Last night was the company Christmas party.  I am quite proud that nothing utterly disastrous happened.  I don’t have that nagging feeling that I should curl up under my duvet and never see any colleagues ever again – I can remember most of the night and I didn’t do anything too terrible.  In fact, I even managed to stay upright at the roller disco – those evenings blading round Lake Geneva a decade ago finally came in useful.

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that I had the most toe curling, mortifying moments of the day week month ok, possibly of the year, while I was in the office, stone cold sober.

We had a big event yesterday.  We live streamed video of the big, big boss being interviewed about big changes that are coming up for us.  It was a big deal; over 3000 people were watching.  A few minutes into the interview it was clear that technical gremlins had got involved – the film was buffering so much that it was almost unwatchable.  I thought I knew what the problem might be so I ran to the room where the filming was taking place and indicated to my manager that he needed to come out as we had a problem.  He didn’t come out (he was operating the cameras and sound) so I resorted to sign language.  He didn’t understand my variation of sign language so it took a while…

Anyway, having done what I could, I went back to my desk to see if the situation had improved.   All the people that I sit with were laughing.  A lot.  It turned out that what I couldn’t see through the glass door of the room where the filming was being done, was that the camera had the door in clear shot.  I had just made an unintentional 30 second cameo appearance.

I didn’t think it could be that bad, although I did go rather hot and panicky when I was told.  But it was a busy day, I still had a lot to do and I had a Christmas party to get to.  I kind of forgot about it.

Until I got to the party that is, and, as I walked around I was stopped repeatedly by colleagues I did and didn’t know, thanking me for brightening up what was actually a really long interview…

I only looked at the footage today.  To show you the level of toe curling-ness involved I’ve had to cut out the sound and most of the picture (which is why it is so pixelated – it’s very clear on the original), but see what you think of what happened in the top left corner.  And see if you think I should curl up under my duvet for the rest of the year after all :o)