GO TO A 'FESTIVE MEAL' THAT HAS BEEN PLANNED WEEKS IN ADVANCE

Some time in September you got an email asking you what you wanted for your £14-a-head two-course Christmas meal (the choices were "turkey roast (dry)", "veggie option (big mushroom edition)" and something with a cranberry in it, always something with cranberry in it, there are always red smudges of jam over your work-issue pub Christmas lunch), which you ignored entirely, which means you are now left with whatever the kitchen can scrape together from the cancelled orders of other parties that came before you. Big Yorkshire full of gravy, that sort of thing. Just a large bowl of stuffing. A cheeseboard with the grapes picked off.

This is the worst bit, because any time with Work People after work and before you’re drunk is incredibly, profoundly terrible. You ever ended up on the same bus as someone you know you work with but don’t know the name of? Keep smiling at each other like, “This bus, huh?”? Maybe they break the silence and ask you something – “Where do you live, then?” – and you have to tell them that it’s three streets away from them, and you’re both locked in this hell for the next hour? One of you really dramatically gets a book out to read and puts a headphone in to stop this? As soon as some seats free up you go upstairs and they stay down? You deliberately get off two stops early and dip into the second-closest-to-you Tesco so you know they won’t follow you? You know that feeling? Magnify it large and put it in paper party hats. Sandwich it between two people you semi-recognise from accounts who insist on pulling crackers across you. Welcome to your work Christmas meal, a banter wasteland.