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I’m starving. Kathryn had suggested we buy food (pie specifically) before going to the pub, but of course we didn’t, and six hours later I was famished. All the shops were closed.

Anyhow, here I am, kind of droopy eyed at threeish am and I guess I should be going to sleep, but today (yesterday now) was a very fun day. If a little strange. It started very late. I got up at a decent time, but sat around doing some emailing for a while, waiting for the rain to stop so I could walk to the station, then took a horribly delayed horrible train in to London, sitting beside a man who made camel noises every time he yawned (which was about every five minutes. Very annoying).

I took a long last walk around Soho at lunchtime and found all sorts of interesting new food shops opening up just as I’m leaving, but made a pact with Kathryn and Ems that I’d come back for lunch and we’d try them all out. I blitzed my hard drive, did the same to my email account, and set up all the necessary autoresponders to tell everyone where I’m going. No doubt Systems will have done the necessary efficiencies and wiped them by tomorrow afternoon, so it was perhaps a pointless exercise but it’ll run for a few hours. Then again, my pass continued to work all day and technically it should have locked me out of the building from midnight last night, so perhaps not.

And then, just before six, everyone gathered around my desk. PCW, Computer Active, marketing, labs, a couple of salesy types, and Dylan did a little speech, with notes, about my time at the mag, pointing out that while it was he who had taught me how to use the crappy email system on my first day there (26 August 1997) the team was now losing the one person who knew most about it. In fairness that’s not strictly true. Then there was cards and (very generous) presents and I opened the bottle of champagne I’d been given a year ago to celebrate my fifth anniversary on the mag. Somehow it seemed more appropriate to be drinking it on the day I actually left.

My phone rang then. It was Ursula down in reception, ready for our joint leaving do, so I necked the drink and carted off my stuff, taking a last look around the office that has been a second home for the last six years. As I turned the corner, Dave was wheeling my chair (the best on the floor) around to his desk and Dylan was nabbing my USB hub.

We’d booked upstairs at the Blue Posts on Newman Street, which is built on a corner and has windows on two sides to give a little through breeze. There are about six pubs called the Blue Posts in media land, so inevitably a couple of people went to the wrong one before finding us eventually.

We were the first to arrive, though, so took the leather settee by the window and waited for the hordes to arrive. When they did, there was far more than I’d expected, with PCW, PC Advisor, PC Pro, Computer Active, MacUser, Macformat and PC Plus there is one capacity or another, so pretty much every one of the main mags plus a smattering of PRs and freelancer writers.

I don’t know where the time went, but before long it was 10, and then 11 and the barman was calling time, collecting up glasses and mopping the tables. The time in between arriving and then had been spent in all manner of bizarre conversations. Chest hair, I seem to recall, featured quite highly. Also Spen’s prize-winning knees. Then there was all the flashing around of review cameras that manufacturers have ‘forgotten’ to ask to have back, Scott’s genius invention for velcro on bras that would stick to the inside of jumpers and accentuate womens’ breasts, and my beanburger craving that always seems to manifest itself when out drinking with David and Kathryn. Gordon was there and we had briefest of chats about his trip to Ljubljana, but agreed to meet for lunch to chat properly.

There was only a few of us left by then. Ursula had disappeared with Mike by about 10, I think, but I remember having difficulty not stumbling forward onto her while saying goodbye, so that might not be the right time at all. Anyhow, those of us that remained - a dozen or so - headed off to some place beginning with B somewhere in the direction of Old Compton Street where a PR party was rumoured to be going on until 3am. That turned out to be misinfo, as it was practically deserted when we got there, so we gave up and headed back out onto the street and along to the Village. The group split again before we got there, leaving only seven of us to carry on.

Considering it was nearing midnight in the middle of the week, it was suitably busy in there, but we found ourselves a nook in the corner, and so perched around a small table, dumping our coats and bags beneath. I don’t know how long I stayed. 45 mins, perhaps, before running out to catch the world’s fastest taxi back to Liverpool Street for the last train home. It made me feel quite sick.

And so here I am. Technically unemployed for the next week, which is a strange feeling. I am surprised how unemotional I was about leaving PCW. It will probably sink in when I realise how ‘real’ it all is. At the moment I’m still in the surreal phase, but consider myself lucky that not only am I a little sad to be leaving, but I am also dead keen to be getting on with the next thing and, as Gordon pointed out, there are very few times in your life when you can say that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2003 at 2:12 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.