Birvidik

So, to sum up:

After three weeks constant slog you have no hard information as to the number coming and you have alienated 60% of your fellow liveaboards, most of whom now refuse to speak to you and will cross busy main roads awash with maniac local drivers just to avoid passing within ten feet of you. On top of that, your sleep patterns are disturbed, you have started sniping at your partner and you appear to have descended into a catatonic state of learned helplessness in spite of the antidepressants. Oh - and you're now back on 50 a day after 25 years of fag-free abstinence. Yup - that's about par for the course.

Now you have to square the circle and sort out the venue and the menu. To do this you have to extract a consensus from 50 or so of the most congenitally unco-operative, egotistic and egoistic (*) curmudgeons on the planet. Believe me, this lot make Joseph Stalin look like the Dalai Llama by comparison.

The first thing you have to do is canvas views of likely restaurants. But you can't do that because the choice of restaurants affects the menu options. OK, you think, we'll work out the menu and then look at the restaurants. Optimistic fool.

Although you have standardised your sample of yotties by the simple expedient of driving off all the non-Brits except for a couple of inexplicably anglophile Dutch, you are far from dealing with an homogenized group. They all want what they personally are used to in a Christmas. This is a psychological comfort blanket to them and if thwarted in their desires they react with all the sophistication and self control of a two year old.

Firstly, you have the problem of timing. Most British Christmas blow-outs are scheduled to begin about 3 p.m. despite this being rarely, if ever, achieved in practice. This target time is far from unanimous, though. Some will have been brought up to start eating at 12:30 on the dot whereas others are unlikely to be back from the pub until it finally kicks them out so that the staff can get to their own festivities. Appeals to reason and fair play are pointless here. You will just have to bite the bullet, plump for 3 p.m. and resign yourself to alienating another six of the few people who are still talking to you. On the plus side it reduces your seating plan to an even more manageable thirty-odd.

Having successfully navigated the preliminary negotiations you must now embark upon the real challenge, the menu. On the one hand you have The Buffet and on the other you have The Tradional Christmas Dinner With All The Trimmings Especially Sprouts. (TTCDWATTES, orTWATS in the interests of brevity). In between you have the á la carte option which manages to combine the disadvantages of both options with the advantages of neither. Discard this out of hand.

The Restaurateur will argue strongly for the buffet on practical grounds. It is a logistical nightmare trying to dish up three (or worse, more) courses to large numbers of drunken yotties, most of whom have forgotten what they ordered in the first place. Invariably someone has his dessert slapped down in front of him while his wife, still waiting for the arrival of her amuse-bouche, is on the verge of fainting from hypoglycaemia. The buffet option is also favoured by vegetarians and pescitarians, along with attention-seeking saddos who purport to be either allergic to or intolerant of virtually every known food group. Most other assorted weirdoes will favour this option.

If confronted with someone who claims special treatment because of a serious food allergy, ask to see his epipen. Anyone seriously at risk of anaphylaxis will always carry one and will know exactly where it is at all times. If all you get is some feeble excuse such as "Oh - I must have left it in my other jacket" or "I accidentally sat on it last Thursday" just snort derisively and shove a peanut up his left nostril. (**)

In view of the above you may be leaning to the view that The Buffet is probably the least hysteria-inducing option. Don't be fooled -such thinking seriously underestimates the blinkered tenacity and petulant bloody-mindedness of the TWATS aficionado. He (it's usually a he) has had a TWATS every Christmas day of his life. His mental equanimity (such as it is) depends on it. His mummy always ensured he had one, and when she finally put her foot down and withdrew TWATS privileges, his wife (AKA mummy II) continued the tradition.

You have to make a delicate, nuanced judgment at this stage. Practicalities lean toward The Buffet whereas the perils of tantrums and untrammeled petulance suggest taking the coward's option and conceding to the TWATS. Whichever way you go, your guest list will shrink by about 50% and you will be subjected to unprecedented levels of virulent personal abuse. If it's too finely balanced to call, go for the buffet.

Now you're on the home straight. All you have to do is get a consensus on the venue and prise the deposits out of their hermetically sealed wallets. The former should be easy for you by now as you have honed the necessary skills to a fine art. Just impose the solution that is most convenient to you and tell the resulting whiners that if they don't bloody like it then they can bloodywell organise it themselves. That usually shuts them up.

Getting actual money out of the buggers, though, is an intellectual and ethical challenge of the highest order. Various techniques have been advocated, but I would suggest constant harassment combined with public embarrassment and humiliation followed up as a last resort by the firm application of a pair of pliers to the inside of the thigh. In particularly obstinate cases a counterclockwise rotation of the pliers usually has the desired effect.

Just as you think you've cracked it, Fortune's smile turns into a snarl. You've plumped for the Buffet, booked the restaurant, got all of the deposits by fair means or foul and drawn up the seating plan. You tune in to the VHF net on the morning of the 21st to announce the final arrangements. To your horror and dismay a spluttering TWAT comes on the air to inform you that he and his good lady wife arrived back from Blighty the night before and were HORRIFIED to discover that not only had he not been posted a handwritten invitation in best copperplate but that, without his having been personally consulted at international telephone rates, it will be a buffet.

His outrage knows no bounds. Arguments that the decision was made by the majority of yotties are dismissed peremptorily. He has, he informs you in a tone that suggests his finger has just gone through the toilet paper, consulted with others of like mind. He calculates that the arrival of his party and the Nice-But-Dims on m/v Easily Persuaded means that the TWATS now outnumber the Buffet supporters by three (or three and a quarter if you count the Jack Russell). He therefore reckons that four days is ample time to cancel the restaurant booking, negotiate with an establishment that has the wherewithal to provide a proper Christmas dinner and notify everyone of the change. He DEMANDS that this be effected without further delay or argument.

You reply in language that would make an RSM blush and in doing so successfully reduce the number of people willing to publicly acknowledge you to single figures. But it was worth it - you haven't felt so alive in months. And the vision of him trying to contort himself into the position you so graphically suggested on an open channel will keep many people amused for the coming year.

So Christmas day dawns and, against all the odds, you pull it off. Apart from the usual couple of tiffs, raised voices, dramatic flouncing exits and muttered complaints about the gravy, everything goes well and people seem to enjoy themselves.

At the end, The Manager rises serenely and taps her glass with her spoon while looking indulgently at her assembled brood. She thanks everyone for coming to what has turned out to be the epitome of a successful liveaboard Christmas and hopes that all the efforts that went into it (by which she implies her efforts) were worthwhile.

As an aside, she mentions that people should show their appreciation for your modest contribution to the sum of human happiness and unilaterally asserts that she is sure that you would be more than happy to take on the challenge again next year.

At this point, should you not have had the foresight to have locked away all sharp objects or blunt instruments I can only suggest that you study the defence of justifiable homicide as it applies in the country in which you happen to be.

(*) Look them up - both terms apply.
(**) Legal advice is recommended before undertaking this course of action