....I said, as we came out of the Indian restaurant and into Ebbisham Centre after our team Christmas lunch. This was the best they could come up with! Oh dear. I suppose it could have been worse...this is attempt three (of three) in the first, several of them are watching a man in another restaurant exposing himself while someone with a camera phone photographed his privates (I wonder how he will feel about that tomorrow!) and the second, Adam had his eyes shut!

A good curry (and this was good - Lal Akash, in the Ebbisham Centre is highly recommended by yours truly) as an antidote to the usual turgid Christmas fare was an inspirational choice by Louise and Ginny.

I sometimes feel depressed looking at the menus in curry houses to find they are all exactly the same. You know.....chicken korma, dhansak, vindaloo, madras, pasanda....oh and the same but with lamb. I know that in a vast country like India there must be millions of different dishes when you look, yet the fare in the UK is, although often good quality, mostly the same few dishes everywhere. Not so in Southall, but I don't get the time to go there often enough. This place in Epsom was different....mind you, I think the restauranteur was Pakistani rather than Indian so that could have a bearing. I'm not aware of having been in a Pakistani restaurant before. The food was wonderful...although there were a number of 'classic' dishes, more than half of the dishes on the menu were completely new to me.

What was sad about it though was that there seems to be an 'us and them' situation developing in our wider team. Ginny and her team came with us because there wasn't a team lunch organised for her own team. Once she'd decided to bring her guys out with the two Louises and me 'the ad hoc team' of which I had though Ginny was a member, decided to have their own lunch elsewhere and without her. I do so wonder what happened to Christmas Spirit among the people who decided to do that.