2003-12-07 - 1:50 p.m.

The worst thing about the festive deluge is that it doesn�t happen at Christmas anymore. Everyone plans their office parties early in December �so as to avoid the rush� with the result that there�s a rush the first two weeks in the month instead of the last two, which is OK I guess, but my liver was psyched up for punishment later rather than sooner this year.

Being freelance, I don�t really get an office party, although granted I could get drunk in my room, make a pass at myself in the stationery cupboard and try borrow a photocopier to copy my butt cheeks on. But it wouldn�t really be the same.

What happens is I end up going to random parties held for other people�s offices, and there�s nothing worse than someone else�s office party, especially sober. Luckily, they come with free bars, and so at least part of the equation can be manipulated in my favour.

The other night was a big Asian airline�s party, where the Champagne flowed like overpriced sparkling wine, and it was actually quite fun, rather than the usual having to meet a succession of corporate stiffs, each with a less interesting job than the one before.

I ended up meeting some people that I�d been on press trips with, and enjoying the on tap conviviality. They had a pretend casino where you played with real chips but that were bought with fake money. We all did very well on the blackjack table, and had the ace idea of going to a real live casino and simply transferring our luck into cold, hard currency. Foolhardy, maybe. It�s a good job the party hadn�t been furnished with a pretend neurosurgery table, I suppose.

We arrived in Mayfair one taxi ride later all fired up, my mood only slightly dampened at reception by the phrase �Perhaps sir would care for a jacket?�, and having to shoehorn myself into the smallest blazer since Moses in order to comply with their dress code.

None of us are troubling Bill Gates in the bank account stakes, so we hit the cheapo table, where you could play for �10 a hand. Betting �10 every thirty seconds would of course be the height of insanity in a sober state, but the booze, and the fact you�re only betting a small plastic disk seemed to calm me.

My system was in place, a cunning procedure which mostly involves betting heavily on incredibly shit hands, and I soon found myself down from �100 to �30, and looking at bedtime for Bonzo, thanks very much. However, I rallied, started to bet cautiously (i.e. not like a rabid gibbon who thinks money is the devil�s toilet paper), and was soon up to even, and then, and I have no idea how, up to �200 and then �300. Luckily, it was absurdly late by this point, and physical tiredness made me cash in my chips, otherwise I think I would still be on that stool, ordering G&T�s. I�m considering developing an uncontrollable and financially crippling gambling habit. It could be character forming.

So I�m heading out to the punishing environs of Cape Town, South Africa for a week � a particularly harsh and brutal assignment, escaping to all that sunshine when it�s cold enough to freeze the proverbials off a brass monkey in London.

Good to go to new places, though, and particularly a new continent. New to me, I mean. Other people have already been there before me. Vineyards, whale watching, and something optimistically billed as a �township tour� await. More, as it happens. Does this make me a Cape'd Crusader?