Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness
Oscar Wilde
I trust all who read this have enjoyed the Christmas they wished for. I certainly did and am now in that post-festivities twilight zone when you aren't quite sure whether today is Wednesday or Thursday.
Given that the big day has passed, I suppose I should not share a Christmas tale of decades ago. I should focus on the coming year, resolutions, challenges, and new objectives. Well, those who are regular readers know I don't make resolutions but promises to myself (I've only one - and it's that by sometime in the spring, I can fit back into a particular waistcoat I wish to wear). I have also had enough real challenges in my life, so I do not intend to create some 'artificial' ones to feel a sense of achievement as the new year progresses. And these days, I prefer meanderings to objectives, so that deals with that.
So, a Christmas tale it is then and one from nearly forty years ago.
Five pm on the 19th of December 1986 saw me in a very, very mellow mood. The sort of mellow mood brought on by an excellent Christmas lunch, shared in the boisterous company of colleagues, a pre-lunch drink or two, more than one glass of tasty red wine and then all topped off with a generous measure of an after-lunch snifter. I was replete, and the atmosphere was full of celebration, not just because of the coming Christmas but of the successful delivery of a significant systems integration programme. My first as a Programme Manager.
I'd been a SI project manager for several years and not without success, if I may make so bold. But for the first time, I had just led a multidiscipline programme team in successfully delivering a complex training capability to the Royal Air Force. This multi-million-pound programme involved building an aircraft fuselage on the ground with all the associated banks of the usually airborne electronic equipment. In order to train RAF personnel, there was also a control room from which the trainers could replicate real-world scenarios and/or inject faults into the electronics equipment to allow those personnel to get the skills necessary when deployed on operational duty.
The programme required close liaison with the RAF engineering team, with some embedded into the overall programme team. There was also much late-night and weekend work. Still, in the end, my programme team of over two hundred people delivered the capability on time, within budget and to customer satisfaction. The overall acceptance of the system happened a few days before the aforementioned celebratory Christmas lunch. I wasn't the only one in a mellow mood by five pm that afternoon.
Knowing that more than a glass or two of something alcoholic would pass my lips, Veronica, my then-wife, kindly agreed to pick me up after lunch in the 'Six Bells' in St Alban's. The pub is a fabulous 16th-century place and looked grand, decked out in all its Christmas finery. So, just after five pm, I poured myself into Veronica's car.
On the drive home, Veronica mentioned her car was due for service after Christmas and asked if I minded her stopping at the local garage to book that in. No problem I said in my mellow state. I was so relaxed that nothing in the world would have been a problem.
The drive from the restaurant to home wasn't a long journey, but as we progressed, and as so often happens after a little too much booze, I began to get the munchies. And yes, this was despite the beautiful lunch not long consumed. So, as we pulled into the garage, I told Veronica that while she was booking the service, I would walk the few minutes to a nearby kebab place for a takeaway. After dinner drinks are one thing, but after drink's dinner is another. And after too many drinks, my mind gravitated to the ‘haute cuisine’ of either an Indian takeaway or a kebab. My choice was a kebab.
It took me only a few minutes to walk to the kebab shop and place an order for not one but two doner kebabs; yes, those munchies really were kicking in. As I waited for the food to be prepared, I happened to look out of the takeaway's window, and to this day, I swear I was sure I saw Veronica's car go past. The takeaway was on the route from the garage to our home (that five-bedroomed place I mentioned a couple of meanders ago).
Umm, I thought maybe the garage had given Veronica some unwelcome news about her car, and in her distraction, she'd forgotten me and drove straight home. Never mind, I thought, my home was only a fifteen-minute walk from the kebab place, so taking up my two kebabs, I set off through the snow. Yes, we had snow at the time. Quite a lot, as I recall.
Fifteen minutes later and after a bracing walk (although my beer blanket - or more accurately, my wine and brandy blanket - had staved off the feelings of cold), I fetched up at our house to find the place in darkness and no sign of Veronica's car. Puzzled, I realised it could not have been her car that I saw, so with the logic that comes with a surfeit of alcohol, I decided to walk back to the garage. Not thinking that by now, Veronica was probably trying to find where I'd got to, and in hearing at the kebab shop that I'd set off on foot, would probably be on the way home herself. However, before setting off again, I left a sign that I had reached home. That sign was one of my kebabs left on the doorstep. I then set off through the snow again, clutching the other kebab closely to my chest.
Back at the garage, I was to discover that, yes, indeed, Veronica had grown concerned that I had not returned and had set off to check at the kebab shop. Of course, on hearing there that I left on foot, she decided to drive home, with the thought that no doubt she would find me there. Like ships that pass in the night, we must have missed each other as I walked to the garage, and Veronica drove home. A home that on the doorstep of which she discovered my kebab. Not sure what this offering might mean, she decided to ask around the neighbours within the small close we lived to see if they may have seen me or know of my whereabouts.
My whereabouts at this time was the garage. The owner greeted my arrival with amusement and bemusement, telling me of Veronica's concern and that she had left hoping to find me on the way home.
We called my home (the days before mobiles), but Veronica was out knocking on neighbour's doors, and there was no answer. There was nothing to do but take up my kebab, thank the garage owner and set off again through the snow.
By the time I returned home for the second time, my wine and brandy blanket was wearing thin. As was Veronica’s humour. She had completed her house-to-house enquiries and was now worried and perplexed about not discovering my whereabouts. She greeted me with a not unexpected and icily delivered “Where on earth have you been?” It might have already snowed, but to me, the temperature dropped even further.
Recounting my sorry tale only confirmed her suspicion that common sense, a few drinks, and Harry don't go hand in hand.
This story has a moral, but you don't need me to explain it. And I never got to eat those kebabs.
Happy New Year, everyone (and for the record - the photograph was taken a couple of years ago and not at the event of which I write)
Oh, the tales I could tell of walks home in the snow after a few too many! A most enjoyable read, Harry. Good to hear from you in this twixmas time.
This was a fun and amusing read! I’m glad it all turned out alright in the end.