff bringing out huge golfing umbrellas for us when it rained so we could stay in the pub garden – class.

My Co-Captain of the Netball team. She don’t drink much, in fact as far as I can tell she don’t get out much at all so she was totally off the wagon and going for it. Cue telling some of her work colleagues exactly what she thinks of them, ice cream fights where innocent by-standers get caught in the cross fire, holding hands with the dude in his socks all night (she is soon to be married) and generally being loud and mouthy. Love it.

Trying to find out about the cute guy from Risk for a mate – is he single, does he fancy her? I went over on the attack with a very drunk partner in crime who initially scared him away with her screeching, demanding high fives from everyone around her but I managed to claw him back and find out a bit about him. He is very cute and a nice bloke too. Didn’t find out if he fancies her though. Yesterday she came running over to my desk asking exactly what I had said as she was rather embarrassed. I assured her nothing had been said to imply she liked him so she was relieved about that. However she then went on to tell me that at one point she had lifted up his t-shirt and had a good feel of his six-pack at the bar. Er and you were worried about what I had said?

I ended up offering to cycle the cripples bike home for him as he lives 5 mins from my house. He was eternally grateful but then started to get a bit too grateful and said things like “you can come in for a coffee when you drop it back” Hmmmmm. How about I don’t do that? Gunner told me to watch myself as he’s a bit of a hussy. Oh joy. He left me lights, a helmet, everything I needed so at 11.30pm I started to wobble back. Forgot to lower the flippin’ seat though didn’t he? So it was tippy-toe cycling for 9km. I got to his, dumped the bike and refused to coffee. He then insisted on walking me to the bus stop even though he couldn’t walk. While I was waiting with him for said bus Gunner text me with:

“Has he treis to lock yu in his cuspord yet?”

Which I think translates into “Has he tried to lock you in his cupboard yet?” He didn’t but he did start to ask about my partner and when I said I didn’t have one and he looked hopeful thank god the bus turned up.

The next day I was feeling fine until 11am and half way through training. The hangover kicked in big time but I think others were feeling it more. Gunner was a wreck, the mouthy Co-Captain had to go home at 9.30am and apparently threw up on every station on the Victoria Line and there were some dark rings around eyes all over the company. I then had to find people to populate my now diminishing netball team and we played 2 games back to back in the sun. So you can imagine I felt 10 times feckin’ worse after that. Eugh.

Had an email go round on the Thursday from the Sports and Social Committee asking if anyone had ‘accidentally’ removed an umbrella from the pub and taken it home as they were asking after them. About 30 seconds after I’d read it Gunner pipes up with:

“So THAT’S where that umbrella came from!”