The safari begins
Finally the day dawned. A subtle sense of dread permeated the Brogency. Offset only by the traditional anticipation the staff had for a night they could completely let their hair down without fear of reprisal. Even the clients knew this. In fact many welcomed this event as an opportunity to do the same. Well, except for the year we had a cage in the middle of the room with a crazed barber who shaved pictures of Che Guevara into people's skulls throughout the evening... That made things a little difficult the next day. Nothing worse than the CE of a large and influential public service agency in a photo opportunity with his minister sporting a back half moon hairstyle featuring Che that he was completely unaware of. How he was blissfully unaware of it was solely down to the Absinthe he had virtually bathed in during the evening. Needless to say, all of the images were shot face-on.
Adrian disappeared at lunchtime, claiming he had 'things to do'. Apart from Julie, our Group account director and I meeting with one of our blue chip clients in the afternoon to discuss their social media strategy, things were relatively clear.
At 4pm, Sean our resident copywriter, popped past my desk with a question that I now wish I had paid more attention to. It concerned a phone call he had received earlier in the afternoon from an international number. The line had been quite crackly so he had only got about 30% of the message …and what he did get was in thickly accented english. Russian english. The thrust of the conversation was best described as… well… random. And what Sean did manage to catch consisted of terms like: 'the owl', 'Basel 35', 'vapor vector' and 'soft cock'. A trifle odd, granted, but due to my headspace being rather distracted by the meeting I had had with Julie and our blue chip earlier I didn't make the connection that was so obviously staring me in the face. Well, not so much staring as shining a bloody great spotlight into my eyes.
I blame the blue chip. I mean it isn't everyday that you walk into a $1 billion turnover corporate client's office to discuss their social media needs only to be confronted by a series of questions more akin to someone grappling with the finer points of eastern philosophy. There are just some life issues that social media will not resolve and I take great umbrage at being asked what the Tao of Flickr is or whether Instagram can lead a horse to water, make it drink and enable it to see the light. For fucks sake, I create needs and desires for people to buy stuff. I can't help them find themselves. And Instagram sure as shit is not a vehicle to find God. Any god. Or at least not one with a gun and a beard. The best I can do is sell them a mirror or a phone with a screen camera… Suffice to say the meeting ended at an impasse.
Anyway, so I noted Sean's concerns, parked them and didn't think about them again until Jesus started walking amongst us.
The event was due to start at 6pm, quite early for a Xmas party, but due to the logistics of getting people out to the ass end of the 'Wai'… we had no choice if we wanted people to be back in town by… well… Xmas.
Participants were to meet at the Railway station to begin embarking procedures. The first of which involved the aforementioned Veuve and some very decadent canapés. Clearly this didn't fit into the theme for tonights evening of frivolity. At least not directly. Later, I realized it was all part of Adrian's plan. It was a fundamental baseline for our trip.
The carriage looked amazing. All 60's and 70s retro chic - it looked like an Airstream caravan on rails, inside and out. To this day I have no idea where Adrian had managed to find the bloody thing. He said he had chartered it from KiwiRail, but I have my doubts. I suspect it came from the collection of some Greek magnate who gapped it and settled on the other side of the world when their home country went to hell in a souvlaki.
Six pm came and went. Everyone was seated, standing and generally meandering in the carriage drinking the Veuve and making introductory signs of carousing. At 6.15 the conductor made noises about the train having to leave. Unfortunately we were still waiting for Adrian and the bugger wasn't answering his phone. I was a touch underwhelmed by this, as his entourage had apparently arrived. An entourage that consisted entirely of blondes and one stunning red head. This was not alarming on its own as Adrian was well known for his 'liquid charm'. No what was alarming was that they all stood well over six feet tall, were seemingly well versed in the vagaries of quantum physics (as I had found out when I overheard one discussing super string theory with her neighbour) and had figures that would make politicians cry. So to speak.
Julie strongly suggested that we just leave Adrian behind which would have been well within the bounds of reason, given there were five carriages of fare paying passengers in front of us wanting to get home after a busy week. And after a not insignificant amount of pressure (particularly from the conductor who happened to be our super human account lady Audrey's …brother) I relented and we departed for the wilds of the 'Wai'.
Adrian joined us somewhere between Lower and Upper Hutt. Winched down from a helicopter no less. Straight onto the carriage roof, down through the skylight (closed) and into his entourage's waiting arms. An entrance previously only reserved for a Bond. I don't want to know how many regulations were broken. But the helicopter was black and there were no markings …so I am figuring it would not have made any difference if any agents of the law had seen it anyway.
Adrian's entrance was only the beginning of the madness. I don't know how he did it but he managed to time his entrance to some insane psychedelic trance track from the 90's which thumped its merry way through the clearly upgraded sound system within the carriage. Accompanied by strobe lights and dry ice. It was not unlike his failed entrance to a Brogency Monday morning meeting six months ago. Only without the gorilla suit and way more successful. I think this was mainly due to his entourage who took their cue and started pulling the Pussy Cat Doll moves to the beats that were streaming throughout the carriage....
Along the way, as we were clearly distracted by Adrian's entrance, a Serbian looking DJ had also appeared in the corner… complete with vinyl jacket, Aviators and massive straight-from-the-engineering-rooms-of-Jesus earphones. He looked like he had fallen through a time warp. Only his music was undoubtedly the latest thing spinning on underground European dance floors …reminiscent of 80's Kraftwerk but with flavors of Oakenfold's Fluoro label - punctuated by Latino rhythms. Granted, a mishmash, but for some reason it worked. It even made Colonel Hough wiggle his hips. Much to Julie's consternation, as she was having a serious discussion with him at the time and could have sworn that he had a strange twinkle in his eye at the very moment he 'wiggled'. (Later we would term that particular move 'the Colonel'. It was written into the Brogency's constitution for future generations.)
The floor started glowing at about this time and a few pygmies, sorry - Children of the Forest, appeared in the corners - just out of sight and to stimulate the cones in our eyes, (this was for deliberate effect according to Adrian who had whispered quietly into my ear that he would "take things from here" …for some reason I wasn't too worried about it.).
As we entered the tunnel through to the 'Wai' the Veuve was withdrawn to be replaced by smoothies. According to Adrian this was to cleanse our wearied souls before entering 'Rarapaland'. The journey through the tunnel was to be exactly that …a journey. Again, for some reason, I didn't seem to care about how I was rapidly losing control of the situation. None of the senior staff seemed to care very much either. Julie was playing Twister with a couple of Children of the Forest, Kath - our head designer was talking up a storm with one of our art clients and Baz - our new media guru was showing some of our grads how to 'offline the bird' - whatever the fuck that meant.
