Christmas Party! (Blog 108)

The London Comedy Writers meeting I like to go to every fortnight had a Christmas party yesterday, in London Bridge, ‘The Old School Yard’! To start things off, the few early comers to it including me and the organiser enjoyed some chips and battered sausage, ordered from a nearby takeaway place. Far from healthy, but it’s the holiday season. It’s good to have some one off treats, right? Well actually my diet is never particularly nourishing but at the end of the day, each day is a gift, so why not celebrate that? Got you there. Moving on before you can come up with a comeback, we also indulged in some delicious cocktails. I had two in fact, and was consequently quickly nice and sedated. Like a meditating Buddhist monk. Digressing very briefly, wouldn’t it be great to follow Buddha? Imagine feeling drunk ALL the time. Or is that not how meditation works? Surely it is, I’ve seen the contented look on the holymen’s faces. (Ok, often they just look bored). But still, you know why they don’t drink alcohol? It’s because if they were any more out of it, they would pass out!

Once the venue was more populated with comedians, we made our way underground to the karaoke section. Apparently programmable on the playlist were Iron Maiden and Deftones. I’ve never heard of a heavy metal karaoke before, but sadly everyone sang along to classic pop/light rock songs, instead. Nevertheless, I had to see what else the special computer wired up to the stereo and TV had to offer. Did it have music even heavier than heavy metal in its memory? It was time to look up Cannibal Corpse. Alas, I was disappointed. The dream of people festively screaming ‘HAMMER SMASHED FACE!!!’ over and over started to fade. Digressing again, did you hear about the CC guitarist going mental, setting fire to his house and running at a policeman with a knife? What a terrible thing to do. However, many fans of the band don’t seem to be too upset about the whole incident. It’s as if they’re minimalising what he did. E.g., they might say ’did you hear about the guitarist from that death metal band lighting up everything and going apesh**t? What an eccentric!’ That comment would be technically true, but clearly it would be misleading.

Back to the party, I was eventually offered a chance to sing to IM’s ‘The Trooper’ by the event planner, once the playlist queue shortened. But that wasn’t going to happen. I’m never going to sing to anyone in my life, even if the guitars and drums to my voice are hard-rocking classics. As no one wanted to really mosh out for a further time, the backing track was skipped. With a touch of sadness, it was time to get a third cocktail. However, one of the classic paradoxes of alcohol is that whilst it makes you feel quite mellow, it also makes you feel aggressive. What if I went into drunken craze and started hitting people? One mindless slap from me would be all it takes to ruin everything. Fortunately, I didn’t ever feel violent, despite the sometimes undesirable tunes from the ‘entertainment’ system. Go me. Very zen. What followed all the celebrations and mild fears, was the journey home. I had to get directions from people twice, but other than that the whole mission and indeed the day, was very successful and mostly peaceful. Until after Christmas (I think)… bye!