It’s story time!

Posted byChico’s MomPosted inIt’s story time, UncategorizedTags:, , ,

Your story or poem can be as long or as short as you want it to be. All four pieces below have to be used. Go wild. 

The only thing is, you can’t kill your main character. 

Post your work in the comments below. Feel free to tag and share. 

Here are your story lines:

1 award ceremony 

2 clothing don’t fit right

3 person with an unfortunate nickname

4 sucker

Published by Chico’s Mom

Thanks for visiting. My blog has lots of different styles: drawing, painting, photography, stories and poetry.

13 thoughts on “It’s story time!”

  1. I hate corporate events. I never feel comfortable at them. I didn’t want to go.

    But, like a sucker, they pulled me in with promises of meeting a famous comedian, a free night in a posh Park Lane hotel and, crucially, putting me in London the night before I was due to see Slayer.

    For reasons lost to the annals of history, I already owned a dinner jacket. I had the shirt. I had the dicky bow. Against all reasonable expectations, I possessed the complete outfit.

    What I did not possess was a pair of cufflinks.

    I discovered this after working a full shift in the factory, arriving at the hotel and putting on the shirt, only to find two enormous pink sleeves hanging uselessly over my hands. There was nothing to fasten them with and not much time before I had to report downstairs for the awards ceremony.

    I knew the area. There were shops just a few minutes away.

    I was also already half dressed.

    So I ran down the road in formal dress trousers and a Slayer T-shirt, carrying the ten-pound note I had in my pocket and hoping the nearest clothing emporium could solve my problem.

    The answer turned out to be a pair of enamel-painted owl cufflinks.

    Why owls? No idea. They were within budget.

    I got back to the hotel room with about five minutes left, glistening with sweat and trying to remember how to tie a bow tie, before heading down to the ballroom.

    The company had been nominated for an award for its work on company culture. I sat on the culture panel representing the industrial side of the business, working with HR to make sure manufacturing and retail staff felt as included in events, rewards and benefits as everybody at head office.

    The old guard called us Culture Club.

    I called us the Culture Vultures, mainly because it rhymed.

    The newer staff seemed to like what we were doing, and apparently somebody outside the company did too, because here we were waiting to see if we had won Best Company Culture of the Year.

    Our table looked exactly as you might expect a corporate culture team to look. Young women from HR, polished, professional and entirely at home.

    And me.

    A large bloke from the factory wearing owl cufflinks who was going to see Slayer the following night.

    I assume I was there to demonstrate diversity.

    The evening was great. Very posh. Everybody else looked comfortable. I was wearing a monkey suit and trying not to spill anything on myself.

    The host was the comedian Deborah Frances-White, who was very funny.

    Unfortunately for me, part of her routine involved explaining at some length why you should never trust a man called Steve.

    She really committed to the bit.

    Still, there were hundreds of people in the ballroom. What were the chances it would matter?

    Then she started giving out the awards.

    “Best Company Culture of the Year…”

    Our company won.

    The table erupted. We all got up and headed for the stage. There were six of us, five women and me, towering over everybody and still trying to disappear into my dinner jacket.

    We collected the award. There was applause. Photographs. All the usual stuff.

    Then Deborah decided somebody should say a few words.

    Five previously confident women suddenly became extraordinarily shy.

    The microphone moved along the line.

    Nobody wanted it.

    Eventually Deborah reached me, looked up and said:

    “What’s your name then, big guy? It better not be fucking Steve.”

    I had spent the whole evening feeling as though I didn’t belong there. Now I had to give an acceptance speech to a ballroom full of people while carefully avoiding telling anybody my own name.

    I did not introduce myself.

    We waved the trophy around, smiled for the photographs and slunk off stage.

    Later, when it was all over, I was standing in the hotel bar with an Old Fashioned, still slightly pink and enjoying the fact I had survived.

    Unfortunately, by then everybody knew.

    The more the drinks flowed, the further the news travelled. The guy who’d better not actually was.

    My main recollection of that night is people hollering my name at me in two syllables.

    “STEE-EVE! STEE-EVE!”

    Which gave me a strange sense of déjà vu the following night, standing in an arena hollering:

    “SLAY-ER! SLAY-ER!”

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

Leave a Reply