Report... For those people who are new to the society I probably ort to let you know what exactly the Ministry of Happiness is. The Ministry of Happiness is a special Social section of the society, mainly providing happiness on trips, as well as specialist social events. Phil is in charge of the Ministry of Happiness, know as the Minister of Happiness. Although the Ministry of Happiness reports to the Executive Committee of the Society, they operate like the secret service, they report to the Exec, but the Exec know better than to try and take charge of it. Firstly, because it could inflict on the quality of the service, secondly and more importantly, we're all scared of Phil. One of the special events that the Ministry of Happiness organised was the Christmas meal, which was aimed to co-inside with my predecessor coming to Oxford for the weekend, which unfortunately meant that it was on a weekend that most members were busy with coursework, even I should have been working on coursework, but decided that I needed a break. Phil planned for us to meet at half one at Carfax Tower, unfortunately there was, as there always is, a late arrival, this time it was me. When we met up there were five of us, Phil, Me (Adders, if you hadn't already guessed), Al (Passed President and Chairman), Joe Wass and Georgia (Joe's friend). Our original idea was to walk down along the river side path to the Trout Inn at Wolvercoats. We took the decision to have a drink in the “Head of the River” before setting off to walk to the pub, it's the student instinct in all of us, that leads us to need a drink before we will even consider taking on a walk to the pub. Unfortunately as is often the case, this time of year, the weather decided to go against us, by that I mean it started raining, as it has been doing a lot recently. We had a quick drink and a phone call to Hugh to try and direct him to the pub where we were. After a drink, with no sign of the rain letting up we started along the path beside the river Isis (The Isis turns into the Thames just after Oxford). The conversation was pretty leisurely, including talk of previous trips (including the minibus problems) and the Fell Walking boat (this was a boat which me and Al decided that we needed while we were out at a museum in Germany. We came to the conclusion that we could use it to go on trips, until Phil hit a rock with it and sank it. We were getting a bit concerned when the water level was getting closer to the path, the river was flowing really fast. This concern was realised when we found a two and a half metre patch of the path that was flooded, this was the point when I regretted not wearing my hiking boots, oh, well, wet foot aren't too bad when you consider that we were gonna get a nice meal at the end of it. However having wadded through that flood, we were then greeted a bit further up by an even bigger patch of flooded path, this patch must have been at least four metres. It was at this point that we decided that it was time to turn back and head to the Waterman's Arms pub for the meal. We got to the pub in time to see them stop serving food, typical. We made the decision to get a taxi to the Trout Inn, and so Phil booked the taxi. While we were waiting for the taxi we had another drink, and me and Al had an attempt to prove our intelligence on the IT Box game, unfortunately we just managed to prove our lack of intelligence, though that seems to be proved way too much (possibly due to the alcohol killing our braincells). We managed to finish our drinks as the taxi arrived to take us to the Trout Inn. The journey was only around ten minutes and we were at the Inn in no time. We got sat down at our table and decided what we wanted, but as always in the nice restaurants, there was a big queue to order. Phil was first to be served and opened a tab for us all to use, they swiped his credit card to open the tab, so we could have legged it and Phil would have been left with the bill. The food was ordered and arrived fairly swiftly, Phil and Al only had time for one fag break while we were waiting for the food, as the Trout Inn is already a no smoking establishment, as all will be from July. The food was great, though only myself had the Christmas Turkey with all the trimmings. Most of us even found room for a desert, Christmas pudding for me. We all enjoyed a very nice baked Alaska which was shared between us, though it was meant to be Al's, he made the mistake of offering it round to us to try, you'll be amazed how much you have to eat to be able to try food properly. Now came the hardest job of any meal, paying, apparently there wasn't room in the Ministry of Happiness budget to cover the meal. We got the meal paid for and the taxi ordered to bring us back to the city centre where we said our goodbyes and Merry Christmas's, then headed home, or to university to do more coursework. A very nice meal, and a great chance to take a break. As thats the end of this report, I guess all tat remains to do is to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Chairman and Alumni Officer
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