A few weeks ago, I had suggested to a group of my girlfriends that we should do dinner at my club one night. After all, it's such an elegant setting and a fun place to go, I like coming up with any excuse that I can to go!
I had to go into the office for the day, as my HR Rep needed to get new copies of my work permit and passports for some reason. Then, my old boss told me he'd received my annual rating info, but every time we tried to connect so he could tell me, one or the other of us was stuck in a call! Finally at the end of the day, I told him I really had to run, if I was going to be able to drop my work permit and passports off at home, and make it back out to my club by 6:45. So finally he just had to tell me via IM, that I'd been given a "Significantly Above" rating, which is only given to the top 30% of employees. Yippee!!
Admittedly, this did make me feel a tad bit annoyed, as this was now the second year in a row I'd gotten such a rating, and here the company had been willing to cut me loose a month ago? "Yes, we know that you're one of our most outstanding employees, but let's still just make arbitrary cuts and fire some of our best talent."
Grrr... I mean, it worked out in the end, but it still really burns me a little. Particularly given that with the economic situation as it is, they're not giving any pay raises. So in my first year when I got a "consistent with" rating, I got an 8% pay increase, then last year when I got a "significantly above" rating, I got a 4% pay rise, and now this year, with another high performer rating, I get nothing. So please tell me what the motivation is to work hard? In lean years you might argue that you should work hard to avoid getting laid off, but it seems that even that doesn't work! So really, I have no idea what my motivation is supposed to be...
So unfortunately I didn't get to talk to my old boss in person, but instead had to dash for the train, get home, drop off my stuff, and make it back out to my club. I was so proud to have made it by 6:50, only when I arrived to find that one of my friends had already beaten me there!
Luckily, she'd only been waiting five minutes, and so then it was simple to get a glass of wine and catch up. Then, once all of my friends arrived, so we were a group of five, I decided to do something I'd always wanted to do, and got a bottle of champagne. After all, I'd just gotten an outstanding rating at work, and that deserved some champagne, I think!
So we had a nice time catching up over drinks, and finished our champagne just in time to go into dinner at 8. Even though I'd been a bit worried about how many guests a single member could bring into the club, they didn't bat an eyelash with me having four guests, just taking us straight to the table they had laid out.
I ordered white wine for our first course, and red wine for our second. Of course, I had to taste the wine for the table, and I continued to try doing it as I have been recently, just through smell. The white was actually exceptionally good, and it was just the house white, so I was pleased with that. I did also try to take on the job of pouring for the table, but the two girls at the end were too far away for me to handle that!
For the starter, I had an amazing salmon mousee with lobter and a caviar sauce (heavenly!) and then the main was this amazing lamb medallion dish with an artichoke in the middle that I don't know what they did to it, but it was some sort of garlic-tomato-artichoke perfection. I was nearly in spasms of orgasmic delight just sniffing it, and it was an absolute taste sensation on my tongue. So you can imagine my surprise when Tara, who had ordered the same thing, expressed no interest in her artichoke at all! So I traded her one of my lamb medallions for her artichoke, and we both felt like we'd gotten the better end of the deal.
Most everyone was pretty adventurous in their eating, except for Martina, who ordered plain smoked salmon as a starter, and then pheasant for the main, because it was the closest thing they had to chicken. Seriously, what is the point of going out for a nice meal if you're just going to eat things you could easily make for yourself at home?
Finally, for dessert, we decided to get one of each of the various cakes on offer, and then pass them all around. At first it was confusing when we asked for five cakes, and the server thought we meant for the each of us. "Madam", he asked, "Are you sure you can eat five cakes yourself?" Took some more explaining, but eventually we got the right message across! So then we each took a dessert, took two bites, and then passed it to our left. After everyone had tried each dessert, we each claimed our favourite, and everyone seemed quite pleased with their choices!
Then we went back to the bar and got a few more drinks, and I took the girls on a tour of the club. In the library of course, they took delight in writing notes on the club stationary with the old-style quills and bottles of ink, and then we moved onto the games room, the silent library, the library terrace, the women's reading room, and so forth. It was an odd tour though, because I kept losing some of the girls each time we moved to a new room, forcing me to leave whoever had kept up with me in the room we'd moved to, and then run around the club looking for the stragglers. Happened four times, I just couldn't keep them all together!
At one point, when the stragglers finally returned, they told me, "We ended up in the snooker room, and there are cute boys down there!" So I finally got the whole group down to the snooker room to show it off properly, and while my friends all acted like giggling idiots, I greeted the boys and made some polite chit-chat... No idea why my friends act so strangely around cute boys!
Finally we went back to the bar to finish our drinks, and I was surprised when the boys from the snooker room all showed up and asked if they could join us. Three of my friends used this as an opportunity to escape, but thankfully Zuzana stayed with me, so it wasn't weird (just me with four boys would have been strange!)
I mentally berated myself for having dressed so conservatively, thinking that I was just going out for dinner with the girls. High-necked long black dress, pink cardigan, and my hair barely styled, and now these cute boys arrive? Yet, despite my attire, at least one of the boys still seemed quite interested, and overall we just had a funny round-table conversation about squash vs raquetball. Just had a nice time.
Finally at midnight we realised that we needed to dash if we were going to make the last Tube home, so we all walked as a group to the train station. I spent most of my time talking to a really cute guy who I think was an artist of some type, as he was carrying a portfolio. Teased him a bit about the way British boys don't ask girls out, but he said, "Oh, I think maybe it's just the boys you meet. I think that real British men will be a man enough about it to ask a girl out." And gave me a wink and something to think about.
At the station Zuzana and I split at that point, each one taking half the boys with us, as I headed down to the Jubilee Line and she went for the Victoria line.
'Twas funny, as when we stood up, I realised that one of the boys who had seemed most interested in me was sadly shorter than I was! Such a pity, because he WAS cute. On the escalators though, he kept trying to convince me to come out for one more drink with them, but I kept pointing out that it was a school night and already quite late!
Thankfully I stuck to my guns, parted from the boys on the train, and caught the very last Central Line train back to Shepherds Bush. That was a close one!
Still, the attention had been so flattering, it made me wonder about the 25-year old. While he's nice and all, am I really ready to give up being single quite yet? Particularly when there are so many options out there, so many events to go to, and so many boys to meet. How on earth can I pick just one? Maybe this single girl isn't ready to be caught quite yet...
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