Yesterday was almost hell. A few weeks ago I overheard an office conversation, my manager was organising a team-task day out. Sad I know, there is after all no 'I' in 'Team'. I suggested the following that in my opinion are almost always successful at bringing an equalising smile to everyone's face: paintball, go-karting or the pub, or better still, nothing brings people together like a huge dinner with wine-a-plenty.

I don't know how the final decision got passed everyone without anyone objecting but my manager, being the social-centric commie that she is decided that the best way to get us all to bond was to drag our asses to an inner-city wooden hut of a nursery school to paint its innards. Community service... I didn't do anything wrong, I'm an upstanding member and participant of society, why then should I be subjected to something that pains me, in the name of team spirit.

In my blatantly obvious discontent I was assigned the task of blogging the occasion and taking photographs so that I can publish them to the intranet for all to see how shiny and happy we are and how clever we all are to have learned to paint together, in harmony. I had been out the night before to The Comedy Store in Piccadilly - it was a rip of a time where jugs of poisonous Stella Artois stripped my wiring and had me escaping my crowd who were intent on furthering their drinking. I bolted somewhere near the statue of Eros, disappearing deep into the underground system and safely found my way to the Bakerloo line. The nature of Stella is that it only kicks in hours later, or the breweries have a time delay on the release of the alcohol. Like I said, it's poison. I have no recollection of the ride home or the walk from the tube station - I must have walked at least an extra mile swaggering down Elgin Ave.

To get to the point I woke up drunk. Nothing is worse, the hangovers I can deal with but waking up still pissed is hell on earth. I now had to make my way to Highbury to paint for chrissakes, paint, sticky, smelly, brushes, turpentine, ladders, sandpaper, rags, shit. I got to Highbury and found a top greasy spoon cafe to nourish my suffering body with fried bread, bacon and eggs. The proprietors looked at me in a very strange way when I requested that no sausage or beans of the baked variety should end up on my plate. After a grounding breakfast I headed off to meet the others at Starbucks.

The school was as I described earlier; a wooden hut in the middle of a small square in Islington. On arrival confusion set in as no-one had read the beautifully produced manual on our day-out-and-about with colleagues. The manual had everything, health and safety tips on painting, how to paint, the most effective way to use a roller, the importance of masking tape, face masks and what to do in an emergency, don't drink the paint and no eating the kiddies crayons. The first thing I did was search for the glue, nothing takes me back to my days in nursery school like washing down your crayons with some paper glue.

The tasks were as follows, there was a mural that needed removing, the entrance, the kids lavvies and a spare room all needed a lick of paint. Everyone stood around goggle eyed like sheep and I waited for the baaing to start. I realised that there was a management problem so I proceeded, as Jocelyn tenderly pointed out at the end of the day 'yelling' at everyone. Quite a few of my colleagues are Indian, direct imports who are clearly of higher cast, they must have more servants than rich South African families do because never before had a DIY implement looked so foreign and out of place in someone's hand. I had to deliver lessons on using sandpaper and paint brushes. I am not tarting this up for the purposes of blogging. I realised that I was in for it when a group of people stood around me staring as I shook the paint up and gave it a stir. I looked up as they exclaimed in amazement that I had clearly done this before.

Everyone bunched up into the same place trying to get the same work done. A lesson on distribution of hands would ensure that we would finish the day's work. I was now painter, sander, blogger, photgrapher and manager. The lady who ran the nursery school let me on to a little secret that would make my self designated task easier. The wall with the mural is going to be taken down next summer. I set about getting my colleagues to give the wall a token sanding before we began the painting. Her message was clear... 'don't put in too much effort dear, the wall's not going to be there next year.'

I felt terrible all day, stomach pains and the hangover had me wishing for the day to end. We got it all finished in the end, an hour and a half ahead of schedule. We were then forced to fill in a satisfaction survey. I fucking hate shit like that, I cannot express myself strongly enough here. I cannot lie when I am forced into filling in a pampy questionnaire. I was confused as everyone else was because this was supposed to be a team-building exercise but there was not one single person who admittedly wanted to be there. This was community service, charity work, it had as much to do with team building as shovelling shit.

The questionnaire asked me:

Q - What was the highlight of your day?
A - Finishing.

Q - What was the low point of your day?
A - Starting.

Q - What do you think you and your colleagues got out of today?
A - Giving the kiddies a fresh wall to scrawl and scribble on.

Q - Have you learned anything about your colleagues today?
A - Yes, they need to be yelled at, they love it, they need it.

The best part of it was that the person who forced us all to go was on holiday herself. All of this in spite of that we are in the middle of a warehouse upgrade and there is actually a lot of work to do because we are weeks behind schedule.

I'll give you all a few pics to get a better idea of the day.




This the ghastly enamel mural that the poor kids had been subject to. I asked if it was being removed for fear of encouraging the youngsters to squander their young lives in pool halls.




This is the freshly painted wall they can set about wrecking with crayons.




The highlight of my day was finding a miniature phonebooth and fireman's hat. I was instantly transported back 25 years. Fantastic!