Halle-fecking-lujah
This weekend was the firms annual do. Wifey and I went to the very nice Ashford International Hotel for a dirty weekend, sorry I meant dinner dance.
The format was the same as usual, you pay a small contribution, you get a night in a posh hotel, dinner, drinks, a raffle, breakfast and a headache.
If any one should happen to recall my post last year you may remember that I am only slightly bitter and twisted about the fact that we have never won a thing in the raffle. Not a fucking sausage, when some people seem to win every year. Bastards.
The raffle prizes range from small items like playstations, pamper days, dvd players up to bigger items like Hifi systems, adventure days and the big daddy prize this year was a 32" LCD telly. They also have a couple of small table prizes which are not part of the main raffle. Last year I won a cheapo MP3 player as the table prize, this was the only thing I'd ever won in about ten years of going.

The raffle started, a few small prizes went, one of the pamper days was the next prize, we didnt want it, we didn't win it Pheww close escape. Next prize up was a playstation with games, we wanted it, we didn't get it. A few more prizes went, Fishboy won a slimline dvd player. Bastard. Bazza won a Sony DAB radio mini system mp3 hifi. Utter Bastard. Next up was a Tassimo coffee making gizmo, the Big boss calls out "I don't believe, it's gone to a site engineer who's probably drunk more cofee that the rest of us put together, it s Mick ......" YYYYesss, get in!
I strolled up to get my prize, soaking up the applause, and made some witty comment about does it make doughnuts aswell.
Now I didn't particularly want a coffee maker, it was too big for our kitchen but I was chuffed to buggery to actually win something. Bazza asked if we wanted to swap his HiFi for the coffee making gizmo ( He wanted to give it to his mum for mothers day) seeing as we currently didn't have a Hifi we said yes.
The raffle is usually drawn using peoples name tags for the seating arrangements but this year for the main prize (the LCD TV) they adopted a different approach. The final winner was to be found by playing heads and tails. This involved everybody standing and putting their hands on their heads or their arses then one of the managers flipped a coin, if it was heads then all the tails went out and vice versa.
I started on heads, the coin was flipped heads it was. A few people sat down. I looked around and saw that most people had chosen heads for the second round so I choose tails. The coin was flipped, spinning high into the air, and then slapped onto the back of the callers hand. Tails. Now there was less than 15 people left, Fishboy was the only other person on our table, he choose heads, so did I. Suddenly Fishboy's wife turned round and said to me "you should choose something different so our table has more chance" I replied with something along the lines of "it's every man for themselves" but the damage was done. Stay the same or change to tails? the dilema was raging in my head, the caller was about to toss the coin AAARRRGHHH what do I do? right at the last minute I changed to tails. The coin sailed into the air the caller caught it and shouted out "heads". Bollocks.
The remaining 5 people were all called out the front and two tosses later the 32" LCD tv went to the girlfriend of one of the ex-apprentices. lucky cow.

Overall it was a good function, the venue was one of the best I've been to and it was nice to have a break from the kids (especially for Wifey) and best of all we actually won something.