There was simply no way we were going to let a global pandemic totally ruin our Z/Yen staff Christmas gathering for two years.
OK, we had to do without completely at the end of 2020. OK, the Omicron wave made it impracticable to persevere with our original date – 17 December – in a week where everything else was also postponed or cancelled.
But we were determined that this would be a postponement, not a cancellation. Those fine people at Watermen’s Hall, together with the rather wonderful The Cook & The Butler people who do the catering there, came up trumps with an early opportunity for us to regroup in mid February.
They kept very quiet about their choice of menu ahead of the day, perhaps because it was full of nice surprises and treats, some of which might well have been late decisions.
More than just sound good, that five course meal tasted really good too, with excellent choices of wines to wash the food down.
We did almost everything we had planned for the original event, including our traditional Secret Santa. The picture above shows my table. The one below the other Z/Yen table, capturing the moment when Peter discovered that he had received the best Secret Santa ever – a massively extendable diagrammatic representation of the central part of the River Thames.
Given the setting of Watermen’s Hall, this present couldn’t be bettered and it did the rounds of the room several times.
The only problem with Peter’s Secret Santa present was that Juliet couldn’t contain her pleasure at how well the gift had gone down, exposing herself (as it were) as having been that particular Santa.
For some reason, by way of contrast, no-one has owned up to giving me a tin of Senior Moment Mints.
The picture below depicts Charlotte and Bikash chatting about their spoils while Michael addressed the assembled throng – a loyal toast I think.
There are a few other photos – you can view them all on Flickr if you click here.
One thing we chose not to do was sing the 2021 Z/Yen Christmas song. Linda did bring it along, as it had been all ready to go back in December 2021. But we chose not to proceed with singing it, as the entire meal had been changed and we can’t even “trail slothfully back to Lothbury” any more.
Still, I thought I should still publish the “unused canticle” for completists of my oeuvre to collect, debate and savour like connoisseurs, at their leisure, in the privacy of their own metaverses.
I think we drew the long straw with the February 2022 menu, personally.
After such an enjoyable meal and conversation, not wanting the afternoon to end, most of us retired to Jamies St Mary’s to continue the discussions over a few more quiet glasses – such is the City early evening on a Friday post-pandemic.
Did we solve any of the world’s problems? Well, you know what we Z/Yen folk are like. It might take a few weeks for the fruits of our discursive labours to come through, but watch that space.