This the season to be jolly

Very soon I will be flying home (for yet another wedding!) and soon after that trip there will be another trip during the Christmas recess. I know this is utterly profane and wrong, but Christmas immediately brings to mind vast amounts of food, copious volumes of alcohol and a gift here and there. The official opening ceremony of the Christmas season's festivities kicked off this week with an office dinner...

A few weeks ago, at the office, we came up with the idea of organising a Christmas dinner. As always, I immediately took over and was responsible for setting it all up. So one lazy afternoon, I drafted an email (which was well-organised in the form of a scientific paper), set up a Doodle website for the participants to vote as to which date they prefer and in a few days all was done. It was decided to have it midweek in early December in order to make sure that all are still around. And so we headed off for the #223 Christmas dinner on the 2nd day of December.

The venue I proposed and which was unanimously chosen was an Italian restaurant just off Oxford Street. The wine was good, the food excellent and the company great. After antipasto, main course and dessert, we headed off to Carnaby Street to a typical English pub where we downed a couple of pints, until we heard the obnoxious bell ringing at 11.30ish, which meant that we had to vacate the place. One of my mates suggested going to a blues bar, which was a wise decision, for the band playing live was nothing but superb. Extensive photographic evidence suggests that we all had a good time at the blues bar!

Once the gig was all done, it was "still" 1am, so we headed off to a place called "The Bar", in a small alleyway off Oxford Street. This is probably the weirdest place I have seen so far in London. A narrow staircase leads to a 40 square metre room at basement level with walls all covered by mirrors to give a false illusion of space. The crammed space was packed with people who seemed to be there from the 1960s: middle-aged, thin men with long hair and hippie T shirts, scantily clad women clearly having enjoyed the odd heroin shot earlier and normal people, like us. The music was surprisingly good and it was a good way to conclude the night. I was shocked to pay a visit to the loo and, while using the urinal, I heard shuffling and panting in the locked WC cubicle. Unbelievable.

At 3am, I decided it is best to head home and try to get some sleep. One bus ride later and a short walk from High Street Ken, I was at home and after one hot power shower, I was all assembled in bed, where I stayed till 10.30am the next day. Malta in less than 24 hours and Malta again in less than 2 weeks! What a good start to the festive season of 2010!