Ergomonkey

Balti & The Common Man

Monkeys / People

I don’t believe that last year’s decision to not have an ergomonkey office Christmas party was an unusual one. With the economic climate so difficult at present, it’s an easy target when companies are looking to cut costs. Moreover, I must confess to feeling indifferent to the absence of the contrived Yuletide frivolity; every year the same squabbling regarding venue, date, budget etc.

It’s as if a conversation sometime in the nineties was cloned to be spun- out endlessly, year after year. Although the faces change, the words do not; “it’s too near/ far from my house”, “if I don’t go, can I have the money instead?”, “will the company pay for my taxi?”, “How much money is the company putting behind the bar”, “I don’t eat Indian/ Chinese/ Italian food”, “I know I said I was going, but it’s on the same night as X-Factor/ my wife’s do that has a free bar all night/ M & S are open late”, “I’m not going if he’s going, “It’s bad enough spending nine hours a day with ‘fingers’ Harris when I’m getting paid for it”. Each question or phrase is a timeless classic, as traditional as Christmas pudding or drinking that bottle of advocaat that’s been at the back of the drinks cabinet since 1994.

It was therefore with dismay that I learned on Thursday last week of an impromptu decision to go for a celebratory meal at our local Indian restaurant. I should point out that I’m no fan of Indian Cuisine; each and every time I’ve been persuaded or cajoled to give it a try, I have invariably ended up eating a dish that looks either like custard with some coconut in it, or worse still the sachet of the Whiskas Beef & Heart that I served up this morning to my cat. It’s not even as though the ordeal of an Indian meal is completed with its consumption; the next day you wake up to find that the inside of your mouth has been carpeted in a deep, rich Axminster carpet, toxic fumes seem to be secreted from every pore, and your insides churn and contort as though they would benefit from a ‘pull- through’ with the ergomonkey Christmas Tree!

To compound my misery, I have my own misgivings regarding the restaurant itself. Until last summer, it was a car wash. One day there were cars queuing for a wash and wax, the next there were a team of ‘builders’ (whose only nod to safety was to change their flip- flops to trainers when clambering on the roof) bricking- up the entrance and re- tiling the roof. With minimal architectural changes, a few short weeks saw it open for business. Indeed, a waterfall feature in the reception looked like it may have been someone simply making the best of an uncontrolled leak.

On the night of the ergomonkey event we approached the restaurant on foot, a number of our team stumbling on the uneven terrain of the unfinished car park. Through the gloom, the outline of a huge storage container could be made out. Bizarrely, closer inspection revealed that said container had been clad in wood, though I'm unsure as to whether this was an unsuccessful attempt to increase its aesthetic appeal. Anyway, this was randomly placed outside the grand entrance looking like a long- since abandonded low- rent sauna. Rather worryingly, two members of the kitchen staff were struggling to fasten huge padlock on the sauna door having removed a huge sack of potatoes and other indiscriminate foodstuffs.

Nevertheless, none of this seemed to have deterred the throngs of Chaddertonian fashionisti, arriving in their chromed Nissan Navara’s and 1990’s stretch- Limo’s, hungry for quasi- cosmopolitan atmosphere and an eclectic but familiar menu. A hastily placed sign on the gates helpfully invited the Hoi- polloi to ‘park on Lidl’s car park if ours is full’

Suffice to say that the evening went just as I imagined; under pressure from colleagues, I ordered a random dish that when served looked and smelled as though it had already passed through someone’s insides. Everyone else seemed to be ‘up for it’; dishes sizzled at the table, splashing caustic hot liquids onto exposed sleeves and skin, poppadoms crunched under carelessly placed elbows, and copious amounts of indeterminable warm beer were loudly slurped, burped and spilled.

Suffice to say that I survived the experience, my own gastro- intestinal tract recovering from the ordeal within two days. For next year I’m considering a pre- emptive strike to get my kind of Christmas party. Now, where did I put those leaflets on mediaeval themed banquets...

Richard Howell
European Correspondent
Ergomonkey