A Coke Can in the Sanny Bin

2008-01-24, 10:13 p.m.
Helloooooo, my little monkies! No, Im not dead. Nor, (as I am certain the lovely for-tart may have been implying in his note to me, generously leaving me with contact details for an oriental restaurant) was I suffering from a 10 day hangover. The truth, dear readers, is WAY more dull. When we got back from Bruges it was all preparation for the most humungous trade show of the *mumble mumble* Industry Calendar so I was getting home very late and very tired and just didn�t have time for updating or anything like what normal people do in the evenings.

I worked 49.5 hours over the weekend (Friday to Monday. Not just Saturday/Sunday � that would be�ummm�.impossible actually) which has racked me up a few lieu days � if I ever get a chance to take them.

There�s a whole load of �trade show anecdotes� but they�re a bit stale now I�ve been back for a couple of days so I�ll just do the edited highlights and have done with it.

I got chatted up, on the stand, by a very tall Canadian man from a neighbouring stand. This would have been OK as I am rather fond of the taller gent as BF and Smash will attest but chatting up a lady in front of her co-workers is only gonna make her the butt of ribald jokes for the whole weekend, dude.

On the Sunday night, there was a corporate jolly. I didn�t know this so I hadn�t taken any splendid clothes with me � just work wear for the stand and crappy jeans for the set-up and pack-down, so I had to cobble an outfit together out of what was in my case. I lost sight of the co-worker holding the company credit card and had to resort to buying myself a drink. �7. For a whisky. No mixer. Just the whisky.

Hmm. Desperate measures, dear friends.

I went to find my new Canadian friend. After chatting for a bit and discovering that we were both spoken for (Phew!) and that he did actually need me as a business contact, I was able to ponce drinks off his expense account for a couple of hours until I was drunk enough to attempt some dancing.

For dancing read �flailing around like a banshee�.

One of our clients sent me a present today � it was a calendar of naked rugby players � and when I phoned to thank him I said �whilst it is not necessarily an unusual experience for me to have 12 naked men adorning my workspace�I still thank you for the calendar�. He said I deserved it for my �crazy moves on the dance floor�. Nice to know I�m providing amusement for my business contacts as well as insightful corporate commercial advice and assistance.

The jolly finished at midnight and it was clear that Toast (our MD) was not expecting to have to go back to the hotel quite so early so he dragged us off to another club for more drinks. As Toast was paying hosting, there were a great many more drinks ingested, some of them forcibly. Generally speaking, flaming Sambuca is usually set alight in the glass. Our MD prefers to make you hold the liquid in your mouth and tip your head back while he sets fire to it IN YOUR MOUTH.

He�s quite short and I�m quite tall. I wasn�t keen on having him turn me into a human torch so I drank mine quickly while nobody was watching. Sambuca is fucking horrible.

A bit later (after our corporate strategy director has tried her hand at dancing on a podium *raises eyebrows*) we had a round of B52s which are actually not too bad. Some people had given up by then, having made merry with the free champagne at the earlier party (I didn�t have any. It gives me a bad head. Or at least, it would have, as it would have been sitting atop half a dozen large whiskies by then!) and were lolling slack-jawed on the bar stools, not daring to go back to the hotel in case they wrecked their future career prospects by being seen to be �not team players�. Toast and I linked arms, like a bride and groom and necked the remaining half dozen shots between us. In many ways, he is a total cunt but he is quite good at drinking.

Strolling back to the hotel later (much later!) my Guv and I spied a kebab stall and, being the classy chicks we are, stood in the street with grease dripping off our elbows, munching extra large burritos while Birmingham drizzle bedraggled our clothes.

People are funny aren�t they #1. The trade show visitors were 95% women, 4% gay men and 1% husbands. No wasted muso types. No teenagers in hoodies. No gangstas. Everyone looked awfully respectable. So who do you think it was who would have thought it was a good idea to wedge a coke can in the sanny bin in the ladies loo? I don�t mean on the top. I mean, when you lift the funny flappy lid thingy you can�t dispose of your *ahem* products properly because some dozy bat has seen fit to insert a coke can which is now wedged in the flappy device. When did that seem a good idea? What thought processes made that action? What was she doing with a can of Coke in the lav with her in the first place? It can�t be very hygienic, surely, to be drinking coke on the lav. There were litter bins everywhere in the exhibition halls. They were mostly empty. *shakes head*

People are funny aren�t they #2. Lee and Anne Marie broke up. Lee�s lovely. So is Anne Marie. Shame they cant be lovely together. On Friday, Lee�s coming to live with us for a while til he sorts himself out. About 10 years ago, Lee cheated on his wife. A one-night stand was all it was. He confessed all to his wife straight away. She divorced him. He�s spent the last ten years trying to replicate that wife � he really did love her and will never get over her. Anne Marie was just another girl who �wasn�t Jeanette�.

People are funny aren�t they #3. Last night, one of our builders said a cheery goodbye to BF, went for a few drinks with his brother and asked to be dropped off at a pub near the river so he could go and do a bit of metal detecting. When the brother had driven off, our builder went behind the pub, where the river is, and hung himself. He was 45.

Later
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