that most extraordinary of human traditions

Last night was that most extraordinary of human traditions, the staff Christmas party. Being a woman with her priorities in order, I have joined a company that holds a summer party as well as the obligatory festive shindig, so I at least had a pretty good idea of what to expect. The ‘party committee’ comprised a woman who is the very embodiment of Shoreditch twat (in a nice way) (sort of) and so we began the enforced fun in a bar on Brick Lane in our compulsory black tie. I teamed my frothy black dress with some scuffed white trainers leading a company director to accuse me of thinking that I am Lily Allen. Despite having neither her money nor a Chemical Brother on my arm, I do like to think that I share her talent for a witty put-down and should probably admit to being a bit of a mockney sparra and sporting a shit-eating grin (TM The Observer – I’d love to have coined that phrase about her but I didn’t. Credit where it’s due). Everyone else in the vicinity was wearing spray-on jeans and scuzzy t-shirts so we looked suitably stupid, although the good people of East London pretended not to see us. Perhaps they really didn’t. Maybe extremely cool people have a version of colour blindness which makes it impossible to determine between the uncool. Or perhaps it’s a form of cringey racism and they just wait for us to leave before claiming that ‘we all look the same’ to them.

Well oiled on East London vodka we traipsed to a pop-up restaurant in the Truman Brewery. Disappointingly, this doesn’t mean that you fold it up into a tin from which it springs forth when opened. Instead, this moniker serves the dual purpose of providing a PR hook for what is otherwise merely a restaurant and also an excuse to cover the management when it fails to make money and closes down in two months.

Of the three options for each course, one was vegetarian, and so I went for that. This led to the interesting scenario in which my dinner featured a first course of soup followed by a second course of soup. Accompanied by the vat of red wine I drank whilst waiting for the staff to master the evidently tricky task of serving two bowls of soup, I consumed enough liquid to ensure not only that I was sloshed but that I also made a sloshing sound when I moved. During this feat of dining, a woman wandered around the tables with a snake slung round her neck, and two androgynous acrobats performed a bizarre and melancholy dance on a rope suspended from the ceiling.

Like most things, the evening could not maintain its level of pretentious weirdness and ultimately had to dumb down to accommodate the masses. Once the wine was all drunk and the soup was all, well, drunk, we continued on to a rubbish nightclub in Soho. Once there, we drank more, danced to instantly forgettable music and stood out magnificently from the hoards of minor soap actors, second division football players and Arabic business men in expensive homogenous suits, having shouted conversations about their yachts.

There was more – there must have been, as the last phonecalls on my mobile were made at 4am – but I have no recollection of what it was. All I know is that I’ve cut my leg open and I’m still wearing the remnants of last night’s makeup. The great thing about staff parties is that you are all as ruined as each other. There is camaraderie in doling out alka seltzer and making epic tea rounds. The shame of it is that someone else is absolutely bound to remember.