Christmas Dinner at the Rothwell Charter, December 1996

CHRISTMAS FAYRE

Christmas Dinner at the Rothwell Charter, December 1996

I hate the office Christmas dinner party. This event is the lowest point in my social calendar. How you dress, when you arrive, when you leave and who you arrive and leave with will usually create more gossip than anything else done in the rest of the year.

If living with the odd gaffe and faux pas after the event weren't enough to deal with, I look forward to the event itself as eagerly as to an interview with the Inland Revenue. People I might have spent the last fifty-one weeks and six days avoiding (and in some cases, believe me, I have been counting) will walk up to me and treat me like a long-lost relative. There have been occasions where I have spent the preceding few months planning to impress one particular individual with my sartorial elegance or suave small talk. Inevitably they won't turn up.

Conversation at the office Christmas dinner party limps along and dies quickly since work is the only thing we have in common and is a taboo subject. Instead, that topic we started on and never finished last Christmas gets resurrected.

"How's that barn conversion coming along?" asks one diner of another, after dredging the memory for the one fact that can be recalled about this stranger. This innocent enquiry can be a dangerous opening since a year has elapsed since the matter was last aired and a great deal of turmoil may have taken place. What if they ran out of money and are now living in their parents' back bedroom? Perhaps the roof fell in, perhaps a partner is now confined to a wheelchair as a result. God forbid they might think you are really interested, in which case you are about to spend the rest of the evening hearing about the price of recycled slates/pantiles or building regulations as applied to downstairs bathrooms.

Which is why it is such a pleasure to look back on the Corby & District IAM Group's Christmas dinner at the Rothwell Charter Inn in Rothwell.

This was my first Christmas Dinner with the IAM. I was assured that the dress code was informal, so I put away the sharkskin lapels and patent leather dancing pumps in favour of my usual weekend wear, jeans and shapeless jacket.

I was the last to arrive and found, at an L-shaped table arrangement twelve other members and spouses (At least I assume they were spouses and it's none of my business if they weren't. Or if they were spouses, they may have been espoused to someone else. Again none of my business, so I didn't ask). We managed to move up a chair or two to make room so I was able to sit with Dick to my right, and Bob opposite.

We had the dining room to ourselves, and thus the full attention of the dining room staff was focused on helping us with our choice from the menu and wine list.

Starters were served, some had soup, some had other things. When they arrived, some of us had trouble remembering what had been ordered and, for that matter, identifying what it was when it arrived. Nevertheless everyone who wanted a starter had one and ate it.

The main courses were awaited. I had chosen a steak in a rich wine sauce, others had other things. I am afraid that time has eroded my memory of who ordered what. The same affliction affected some of the diners that evening since by the time the main course arrived some of us were uncertain as to our earlier choices. My steak was cooked very nicely, still just pink in the middle. It's correct to stew shin or even braising steak to rags - it extracts the flavour - but if a nice, tender fine-textured cut of steak is to hand, then I like it rare. Oozing juices if it has been grilled or fried, just cooked if its being served with a sauce. Abundant quantities of veggies arrived in large servers, so one didn't have to be polite about helping oneself and there was plenty to go round. I recall we even had some chips left at the end, at least until Dick noticed them.

Some carafes of wine were ordered, for the benefit of those who did not have to worry about getting home next morning via the cells and magistrates court. I stuck to two very slow glasses of ale (cask conditioned, unpasteurised served through a swan-neck dispenser with the sparkler loosened right off. Don't get me started).

The dessert choice included something called "Whim-Wham". It was Dick who asked "What's Whim-Wham?". "Trifle" came the reply. "Why don't you call it Trifle?" asked Dick. "'Cos its Whim-Wham" said the latest dropout from the Rothwell College course on Customer Relations.

If there were a classification system to help us in identifying standards in cutlery or table centrepieces or crockery or table linen, it might start with "Imperial" as the most sumptuous and expensive and then work down via "Ambassadorial", "Management", "Hourly-paid" and "School" to "Prison" and finally "Catering". We had the catering- quality Christmas Crackers. These yielded an hilarious selection of gags. "Q: What do you call two rows of cabbages? A: A dual Cabbage-Way!". Oh we laughed and laughed at that one. My cracker yielded a plastic white elephant about one inch (25.4 mm) long. I put it with one or two others I had collected at the office party, the kids school party and the wedding reception in Wales the week before.

As coffee was being served, our waitress enquired about who we were and what we did. For some reason my assertion that we belonged to a rock'n'roll motorcycle gang left her unconvinced. It was Bob who revealed that we were all advanced motorists, apart from some spouses who were just along to drive the advanced motorists home afterwards. The waitress was well along the induction process before she let on that she hadn't got a car.

Stretching back in my chair, all the better to aid the digestive process, I found myself head-to-head with Duncan who was doing the same thing from the opposite end of the L-shaped table arrangement. I was soon engaged in an intense debate over the combat tactics employed by the Royal Navy's Sea Harriers over the Falklands in the war of 1982. I look forward to picking up the debate at the next Christmas dinner since, according to Dick's watch, it was time to go home.