3 Dinners, 2 Lunches, And Far Too Much Cervesa in 2014: The Year That Was

The worst thing about a Friday night is the Saturday morning when you nervously login online to your bank account. Fortunately, with three wishes to the genie, you breathe a sigh of relief as your transactioning in Euro’s.

It’s todo bien as I nurse mi cebeza through a delayed start to this day. Waking up at 3pm to stagger downstairs to the restaurant where I order tres brocadiolo, and dos cola, et dos cerversa. Woke-up too late to pick-up my dry cleaning so I stumble like a zombie back to my bed to embrace the first Newcastle loss in 7 games. I succeed in failing to throw-up.
- I love returning home daily to a well-made bed and freshly (dry-cleaned) clothes. It’s like being married in the 60’s!

My boss was here this week to cast an eye over the show. He sat down centre-stage with a relative smile and the occasional bit of pop-corn thrown at the actors! Bull Dog and I went out with him in Sol on Wednesday night to enjoy far too many drinks and not enough food.

Bull Dog was pretty good buying us champagne cocktails, Sambuca’s and cerversa but I (narrowly) learnt my lesson from last time and gauged myself like a real adaultos in the face of free flowing booze. He also made the decision to take the boss to a titty bar
- It’s an interesting proposition to consider one must go to a titty bar for the good of his career?
But this is Madrid and it quickly become apparent that the ‘club’ was nothing more than a rather fancy brothel. I declined every advance whilst my boss and Bull Dog retreated upstairs with some stunning foreign women. The later part of the night ran rather slowly as it’s really quite dull to be in such a place when all you want is a rum and coke because you don’t want to batter your improving self-confidence by paying for company. My time was spent between smoking inside, smoking outside, advising ‘Lo ciento no hablo mucho espanyol’ And, to the more persistent girls, ‘I’m here with my boss and friend, ask them. I’m not interested.’ There was easily about 50+ girls strutting about compared to the 20 or so guys. I brought a round of drinks for the 3 of us which came to 45 euros. I asked for a coke and was told it costs the same as a beer.

Once the other two were finished off BD grabbed my bag from the clock room and we left. It took me half a second to realise we’d been given someone’s suit jacket in the mix. The skank in me put it on and we departed for our respective taxi ride home.
- The jacket by the way turned out to be quite a scoop, it’s a perfect fit and it matches my vanity (it’s CK).
By this time it was close to 6am. I praised the gawds that my work day, each day, runs 12:30-8:30. Mi Espanyol is still rather awful but even I was shocked when the taxi driver had to pull out the Tom-Tom when I asked him to drop me off at the Bernabeau.
‘Hola, err the Bernabau?’
‘Qui?’
Hmmm? ‘Ahh Real Madrid estadia, err stadia Real Madrid?
‘Qui?’
‘Football stadium senior.’
Resorts to what every foreign person does in this situations and acts out the motion like he’s playing charades at Christmas
We got there eventually despite him driving past it which if I was in London I’d have presumed was deliberate to jack up the price but the counter stopped at 10. Had a weird 200 metre side-by-side Polica escort which I just about managed to restrain myself from waving at. A quick stagger to the closest shop for un brocadio proved rather amusing as the guy on the other side of the counter was out cold duerme. Despite my best hola’s he refused to wake so I left my money on the counter and tripped home the last 5 minutes to my hotel bed.

Awoke 9ish, rough as a badger’s ass. Thought halal this and went back to bed where my 2nd attempt around 11 proved infinity more successful. My two partners in crime from the night before looked dreadful, BD had been throwing up all morning. I had a shave before I set off into the office and felt fresh as the daisies.
- Providing afore mentioned daisies didn’t sway too quickly like dandelions.

That was that. I got an average rating for my yearly appraisal taking into account the turbulent early part of the year, that it’s actually impossible to get a 1 or 2 (out of 6), unless you save the company 10 million…
- What’s the point of having a rating system that doesn’t align to your job?
..And the amazing work we’ve done thus far with the service transition. I also received the copy’n’paste from every review I’ve ever had, ‘You can be too direct at times.’ And, ‘You should work on your soft skills a little.’
- Which in this case translates as, ‘Please to ensure you stamp out lateness early on but do it in such a way that you hold their hands and wipe their ass so that we don’t have to fire anyone.’

I’m in the running once Senior Management decide on the prize? It could be a Manager (pff actually TL**) position for the Madrid guys or it could be a Service Manager for the Madrid and French guys.
- Please let it be this!
I’m holding out to stay here but I think it’s ultimately going to come down to how much they’re going to try and fuck me when they convert my £ to Euros. I need to take some external legal advice as I have no idea on the law around this? Anyone?

As I said at the start, today’s been a non-event as 3 of us finished our week in a rather lovely boozer consuming 4 ultra roundis which was only ever meant to be 1. It’s nice to be able to buy a load of drinks for my team after yet another great week cherrying a perfecto month!

**I’m always reminded of that line in The Office, ‘A TL is a position you give to someone to do the work you don’t want to do