EaRN Christmas party

This afternoon at work, the Experimental and Regenerative Neuroscience team did a staff Christmas party the only way the Australians know how: by throwing a shrimp on the barbie! A Thursday night of a fancy dinner in the city accompanied by a bucket of red wine, followed by a rather widespread exploration of Lafayette’s cocktail menu for good measure, meant that I was nursing a monster of a hangover this morning, so I slept in and ditched the bike for the bus. Luckily, I only had a few media changes and a light treatment to attend to, so rocking up at 10:30 allowed me to finish my week’s work in time to down tools at midday.

A few weeks back, Marissa (resident hilarious crazy woman) asked us all for some cash and in return organised the whole culinary situation, which was perfect. With our numbers significantly reduced (Marcus and Tamasin have flown the nest after finishing honours, Alex is down south on holiday, Andrew and Kalina have gone to Europe for the break and Andy was presenting at a symposium and going to be late), it took us a fair few trips to cart all the food and drink from the lab to our chosen spot across the road; a patch of grass under the trees by the river. The barbecue was fired up in no time and I decided a hair of the dog approach was necessary, so ventured over to the coolbox containing the booze. For the amount of cash that Marissa gave him, Andy did incredibly well in obtaining a huge array of alcoholic beverages; the polystyrene boxes and dry ice from tissue culture came in useful for something interesting for once! There was a lot of wonderful food and even crackers, which felt a bit weird with it being hot but hey, Christmas is Christmas.

A few bottles of cider inside us and Alexia and I were ready for causing some mischief. We ditched our shoes and waded out to the ladder onto a little jetty in the river, wandered down to the end and lay in the sun with our bottles; she’s such a little Russian babe and the closest girlfriend I’ve got at work now Tamasin’s left me for the outside world! Back at the shore, it was great to chat to people I don’t normally get the chance to. Jenny, one of the other supervisors, studied at Bath 20 odd years ago and it turns out some of the old fossils who lecture me were around back when she was an undergrad! Carole retained her role of lab Mummy and looked after us all with her delectable boozy desserts; that woman continues to go up even further in my estimations. In a similar fashion to Melbourne Cup day las month, Lindy was knocking back the bubbly and she’s so cool when she’s had a drink! Her and her family head off on a round-the-world cruise for 5 weeks this weekend, so I have a feeling it’ll be a slight case of “while the cat’s away” in our contingent of the lab… With some of our other colleagues, however, seeing them in a social situation is just plain weird. Sort of like seeing teachers in the supermarket.

I was just thinking that it felt like someone was missing from the party when Ryan appeared. Ryan is Lindy’s PhD student and the one who’s taught me pretty much everything I know, seeing as Lindy’s so busy, and he’s become one of my best Aussie mates. Tales of his hectic life always amuse me; he was late because a gunman was on the loose near his house and he had to wait around while his little brother’s school was on lockdown and check that he didn’t get murdered. As you do! By this point a lot of people were either returning to work (they must have something wrong with them) or carrying on the party inside, so Ryan and I grabbed some munchies and a few beers and crashed out on the grass for a catch up. The high abundance of ducks reminded me so much of Bath and I spent a moment picturing its chilly streets and Christmas markets with a tinge of sadness. It’s a good job Ryan was around to distract me from missing home; we basically ended up laughing about the funny ways of some of the more eccentric members of the lab, but it was nice to have him around following his absence over the past few weeks while he moved house. Turns out we only live five minutes apart now, so we’ve vowed to meet up and cycle to work together in a bid to keep fit/motivate each other.

Back in the office, all the leftover food and drink was set up on the mealroom table, so we tucked into mince pies and continued drinking with the more hardy of the bunch that were still around. Considering he’d provided us with all these alcoholic delights, a group of us were determined to hang around until Andy returned from his symposium. He eventually rocked up and we had a merry old time, coming to the conclusion that we’re actually quite good fun and should definitely go out together more often. By 5pm, I was majorly flagging and Ryan dropped me home to wallow in my hangover with gallons of tea and Magic Mike. Most of which I watched with my mouth open. Putting Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey in the same film should be illegal!