Last Friday was my work night out / 'do.' People go a bit mad on the day of the work do don’t they? From circa 2.30pm, women start applying lipstick and curling their hair and nobody does any work. This would detract from examining the cocktail menu of the bar in intrinsic detail, deciding what you will have for your first drink (in three hours’ time) and who you could pair up with for the 2-4-1 offer, which always gets a bit political. There is heated debate about the best routes and parking spots for the designated drivers too, with people strangely protective of their preferred multi-storey car park.

This was only my second work do at this place, although the first one barely counts. I’d only gone for one drink as I was meeting some, non-work mates later on in the night - the social butterfly that I am. Unfortunately, my phone battery died – which only seems to happen on the rare occasions when I actually need it – so I missed a crucial text informing of a change of plans and ended up sitting alone in a loud bar, watching MTV for an hour, willing them to show up.

They didn’t.

Defeated, I called it a night and reflected on how there were currently two separate and likely enjoyable, night’s out going on and I was on my own on the number one bus, while a gang of teenagers played grime music on their (fully-charged) phones.

There were to be no such mistakes this time around. It was a good evening and I managed not to make too much of a fool of myself, which is always a relief. It’s one thing waking up with a sinking feeling after a night with friends or family, but the workmate sinking feeling is another level. Awful.

The only hiccup was when I made, what I thought was a reasonable quip but nobody laughed. I stupidly and over-confidently assumed that they hadn’t heard me properly and repeated the quip a bit louder. No laugh again. They had heard.

I sought solace in a five-minute conversation with the toilet attendant, who seemed to like me after I paid £1 for a solitary Softmint. He was an agreeable guy although he did continually repeat his crude catchphrases throughout the duration of our chat.

“No money, no honey” was probably the most sophisticated one in his repertoire and it was the first time I’ve heard it from a man in his profession. I usually associate it with men in holiday resorts trying to coax you into their restaurants or into buying wooden elephant ornaments. Thinking about it, it’s not really relevant in that context is it? It rhymes though doesn’t it? Catchy. That’s the main thing.

After the Softmint and gathering my thoughts, I got through the rest of the night unscathed and had a good time. I resisted the temptation to dance, which is no bad thing and found myself discussing topics ranging from Buddhism to Finnish rockers, The Rasmus with a team leader. There were no faux pas to compete with a night out at a previous job where I’d thought disclosing to my manager that we spent every Friday afternoon holding a secret fifty-question football quiz was a good idea.

Having returned home at a reasonable hour, dignity intact, I felt pleased with myself. Louise had fallen asleep on the sofa in front of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which she has, I believe, started watching from the very beginning again. She was not interested when I woke her with tales of my conversation with the toilet attendant and swiftly went upstairs to bed.

Feeling sociable and still in night-out mode, I grabbed an ale and turned on the computer, which is never a good idea.

The next morning, I woke up with 'In the Shadows' by The Rasmus in my head, felt a niggling fear then read through and a host of nonsensical Tweets to minor celebrities and a series of grammatically flawed Facebook comments to pals. Just when I'd thought I was safe, there it was. The familiar sinking feeling.

So close.

On the topic of cringe-worthy Facebook behaviour (of which there is lots), a friend of mine has a joke at the moment where he replies to posts from many moons ago, thus unearthing embarrassing exchanges. This is one of those things that’s funny until it’s your turn and his recently dug-up post of mine made me realize that if I met my nineteen-year-old self, I wouldn’t like him. We wouldn’t get on. That guy was an idiot.

The post was littered with bad spelling and some frankly unnecessary swear words as I talked about upcoming plans to see a DJ in a nightclub, using words such as ‘epic’ and ‘legend.’ In defence of the nineteen-year-old me, I didn’t understand the concept of Facebook for quite a while; I thought that if you wrote on someone’s wall, only they could see it. That’s no excuse though.

Idiot.

If memory serves me correct, at the nightclub in question, I was turned down by laughing bouncers at the door because I was wearing an ill-fitting shirt which I’d stolen from my dad. Bouncers have never seemed to like me.

“Not tonight mate.”

“Why not, you’ve let everyone else in?”

“Leave.”

This is probably a bit of a worry as to what people’s first impressions of me are; are bouncers representative of wider society?

Unperturbed by my volatile relationship with doormen, from between the ages of seventeen to twenty, I erroneously thought I was genuinely quite cool. I tried to make people aware of this with my aforementioned wise words on nightlife (I was a drum and bass fan despite not actually liking it) and adding a hint of streetwise slang to my vocabulary. I also had bleached highlights in my hair and - when not in my dad’s work clothes – wore baggy jeans, brightly coloured Nike Air t-shirts and, on occasion, sweatbands. Those were the days. Or were they?

If my friend unearthed a Facebook post from the twenty-nine-year-old me a decade from now, I wonder if it would evoke a similarly negative response? Would I look back with disgust thinking, I was such an idiot back then? If he picked out anything I wrote on Friday night, probably yes.