Incider information

Dave, Victoria and I grabbed a quick lunch on a bench where Kings College fronts the river. Due to inadequate planning I only had plums and dry bread, so Dave kindly smeared it with some daal, which was a more balanced meal.

We attracted too much attention from puntloads of teenage French exchange students. Dave played them at their own game of incessant waving and yelling.

The evening was much fun as it marked the leaving dos of colleagues and friends Paul (who I've worked with for ten years) and Kate (five years including overlapping time in Cambodia). An end to 17 years of combined service for our organisation, so worth a good knees up.

A good turnout meant we invaded one of Cambridge's bars and didn't budge for around six hours. I must have been in the party spirit as I was coerced into splitting a bottle of Prosecco, when I'd normally drink Carling if anything. Never again at that bloody price. Prosecco only when it's free at weddings.

The crowd eventually thinned until the survivors remained, one of whom was nervous of the impact of several pints of rhubarb cider on a 9.30am meeting about Liberia with a senior manager. However that was forgotten when our colleague Nicola, freed from childcare duties for three days and feeling merry, reported her laptop stolen. Kate and I then spent an hour in the bar manager's CCTV room replaying the night on fast forward. We tracked movements of Nic's bag around the room, with a beady eye on anyone loitering suspiciously. The manager hadn't expected us to apply such an anal approach. Try as we might we couldn't identify anyone slipping a laptop out of Nic's bag.

*Edit*
The following morning Nic's laptop was on her desk... At least the manager got out of cleaning up, which he seemed happy about.

When we eventually emerged long after the bar was closed, Kate's bike had been stolen on her last night in Cambridge. She was planning on using it for a new commute in London for her new job starting next week. It's always surprising to realise how blatantly people will walk around with bolt-cutters, but unfortunately par for the course in Cambridge.