I love the Taps Christmas Party. I mean I really love it. After Christmas Eve I think it’s the best night of the year. Everyone dresses up and gets incredibly drunk, and well…
Well…
Hang on a minute, is that it?
Is that really it?
Everyone's drunk and it's in the pub?
Is that the only reason I like it?
And if so, how shallow am I? I mean is that really my criteria for the 2nd best night of the year. 2nd out of 365 days?
I mean do my interests really only to extend to drinking in pubs, reading about pubs, talking about pubs, thinking about pubs and writing about pubs? (Preferably donel while actually in the pub?).
[give me a second to think about it]
Well….yes they do.
I really am that shallow. That really is all it takes to make me happy.
And you know what? I don’t care. Well I do care a bit obviously, I mean once as a callow youth I had harboured ambitions of growing up to be a refined, well-read and cultured adult, but that seems like a barely remembered passing fancy now, like that brief period when I wore baseball caps in the mid 1990’s.
But, thinking about it, you know what? I’m reasonably content to spend my time as an existential adventurer seeking out the meaning and truths to be found deep in the dark hidden heart and soul of the British pub.
[yes, that’s right I said existential adventurer]
So anyway, basically the Taps Christmas party is a night when everyone (well most people – I just come straight from work in whatever I was wearing) makes an effort to look nice and dress up….and then get completely shitfaced.
And that’s basically it.
Although, of course (as I would hope you have come to expect) there are deeper nuances to it than just that (to be found deep in the dark hidden heart and etc etc). It’s not just dressing up and getting drunk – because quite a lot of people do that on a Saturday night as it is.
[Sidenote: I’m genuinely surprised by how many people do this. You’ll often see (mainly) women properly dressed up in the Taps on a Saturday night,and I’ll be sat there thinking, ‘well they must be just having a few drinks before they get a train/cab to London or somewhere’, but no, these people stay all night. They’ve literally got dressed up to come to the Taps. Which just seems weird when you’ve been sat there all day in a cardigan with ink stains on the sleeve and sausage roll crumbs in your beard].
It’s also that those people all like the Taps enough to pay £35 for a ticket and (in almost all cases) get a day off the next day to go to the party, which naturally means that they're reasonably decent and intelligent people.
And then there’s the fact that it’s called a party – and that one simple noun changes things immensely, because now, temperamentally speaking, people are all on the same page. Because now it’s a party – and people can’t help but act accordingly. They’re immediately nicer and friendly and everyone invariably ends up talking to random people who under normal circumstances they would never usually meet. By the end of the night there’s always some dancing and singing and presumably I mentioned the free bar?
No, well ok. Now technically it’s not really a free bar as you’ve paid £30/35 for your ticket, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t seem like one. And I’ve always taken the view that a free bar isn’t something to be enjoyed. It’s something to be taken on, fought to a standstill and then defeated in detail. The fact that it’s impossible to drink a bar dry in a pub only makes the effort all the more Quixotically noble and hopeless – and therefore deeply deeply heroic.
And I think that (though perhaps they don’t necessarily put it in those terms) lots of people look at it in that way, which explains why everyone ends up so massively drunk.
[Side note: also, they don’t have to carry loads of change in their pocket. I accept that this might be of very little marginal importance to the overall level of people’s happiness at the Christmas party, but it’s still a factor. Every Sunday morning I wake up with tons of shrapnel in my pocket. This is because by 12pm or so on Saturday night I can’t count so I just pay with a note every time I get a drink. Could I please therefore take this opportunity to ask our wonderful barstaff readers to please count my change for me when I pay? Thank you very much]
Drunk, friendly and happy
(oh, and well dressed).
And on a strictly personal note, given that tomorrow is my last day at work until the 4th January 2011, that only makes it all the better.
Well…
Hang on a minute, is that it?
Is that really it?
Everyone's drunk and it's in the pub?
Is that the only reason I like it?
And if so, how shallow am I? I mean is that really my criteria for the 2nd best night of the year. 2nd out of 365 days?
I mean do my interests really only to extend to drinking in pubs, reading about pubs, talking about pubs, thinking about pubs and writing about pubs? (Preferably donel while actually in the pub?).
[give me a second to think about it]
Well….yes they do.
I really am that shallow. That really is all it takes to make me happy.
And you know what? I don’t care. Well I do care a bit obviously, I mean once as a callow youth I had harboured ambitions of growing up to be a refined, well-read and cultured adult, but that seems like a barely remembered passing fancy now, like that brief period when I wore baseball caps in the mid 1990’s.
But, thinking about it, you know what? I’m reasonably content to spend my time as an existential adventurer seeking out the meaning and truths to be found deep in the dark hidden heart and soul of the British pub.
[yes, that’s right I said existential adventurer]
So anyway, basically the Taps Christmas party is a night when everyone (well most people – I just come straight from work in whatever I was wearing) makes an effort to look nice and dress up….and then get completely shitfaced.
And that’s basically it.
Although, of course (as I would hope you have come to expect) there are deeper nuances to it than just that (to be found deep in the dark hidden heart and etc etc). It’s not just dressing up and getting drunk – because quite a lot of people do that on a Saturday night as it is.
[Sidenote: I’m genuinely surprised by how many people do this. You’ll often see (mainly) women properly dressed up in the Taps on a Saturday night,and I’ll be sat there thinking, ‘well they must be just having a few drinks before they get a train/cab to London or somewhere’, but no, these people stay all night. They’ve literally got dressed up to come to the Taps. Which just seems weird when you’ve been sat there all day in a cardigan with ink stains on the sleeve and sausage roll crumbs in your beard].
It’s also that those people all like the Taps enough to pay £35 for a ticket and (in almost all cases) get a day off the next day to go to the party, which naturally means that they're reasonably decent and intelligent people.
And then there’s the fact that it’s called a party – and that one simple noun changes things immensely, because now, temperamentally speaking, people are all on the same page. Because now it’s a party – and people can’t help but act accordingly. They’re immediately nicer and friendly and everyone invariably ends up talking to random people who under normal circumstances they would never usually meet. By the end of the night there’s always some dancing and singing and presumably I mentioned the free bar?
No, well ok. Now technically it’s not really a free bar as you’ve paid £30/35 for your ticket, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t seem like one. And I’ve always taken the view that a free bar isn’t something to be enjoyed. It’s something to be taken on, fought to a standstill and then defeated in detail. The fact that it’s impossible to drink a bar dry in a pub only makes the effort all the more Quixotically noble and hopeless – and therefore deeply deeply heroic.
And I think that (though perhaps they don’t necessarily put it in those terms) lots of people look at it in that way, which explains why everyone ends up so massively drunk.
[Side note: also, they don’t have to carry loads of change in their pocket. I accept that this might be of very little marginal importance to the overall level of people’s happiness at the Christmas party, but it’s still a factor. Every Sunday morning I wake up with tons of shrapnel in my pocket. This is because by 12pm or so on Saturday night I can’t count so I just pay with a note every time I get a drink. Could I please therefore take this opportunity to ask our wonderful barstaff readers to please count my change for me when I pay? Thank you very much]
Drunk, friendly and happy
(oh, and well dressed).
And on a strictly personal note, given that tomorrow is my last day at work until the 4th January 2011, that only makes it all the better.
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