sometimes I wonder about certain events... did they really happen???

yesterday was the work Christmas lunch/away day event.... a simple idea.. take the team off get someone in, have lunch, do more stuff together as a team in the afternoon and then head home...Christmas parties often turn in to rowdy drunken affairs ... that would have been so vastly preferable.... it was a spectacle tho'

I nearly didn't go, as I didn't get the job here I am leaving in a couple of weeks and I wasn't sure I could face it... read the agenda and all it had was a name of the trainer, so I googled her.... the day was to be an exploration of one's inner clown!!! Thought it might be too difficult as I am still upset and I didn't really want to put myself in a position where I would feel vulnerable. But woke up Wednesday morning with a changed heart, did up my Secret Santa pressie and headed off. The bus ride was uneventful and we arrived at a little hotel in woodland.

It started off with a very small woman with a very big laugh talking about sacred clowning. This was not to be a day of learning juggling and uni-cycling but it started off fairly innocuously with standing in a circle and each in turn walking to the centre of the circle and saying their name with an appropriate action. Even at this point some people were having problems. Some just really don't like being the centre of attention in such a focused way... anyway the morning progressed with some trust games, Grandmother's footsteps, a bit of skipping around expressing emotions sort of stuff, then we had lunch, then we did a bit more group stuff but it got very intimate... we had to 'connect' with each other by lying on the ground with your head on someone's stomach and someone else's head on yours! We all got a bit giggly at this stage.... but the strangeness really started happening with the introduction of the red noses... we were told these were a mask to our inner selves, nothing remotely to do with comic relief but an ancient form of healing, we had to 'explore' our noses, come to know them before we put them on, to feel the nose and become one with the nose... it was difficult to suppress the inner giggles when you looked around the room and saw your boss, a highly regarded colleague, wearing his nose with pride, but then he started exploring his nose further than I felt comfortable with, he placed one inside his mouth and dribbled rather a lot, looked more gormless than I would have guessed possible and listed, with glazed eyes. Others at this time were starting to explore the treasure chest of a fancy dress box! Further colleagues donned blond wigs, glitter bra's and pink hats, and this was just the blokes... It was all very free form by now there was no structure, no agenda... and it was here that some reverted to the kindergarten.... the Office manager had a wrestling match with the editor of the newsletter and they were both seriously in earnest! Deadly earnest! The boss took his exploration further and dressed in loo paper, an uninflated toy duck on his head, and a posy of silk flowers, he was now partnered by the deputy head and they became a team of performance actors in some strange frozen pastiche of a couple...... there was a further group who sat at the back of the hall and became quite aggressive about the day... I was mixed... but I have never experienced anything quite so surreal as the afternoon progressed. It grew dark, people were tired, and it was very very weird....