Baubles and mirrors

At Wimbledon, the platform signs said the train was a City train but the digital displays onboard said Edgware Road. So, I took it and it turned out to be the right choice. I wonder if this is the Christmas party day for a lot of people as the train was quite busy. In the office, eating the breakfast of fruit and yogurt that I had prepared last night, by 8:40am.  

I was wearing my Christmas jumper. I had expected lots of people in the building to be doing similar but they weren’t so I stood out quite a lot. And I was very warm.

Lovely catch-up with Alex and planning for some of the work that needs to be done next year. The canteen was doing a Christmas lunch but I thought that I didn’t want to start too early and so opted for the salad lunch. 

I spent most of the afternoon chatting with people and using the in-person time to discuss some questions that come up but don’t need a meeting. At one point, I was reminiscing about a Christmas party back  in 2019 when the team was only big enough to sit in the corner of a pub. And now the Christmas party booked out the entire downstairs space in a venue. Probably about 70 people have said they are coming (which, I guess, is about half the total team).

At 4pm a group of us decided to leave. I thought I’d leave with Alex but got distracted and walked out chatting to other people.  I felt guilty and messaged accordingly. A walk to Wood Lane and a tube to Paddington and we were at the venue a little before the room was ready. The bar was quite impressively decorated with baubles and booze. The mirrors behind the shelving adding a nice effect.

The event itself was great fun. The food was a bit odd - Asian-fusion with lots of octopus and plates of turkey where there did not seem to be a plate each. I think the kitchen was, perhaps, a bit overrun that night. Bar service was slow but that didn’t seem to stop me drinking too much. I left at 11pm but, having started at 5pm, that made for a long evening. I took the train to Farringdon. I did check-in on the ex-colleagues meet-up but they’d long since gone home - which was for the best - and I walked to Waterloo for the midnight train home.