I doubt in the history of my work it will ever see a leaving do the likes of which we saw tonight. My boss is retiring after having worked decades here, basically his entire career, and he threw one huge party tonight to celebrate. Most people will just pick a venue and then let the night happen – instead Kash went to the effort of hiring out a massive venue, hired caterers (with a pretty decent spread – they even had mini burgers!), and put a huge amount behind the bar. What a man! He really has a most generous spirit.

It was clear from the leaving speeches tonight that Kash has made an impact on so many lives, on a personal and professional level, during his career. And it is also clear that there is no one else quite like him. He will certainly be missed.

Sometimes a leaving do is the best place to meet new friends. Strange huh?

Tonight Laney had a leaving do to say a temporary goodbye to people as she swaps the British winter for the Australian summer. I’m slightly jealous of the tan she is no doubt going to come back with!

At any rate at least she’ll be back in Feb next year so even though I’ll lose a playmate for a few months at least its not for longer term like the lot that left in October! As I haven’t really known Laney that long I’m still getting to that stage of meeting her friends … the night started off reasonably civilized:

but then this:

and then this (I don’t know how Jonny didn’t break his back lifting me):

then this:

Yeah – it was time to go home before things got really crazy. 😉

15 months ago Elvira and Andrew with Baby Elsa left the UK to return to live in Australia. They are back briefly in London to sort out Elsa’s passport so tonight we caught up for dinner. It was great to see them but it was interesting to hear that they found that settling in Australia was taking some doing. Mostly it had to do with the fact that it was hard to find people who could relate to their experiences in the UK. I could kind of understand what they mean – sometimes people who haven’t come over to live in the London get this glazed look on their face when you talk about life over here. I get the sense that they are seriously considering coming back here! However, there was some other news – they’re trying for a second baby. Yay!

I feel like I’m lurching from one leaving do to the next lately. October has been a sad month and I’ve got my final dinner with Pauline tomorrow 🙁

Well, the only consolation is that tonight’s leaving do for Neil, resident hottie in the office, is supposed to be only a temporary one. Neil is taking a career break from work to travel around South America for a few months – lucky boy! The venue for his leaving do was the Cells at The Southwark Tavern. Though Neil had reserved a few of the cells for our use it made socializing a bit awkward as the group was split up and moving around the very confined space was awkward. Nevertheless I believe everyone had a fantastic time. He had a great turn out though it was the usual suspects who were left to catch the last tubes at the end of the night:

Its funny how the girls say goodbye differently to the boys 😉

So tonight was Pauline’s official leaving do 🙁 at Strawberry Moons For good it seems this time. It will be very sad to see her leave since she’s been such a big part of my life, if not necessarily for a long time, at least for a lot of important moments. We just clicked from the moment we met (not to sound too sappy!) But everyone has to go their own paths eventually I guess and Pauline’s path is taking her back to Melbourne. The only consolation is that these days 10,000+ miles isn’t as far as 10,000+ miles used to be (plus I’ll see her a couple of more times before she actually departs this country.)

Oh boy you know when Strawberry Moons is the venue that its going to get messy … very quickly. Happy hour meant that we were getting jug after jug of cocktails before 8pm. At one stage I’m sure someone came over to the table with about six jugs at once! And then The Wongo was unleashed – before we knew it there was a bottle of Moet on the table and then, the inevitable, shots. That boy is dangerous. Very dangerous.

It was a good night out though because everyone drank so much so quickly early on only few of us remained at the end of the night (and Peter was so drunk that he was opening his mouth but no sound was coming out and he left the Moons without picking up his briefcase!)

Though that’s not to say that stopped Pauline and I getting our requisite photo with work hottie Neil:

Heh heh.

But the funniest moment of the night was when we ran into Caroline’s admirer:

That dude must live here.

Tonight was unbelievably the first night that we could get that everyone was apparently free for a night out on the town. Technically it was also Rehana’s birthday a couple of day’s ago so this was a sort of quasi-birthday do though really because of the sort of random “cliques” of girls that we had attending tonight I was treating it more as a general girl’s night out. Whatever it was labeled we hit On Anon and made it a night to remember. I think my feet will be the part of my body that remembers it most.

When ideas were floated for where to go tonight ideas ranged from Strawberry Moon (not a bad place and popular on a Friday night but it would have been disappointing to me if we’d ended up there considering we had so many weeks to decide on a venue) and then Rehana came up with the idea of Sound. Unfortunately when we turned up it was to find that the venue had been booked out for some sort of private party. Unfortunately we couldn’t blag to get in and even more unfortunately there were loads of scantily clad and I must say extremely fit lads running around topless with only a bow tie on. Hmmf. Too bad I didn’t have my 12x zoom with me …

So, anyway we ended up at the newly revamped On Anon just around the corner.

By the time we got our act together to get into the joint (a relatively early-ish) 8.30pm-9.00pm whilst the place wasn’t exactly heaving finding an area which could seat the eight of us was nearly impossible. We ended up camped on a few bar stools in an awkward spot near some stairs. However, true to our style though, we ended up owning the area for pretty much the rest of the night.

On Anon is a lot larger than you can imagine – with about five floors all playing distinctively different music and all distinctily decorated. Right on the top floor is the lodge where it was oddly relaxing if a bit strange for a bar!

Towards the end of the night one of the girls asked if we wanted to check out the VIP room. It was about 2am and, of the girls remaining, legs were definitely getting a bit weary so we thought a change of scenery would be cool. We were taken to The White Room floor. It’s white, no surprise there, with a long bar on side and the entertaining raised platforms for dancer girls/boys wannabes. We were taken to the larger VIP room but soon realised it was only a way to get us to buy drinks. As nice as it was to have a bit of quiet space (the VIP rooms were practically empty) we were long past having the energy to get any drinks so we snuck out when we could!

We had a fantastic night even though the music was on and off brilliant and awful. The DJ would hardly take requests either so that was kind of frustrating. With all the girls in killer outfits we certainly got a lot of attention from the lads, which is always flattering, though that’s not to say that any of them were particularly luscious. For shame! Sadly, everyone’s favourite was the married and unavailable Alex. Great fun.

However, if there was ever a bigger meat market than On Anon I challenge anyone to suggest differently. Still, most of the guys out on the pull are pretty good natured though I was a bit freaked out when one guy waited for me to come out of the toilet (and considering I was in there for probably 20 minutes as well trying to fix my spanx!) to try and get my number.

School Disco is a UK institution and no visit to London, at least, is complete without night at a School Disco Club night. I’m sure everyone holds their school memories close to their hearts, nice or not so nice, but the chance to get back into uniform and experience your first taste of rebellion is something no one should miss.

It even has its own wikipedia entry.

Officially School Disco is held at The Great Portland Girls School but for some reason tonight’s event was held at Sway in Holborn. I’ve never been to Sway but tonight it was rocking and Rita, Laney, Mei, Annie, Jo and I certainly made the most of it.