Christmas parties and black jumpers

“I’m not being funny, why are you wearing a big black jumper that look amazing similar to my, big, black jumper?” I probed. “Errrr, my mate found it, eerrrrr sorry, I’m really sorry, look, errrrrr take it back please”. Whilst shaking my hand I replied, “Look I don’t care how you got it, give it back to me now”.

One of the good things about working at this time of the year is office parties. Well as I am not working, it was time to find someone else’s Christmas party. In essence it’s not that difficult to gatecrash one, all you need to know is where it’s being held and what company is holding it. If you can get these vital snippets of information, the doors open to free drinks and an array of slightly stale finger food.

As I approached the door man, he glanced in my direction. “Private function tonight” he said. “JP Morgan” I replied. The doors opened. As simple as that. Despite getting the “does he work here looks” from those at the bar, I took my place in the corner and helped myself the thirteen sausage rolls, two slightly flaky biscuits and two free pints of beer. Have I said before how much I like Christmas? It was interesting observing the ‘in office’ flirting, people who don’t drink get drunk, listening to the work gossip, but, as always, the Christmas party DJ was starting to play songs nearly as cheesy as the finger dips on the table.

Onto Walkabout, the Australian sports bar. In a protest of having to pay two pounds to get in, I decided, like I normally do, to boycott the cloak room charges. Quite why anyone should pay a couple of quid for someone to put a coat on a hanger is beyond me. Anyway, all you need to do is find a nice dark corner to house your temporarily unwanted garments. My chosen gap was between two sofas, the black jumper was hidden in the shadows, or so I thought.

At two am, it was time to go. The eight pints of premium larger had, as always, taken too much out of me. Once again I was dancing to songs I hate, I was looking at people that I shouldn’t be looking at and my brain and my body were seriously falling out. When my friends decided to advance onto the stage, it was time for me to walk, that’s all I could gauge.

Right, time to find that jumper. All that remained was an empty gap. My long standing jumper hiding, cloakroom avoiding, tactic had failed for the first time. Slightly buoyed by the premium larger, and looking ahead to the four mile close to freezing walk home, I was determined to solve this crime. Think like Colombo. Think motive. Think clues. Look around for suspects. If this was going to be an episode of Colombo it would have lasted two minutes.

Standing beside me was a guy hardly over five foot seven, wearing a big black extra large jumper. He was in a group of seven people, but I wanted it now, I could smell the sweet and sour chicken balls up the road. Thank god I’m a lot bigger than him.