Advantages of X-mas lunch

... over X-mas dinner, or 'When is a gathering a meeting?'

See, at work we have these Christmas outings with our teams and until last year I was having dinners. Dinner sounds important and sophisticated, lunch is merely a quick bite, or so I thought. There are three advantages of lunches which jump to mind instantly. Firstly, the organisers of a lunch will avoid the discussion of whether or not spouses are invited, secondly, one doesn't have to see for a babysitter and thirdly, one actually gets the benefit of a half day off if the meal is booked for the end of the lunch serving period, stretched nicely with coffee and chat, to then be moved seamlessly into the pub.

The new team with which I went yesterday have researched the matter for a few years now and have developed it's execution to perfection. The location was Salthouse Harbour Hotel in Ipswich, where the atmosphere is beautiful, the food is delicious and the wifi for free. No, I of course didn't use it during dinner, but they have this lovely coffee place with plain view of the waterfront where I like to take my coffee breaks from the heavy work of shopping and which was the place where I did my first flight into the internet cloud. This is the perfect place to wait for the rest of the party to arrive.

Feeling nicely fed after a pleasant lunch I was prepared to go home and to work a bit more... and then we turned right... the car park is left... and then we walked a little bit... and then we turned right again, up the stairs and found ourselves in front of the bar of Isaacs. Did I say half a day off? What followed was about six hours of hard work! I learned about weird feet and hands of my colleagues, which bones were once broken, revealed that for the bodybuilding competition I will have to wear a tiny bikini, and we of course briefed each other some work related stuff. Great thing about Isaacs is that it has secluded corners. Eventually we had an entire room for ourselves which was actually big enough to fit us all in. Tomorrow we will be back to the boss's little office, cold and without drinks served and we will discuss the same all over again - the work stuff, not the feet, only then it will be called a meeting.

Unusually enough I arrived back home later then hubby who was at the movies, and hence I will cut it short now, I have a few chores to attend to which were scheduled for yesterday afternoon, and then work is calling...