Father Wogan

A full report on last nights activities as promised….

The team meeting was, as expected, dull and boring and much of it over my head. The clock in the meeting room was also broken and said 4.33pm the whole time we were in there which was like water torture. But it was done by about 5.45pm so at least we were only in there just over an hour.

The free drinks and food afterwards was a much more agreeable affair. I did eat far too much though and was actually in physical pain after finishing my dessert! But the dessert was so good it would have been an offence to the food gods to leave it on my plate. Fact. I also managed to polish off a bottle and a half of a very nice Sauvignon Blanc and had 3 baby Guinness shots with Gunner (it’s Tia Maria with Bailey’s floating on top which gives it the effect of looking like a tiny pint of Guinness – goes down very well, perhaps too well). So I made full use of the freebies of course. Gunner was on about doing a 4th shot at about 10.30pm and my belly was close to exploding so I decided to make my exit at that point. Probably for the best that I did as Gunner was looking more than worse for wear this morning and didn’t get home until 1am!

Freaker, aside from being disappointed there wasn’t some sports based activity he could try and beat me at (I emphasise the word ‘try’) was actually on good form for the evening. This morning he was relaying the story of getting Moon Monkey home last night to us. It took him ages to get the Moon Man out of the pub and then he was stuck with him at the hotel bar for ages. He said he was like some incoherent rambling Irish old man, he compared him to a mix of Father Ted and Terry Wogan, and so this morning we re-named him Father Wogan.

During the course of the evening I discovered some snippets of information including the fact that I am apparently headed towards working more with IS. Really? News to me, thanks for passing that on, it’s always good to know what my job is actually meant to involve. I do a lot of work for IS at the moment. I’m not sure what capacity I would be working with them in, he wasn’t drunk enough to elaborate. We were told in the team meeting that soon we would all be getting personal development plans and objectives set and by Jan everyone’s roles would be changing so perhaps it will become clearer at some stage. Perhaps. I won’t hold my breath.

Gunner (who has recently returned from Dublin on a work based trip) was trying to lay the grounding to get a trip to the Cape Town office and was doing quite well. So well in fact that Father Wogan hinted at other people possibly going – including me! How cool would that be?! I’m definitely not getting my hopes up or going on the word of a drunken Irish monkey but you never know eh?

Oh and we also met Mrs Moon Monkey and baby Moon Monkey. Baby has the misfortune of looking a bit like her father (I think it’s the pudgy baby cheeks) and the Mrs did drop a few hints about never seeing her husband because he’s always away on business. I’m surprised the baby actually recognised him. Mrs MM was very nice though, I didn’t speak to her much as most of the conversation was revolving around babies which I am not interested in and neither did I want to hold the dribbling fattie (as cute as she was). She made a sharp exit before the meal anyways.

So a fairly informative and enjoyable evening. No fisty cuffs and no one fell in the river or disappeared for 24 hours so I think that means a successful evening. We were definitely more reserved than the leaving party for some top bod in the company. Been getting bits of gossip through the company grapevine which include people getting home at 3.30am, some people not managing to get to bed, partying the night away in an 80’s club in the city and my favourite so far – one of the receptionist getting a member of the senior management team in a headlock and ruffling up his hair Benny Hill style. Classic.

I just went to make my lunch and noticed one of the posters they have put up about this new database (the one we have going live on Monday that everyone is dreading) has been vandalised in a rather amusing fashion. It says “Maximo is coming to town…” and has a bunch of giraffes on it (not sure why) and someone has put a speech bubble next to one saying “Oh no!” he he. Gunner reckons there will be a cock drawn on there by the end of the day.

Glad to see that juvenile behaviour is alive and well in the company.