IT was our Christmas do on Friday and what a disappointment it was.

I was looking forward to our meal and a few sociable glasses of wine as we had been to the same venue last year and had a great time.

The first shock was where we were seated - our table was so close to the one behind that every time someone on that table wanted to go to the loo, we all had to get up.

My seven-months pregnant colleague didn't have a chance of sitting down at our table as there just wasn't enough space for her bump.

She ended up sitting right on the end of the next table.

It was quite obvious to us that they had squeezed more tables into the restaurant.

But trying to get into the festive spirit, despite not having enough room for my elbows, a couple of people pulled crackers.

That's when we realised that there were only about four crackers on our table and we certainly didn't have the luxury of one each.

How much do they cost? Not much judging by the standard of the contents.

When the food arrived the standard was poor compared to last year.

Not only that, but with absolutely no space, the waitress had to hand food to the end person for it to be passed down the line.

A minor irritation perhaps, but I wasn't keen on having someone's soup sloshed all over me.

When we tucked into our meals I discovered that my roast potatoes were completely black.

They were so burnt that my knife had trouble cutting them. I was offered no accompanients to my turkey - no cranberry or bread sauce, no little extras.

After dessert they brought a plate full of shop-bought mince pies in their foil cases, but no sooner had we taken one than a waitress asked us to move from the table as they had more people coming in.

We weren't even offered a coffee.

So there we were, with half full bottles of wine, partly filled glasses, mince pies and no table.

What was worse was that every other table we tried to sit down at was reserved and we were asked to move.

There was absolutely no other available places to sit and very little room to stand - there were, after all, 30 of us.

So that was it - we had no choice but to move on to somewhere else.

That was all we got for £21.50 per head and nearly £200 worth of drinks.

So this year they might be celebrating having made a fortune by cramming everyone in, but next year we will be going elsewhere.