Bed-hops and Lunatics

I'm please to announce the return of an old friend. A friend who was omnipresent during my early years in employment, but in recent times has been exiled for reasons not of their own doing. However, this year has seen a resurgence, and we can all rest easy in our beds that the glory days are back again.

Of course, that laboured introduction refers to the debauched antics of my colleagues at the company Christmas party.

As I said above, in recent times, antics, tomfoolery and the varying levels of horseplay have been at a worrying low. Refusing to blame the credit crunch, I believe it's because the ratio of single-to-impressionable staff has been skewed by the sheer number of married and shamefully unadulterous folk we've recently employed.

Skip forward to this year, and we're back on form, fuelled by a heady injection of youngsters, singletons and recently-divorced arsehats bent on alcohol-fuelled redemption. The following events back up these outrageous claims:

- 1 chap drank a bottle of champagne and 2 cans of lager. On the bus on the way to the hotel at 4 in the afternoon
- Said chap hit the karaoke at 7:15, and threatened to knock someone 'spark out' who he believed had a better singing voice than he did*
- 1 young man was propositioned by a much older, bisexual male colleague, culminating in the question "Have you ever shagged a man?"
- A free bar was declared at 7:45. By 9:45, £2,500 of drinks had been ordered (but not necessarily consumed)
- The free bar was closed when somebody ordered 30 pints of Fosters
- 2 of the more attractive members of the female staff enjoyed the pleasures of 2 salesmen sharing a room. One in the bed and one in the bath
- 1 young lady, who is well-known to have a boyfriend, was propositioned by a young chap along the lines of "Fancy going up to your room?". She needed no second invitation.

* I was the man he threatened to knock out. I was well scared, I tells you.

Good times. Personally, I much prefer this kind of party as a married man, as you watch the myriad perpetuators of the above carnage making the walk of shame on the Monday morning (or in some cases, setting new records in non-plussed arrogance). Let's face it, they're not doing any harm (apart from maybe tearing the occasional trouser press off the wall in the throes of passion) but isn't that the point of an all-expenses-paid Christmas soiree - to wreck possessions, reputations and the trust of the free bar cardholder in as quick a time as possible?

It isn't? Cripes. I'd better have a word with a few of the more 'energetic' staff before next year then...

It's double standard-tastic!

A colleague of mine once sagely opined that if a woman was to enter his office, open her blouse and enquire as to the contents' quality, said chap would be more than delighted. If however, he was to offer her the same right to reply on his trouser furniture, the local constabulary would be involved quicker than you could say "love truncheon".

This morning, a chirpy southern lady spent a few minutes on the radio explaining and ultimately defending her new website, which allows wives who are bored with their marriages to gather, converse and ultimately brag about the affairs they're currently enjoying.

Hmm.

Imagine if you will a world where a website existed solely for blokes to boast about their extra-martial doings; all hell would break loose. Woman's rights groups would go off the chart, slagging off the menfolk and displaying levels of penis envy previously uncharted. There may already be a site dedicated to this particular niche, but its proprietor hasn't been in the national press bigging it up, to my extensive knowledge.

I'm not naive enough to suggest that women aren't capable of initiating affairs, but it is my experience that it's usually the bloke who is doing the dirty, while the wronged wife sits at home, none the wiser, poring over a BettaBuy catalogue. The existence of this new website bucks that particular notion, but it seems to have taken it beyond a simple support group for women who are stuck in loveless marriages, and instead seems to celebrate their adulterous ways. And that's just bogus.

It subsequently turned out that this woman was very happy in every aspect of her marriage except the bonking bit, but rather than approach her husband about it, she went off with some other chap then founded this website to document her progress. Ignoring the moral ambiguity of affairs, doesn't she think that encouraging this kind of behaviour via an online support group is more detrimental to marriages than suggesting they actually talk to each other and sort their shit out?

My attitude to affairs needs no further airing here, but my attitude to marriage is similar to people in jobs they don't like - if you don't like it, fuck off and find a new one. Don't just stick with what you've got and moan about it. And certainly don't broadcast the various ins and outs (arf) of your affairs for like-minded harridans to gorge on like the sex-starved morality vacuums that they clearly are. Jesus wept.