venta

In a moment of unguided bargain-buying, I purchased a 50p drink from the Post Office bargain bin today. It is called Kitsch and comes in a leopard-print bottle.

It's perry and it's actually reasonably drinkable.

Pintwatch is not speaking to me.

Today, I received an email from one of our admin staff at work inviting me to join "the girls" for their Christmas meal this year."The girls" (not my label) constitutes the female "upstairs" staff - in our building there is a fairly strict divide between upstairs (management, legal, admin, accounting, people of uncertain function) and downstairs (programmers). I've occasionally heard remarks like "oh, all the girls went out last Friday" but never before been invited to join them.

I am, for people who don't know me, a girl but a downstairs one. When I joined I was the only female programmer, we briefly rose to three, then back to one, and are now two. I replied that I'd like to join them for lunch - many of the upstairs people I barely know to speak to, and feel I ought to make more effort - and would play along with the Secret Santa which appears to be involved. I fear smarter clothes and chardonnay may be the order of the day.

Rather belatedly, it occurred to me that if, for example, the engineers organised a Blokes' Night Out to which I wasn't invited I'd feel somewhat put out. Is it, therefore, hypocritical of me to join in with a Girls' Christmas Lunch to which I've been invited for my chromosomes rather than my charming and witty banter ? Why, in the workplace, are girly lunches considered acceptable while an outing from which women are excluded thought to be all kinds of bad ?

I suspect that, in a lot of cases, outings like this are organised and none of the excluded people are actually bothered. Few people will protest inequality if they don't actually want the thing they didn't get. The test would come if one of my company's male employees asked (for some reason) to be included. I remember a male friend of mine objecting bitterly that he wasn't invited to a hen night, even though he was close to most of the people involved and expressed interest. I, by contrast, thoroughly enjoyed