Well that was fun.

Useful meeting followed by a rather nice meal, some rather expensive red wine (which we discovered this morning not only tastes nice but you don’t get hangovers) and a few beers in the Walkabout afterwards.

As the only woman there I was a little apprehensive about going drinking with 15 men, but it did mean that they could remember my name, if only by process of elimination. "oh you must be Mary…" And to be fair, they did decide not to go into the table dancing club. It was at that point that someone said in surprise "You can be very assertive can’t you". Most of the people who read this blog may well have realised that one already. Although the word commonly used is ‘stubborn’.

For much of the meal the construction end of the team tried to headhunt me for site experience. My lead design engineer was trying to bribe me to stay put. I’ve explained I only take bribery in the form of money, but he did insist on trying by just refilling my glass. Although on the plus side, he did claim that if I found the bonus scheme stuff filled it in and told him who to send it to then he might do it. Trying to decide if I’m really that cheeky. And if such things should be taken as meant after a few too many glasses of wine.

Weird thing about drinking with colleagues. Even at the end of the evening we were comparing drinking beer to the flow control devices we’re going to be using on site. There’s something very wrong about that.

And I wish I could remember how the conversation at kicking out time went that moved from me not wanting another beer, to a closed gate flow control valve to me probably not really being menopausal yet.