When Words Flew Like Bullets -

 - And I Was The Gun
Oh wow, that sounds exciting, doesn't it!
     Calm your throbbing veins, gentle reader, for Conrad - which is me, in case you have arrived here at random or by accident - is ever one to exaggerate.
     "What is he on about now?" I hear you quantify.  "Because the Hollyoaks* omnibus is on soon and I've got to make a brew yet."
     Well, here's a challenge.  Conrad, which - oh, you already know - is not one to post a long article about his friends acquaintances people he knows slightly having drunken fun on a Friday night, as it's hard to transpose the, and excuse me for being pseudy and intellectual about the term, mise en scene, into mere words on the screen.  "You had to be there" does not work if you weren't there.

They were all there!

     Thus I shall treat this as an experiment, and you can quiver in fear if it works, because there's a canal trip in the offing next Friday, and a stag-do the following Saturday.
     Enough Intro!  Let the motley gallimaufry pantechnicon - where are we up to?   Ah yes, the <blushes at the intellectual pretension involved> phaeton of phantasy.

Let Us Set The Scene
When I say "us", I mean the poetic "us", which means "me".  Okay, the event was Russell's birthday party and Lucinda's leaving spot.  Russ is only a year older, but Lucinda is going to be working in a sweet factory in Liverpool.
     A sweet factory.
     


     Sorry for the pause, I had to get tissues to wipe drool off the keyboard.  Doubtless she will get bored of sweets being present at every point of the compass, in two or three years or so**.
     They both work in the Business Services team, and the best bit was that no managers would be present.  So, no supervision.  Did I say "best"?  Perhaps not quite the most appropriate word - see "Lucinda The Tart Lady Of Easy Virtue!" lower down.
     Russ used to be on my team, so I am familiar with his personality and wit, but my interaction with Lucinda was usually limited to "Case reference Blahblablah date-expired can you action immediate thank you so much?" which is, you must admit, pretty limiting.

Bluu (For You)
This was the venue, one of the achingly trendy bars in Manchester's Northern Quarter where you get charged a mortgage payment for a bottle of wine; I say "achingly trendy" because that's on their website.  Conrad - who occasionally plays daft but really isn't - checked where it was, since the last time he had to be there he first visited two other venues with variants of the word "Blue" in the title.
     It's not all bad.  Art?

     This is the Black and Blue Burger, specially posted for Mina and Stacey, because see what I ate?  All on my own and in about 5 minutes***.
     Then we have a drink that the musos will love:  Bluu Oyster Cult.  Art?

Very nice.  Very nice indeed!

     Allegedly based around the Dickensian-era consumption of oysters and stout as the working-man's meal.  Bah!  I can only hear the sound of "MORE COWBELL!"

Ah Yes About The Bullets
There was a bit of debate going on, and Tom described Lucinda as having "promiscuities", which is quite subtle and understated, except that your humble scribe kind of interpreted this as it was meant to be and informed Lucinda that Tom had called her " - a slapper".
     This has a lot more class than some of the conversation that was going on at the same time - Conrad asserting that "dogging one's footsteps" has no NSFW connotations and being contradicted - and yet - well, Lucinda was rather offended.
     Hold onto your liberty bodice, for there is worse to come.

Those present in order from the left:
Pete's hand, Anita, Russ, Lucinda (just barely), Gaynor, Anna (totally rocking the Hippy-chick look) , Johnnie, Manisha's head, Scott, Kristian and Tom

     I don't want to be controversial here, but Tom was calling Russ a "BFG".  Russ, you see, and Scott, are married - one of those 21st Century things that were going to cause the Earth to fly into the Sun or something - and here this acronym means "Big Fat Gay", which is - well, sexuality aside, it's pretty insulting whomever you fancy.  Russ, who is rarely lost for words, came back with "BFGAD", which is "Big Fat Gay Adjacent Douchebag" -
      - as you can tell, by this time Lucinda being dubbed a Lady Of Easy Virtue had been entirely forgotten.  Rainbow flags, civil partnerships, Mary Whitehouse, the Permissive Society - all very welcome as diversions.  Not to mention photographs of some Atlanta Bloom chap in a rather hazy context -
     Conrad, however, being fuelled by beer, whimsy and a sense of mischief, picked up on yet another conversational thread, about when Russ became Chief Executive Officer of Whomsoever We Work For.  He would have Anna as - Art?

I had to write it, didn't I?

     Tom - who is coming in handy as General-Purpose Whipping Boy here - read this and nearly fell off his chair laughing, which inevitably caused Anna to come over and investigate.  Suffice it to say that Conrad had to exercise considerable - CONSIDERABLE! - time and effort in not getting a wedgie as a result.
     
I think that's enough offending work colleagues for tonight.  After all, there's always tomorrow!



*  An hideous low-budget UK soap-opera.  Soap-leider, really.
** Conrad, as proven in "All the sounds of gear", is a walking sweet tooth of 240 pounds mass.
*** I was hungry!