It was raining so I very nearly didn’t go to the Creative party this evening. It stopped, though, so I wandered with Dylan to Goodge Street for drinks and chips and cheese on toast. Plans for a late-night gym session let me eat them without a conscience.

It was a small venue, but a great party. Every so often you get one that drags out everyone, no matter who they work for or how long it is since they were last out on the circuit. This was one of them, bringing out not only Matt Whipp, who I’d not seen for a couple of years, but also Paul Trueman who I’ve not seen for even longer.

Paul T was my best friend. We started work at PCW within a month of each other, both having got our jobs in the same batch of interviews. We each found ourselves doing group test after group test month after month and eventually Paul was offered a job at PC Advisor to do features. He left, which was a shame as it meant we weren’t working together any more, but it did at least mean that as we were now on different magazines we could go on press trips together.

Well, that’s what we expected, anyway, but in practice we only ever went on one trip together - to Microsoft’s sprawling HQ campus in Seattle. I still have a badly framed picture of us sitting on a wall outside one of the Microsoft buildings. The camera was balanced on a bollard and had slipped slightly so you can’t see our faces. I’m on the left, wearing the coat. Paul T is on the right.

We were on a break between meetings and had jumped on one of the campus buses after asking the receptionist in the building we’d been using (building 110) where Bill Gates’s office was. She said she wasn’t allowed to tell us. I asked her whether or not she even knew which it was. She said she wasn’t allowed to tell us that either.

Of course, after that we had no choice but to try and find it ourselves. Inevitably we got stranded on the opposite side of the campus and were late getting back to 110.

We got told off.

1. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
   The University of East Anglia's Norwich campus is a home to a strange and varied mix of buildings. Much of it is brutalist in nature,...
   
   
2. Sal and Dan’s engagement party
   I always take my camera everywhere - even on mundane trips like the journey to work - which makes it so annoying that I forgot...
   
   
3. Party cubed
   Quite a busy few days, actually. It started on Thursday, which feels like an age ago now. Drinks and nibs at the Glassblower, which I'd...