Fashionably Late

Following last night's blip, we were sitting having tea when Mrs Cogs slid this letter over to me.
"Are you going to this tonight?", she asked.
"Damn, I'd forgotten all about that", says I, "it's not tonight ,is it?" But there it is in black and white (and bold) Thursday 26th.
"I'll go along and show my face, but I might not stay too long"

A little later I'm washing the dishes when Mrs C tells me to leave them or I'll be late.
"I'll finish these first", I say, "I'll be fashionably late".
What a guy!

So that's what I do - I wash the dishes, put on a jacket, check myself in the mirror and say my goodbyes. It's the 20th anniversary of the school that the kids have recently left, and parents who have been on various committees and Boards of Management have been invited for an evening of champagne and exotic dancers finger food and speeches. I'm not too pushed about it really, but it'll be nice to see some of the others and give out about some of the things we had to do. Like the Executive Committee AGM. Or maybe I should say particularly the Executive Committee AGM - a desperately dull event which involved 2 hours of listening to the accounts, feigning regret at the loss of retiring members (while secretly envying them) and attempting to press gang new members from a hall sparsely populated with parents of Junior Infants, who hadn't yet worked out that this is the one gig you really don't want.

I arrive about 15 minutes late. The car park is full, lights are on in the hall. I hope that the Indian lady who makes the samosas is here and I consider how to pace the wine to avoid feeling too paranoid on the drive home. As I wander into the hall I notice that there are eight people sitting behind a long table shuffling papers, faced by about 30 others in rows of plastic chairs. "This doesn't look like a party", my brain informs me, but I recognise a few faces and so continue on to take a seat on the front row.
"Not the front row!", my frontal cortex yells, but I pay no attention because another part of my brain is trying to work out where they've hidden the food.

I turn to Joe behind me and exchange pleasantries.  "This doesn't look like a hooley", I say. Joe looks confused and doesn't reply..... I look back to the top table and I think I recognise the woman in the middle....she looks like the Chair of the Exec......."OK, shall we get started?", she says....out of the corner of my eye, I see the Secretary approaching from my left, carrying what I instinctively know to be a membership form.....behind I hear Joe, "This is the AGM", at the exact instant that I come to that fact for myself......"The anniversary party is on the 26th March....."

The rest of the sentence is lost as adrenalin courses through my veins and my body springs in to action. I take out the Secretary with a right hook and the momentum takes me crashing through the rows behind as I scramble for the exit. I burst through the door in to the cold night air and hurl my car, engine screaming, towards the darkness as if we were in an early Springsteen epic.

The wild-eyed panting doesn't stop until I make the motorway.....and the sobbing begins.

Fashionably late...........four weeks early.