Have you ever had to manage rowdy, inebriated family members on a Christmas Day night out?
A teetotaler’s idea of a bad evening is hanging out with people enjoying a drink. It’s all fun at first, but the scale soon tips – and it’s all downhill.
It suddenly shifts from a good evening to a realization that hanging out in a pub with this crowd wasn’t a good idea.
It’s especially worse, if it’s the annual Christmas Day family night out at the village pub.
The family joins up half of the tables in the pub into one long ‘conference table’. At first, everyone sits randomly, but as the night gets merrier, alliances start.
As a teetotaler, everyone wants to buy you a drink. Like, I mean, how many packs of fruit juice can you take in a night? Pretty soon, your section of the inebriation conference table is packed with soda and fruit juice.
Then, drunk long lost cousins will suddenly remember how close you all are.
Someone will throw an arm across your shoulders, and slur into your ear:
“Bro, hii miaka yote nishawahi kukosea?”
“Bro, ulisema utanipa kuku moja nikakulie Nairobi? Kwetu Rongai kuku ni expensive sana!”
Before you can think of something cordially apt in response, a mild scuffle at the far end of the table catches your attention.
Uncle Tosh, the official family MC and acclaimed ‘entrepreneur’ is a drink or two past his threshold. He wants to know where he’s parked his jalopy. In normal circumstances, that query would be valid – except that on this night no one drove to the village pub – it’s within walking distance from home.
One of your cousins at some point has doused your fruit juice with whisky.
You realize it’s close to curfew hour, and no one seems in a hurry to leave….
Shortly, the pub’s owner and former classmate beckons for a private chat. He wants the bill cleared, as the law demands close down before the curfew.
“They haven’t paid?” You ask, pointing at the lot over your shoulder with your thumb.
Mentally, you are fast making count of all the fruit juice ordered in your name.
“Oh, they have paid, except Tosh. He has a bill….” The owner tells you.
Meanwhile, Uncle Tosh is trying some Lingala moves between the tables. It’d be hilarious to watch, if the little matter of his pending bill wasn’t looming so low overhead.
“How much?” You ask.
“Tosh has 6,600 not paid. He asked for The Whisky bottle”.
At the village pub, The Whisky is an expensive bottle of Scotch whisky that has gathered dust on the shelf for a couple of years. No one had dared ordered it!
You approach Uncle Tosh, and he chooses the moment to remind you how in his hey days, he had sacrificed everything to pay your father’s school fees. You owe him, see?
Reluctantly, you realize you are the only hope in saving the family’s face. You need to clear the bill. How now, at almost curfew time in the village?
As a Co-op Bank client, you have an open option.
Next door, the late-night pharmacy is also a Co-op Kwa Jirani agent. A withdrawal allows you to clear the pending bill, though prior marked as “Bedsitter Rent Money”.
Well, Uncle Tosh ain’t entirely safe – you confiscate his phone to make a claim for refunds in the morning.
It’ll be easy to prove – every transaction at a Co-op Kwa Jirani gets instant notification sent to your mobile number for easy account management!
Click here to learn more, or visit the nearest Co-op Bank branch.
