Brief version

[lnr]

Friday night: head down to London, Tube to Olympia, meet Mike's ex-boss, ex-colleagues, boss's son, Jamie, boss's Italian acquaintance and assorted other halves for Thai dinner. Head to bar down street afterwards for cocktails with some of the above plus daughter and her friend. Walk to hotel and check in for night c 12:30am.

Saturday: Up and at Olympia for c 9:45. Spent day on stall at BETT (educational technology show) handing out leaflets and talking to potential customers. Afterwards head to Holburn with Mike and Jamie to meet Ned. Dinner at Belgo's Bierodrome. Wandered round Soho lots and didn't drink much. Back midnightish to odd little hotel room with four single beds near Earl's Court.

Sunday: breakfast at hotel, leave Ned on tube and head out to zone 6 and Essex to meet another of Mike's old friends Adam, his wife Amanda, 20 month son Thomas and 3 day overdue not-yet-born son Jacob. Sunday lunch, playing with child, long walk in nearby park and nature reserve, including playing in playground. A few drinks in the pub with Adam before getting the long tube and train journey home.

A lovely weekend, if absolutely knackering. Might write more about it tomorrow once I've had some sleep. And counted the calories.

Comments

[deborah_c]

Sigh... that brings back memories!

One of the things I don't miss in the least about my previous job was that BETT was very important. This tended to mean "the best time of the year to release new products", which being a small company meant "no sleep for a fortnight beforehand"... My chronic inability to produce meaningful estimates for how long work was going to take (I now have a rule of thumb of "multiply first guess by 6") didn't exactly help!

I would have said that I didn't miss BETT itself, but actually, in a slightly wistful way I do. Actually seeing people who used the things I spent my life working on was generally rather nice, although I suspecting that eight years separation has given me a different perspective; the fact that I'm rather better at coping with Other People now probably also makes a difference...

[lnr]

Oh cool, I wans't expecting anyone much to have even heard of it (I hadn't, before Mike suggested I could go along and help out). It was a bit surreal, given the only show I've been at there before is Erotica: which is rather different in style! I had a nice day though.

[deborah_c]

I was just about to comment that I expect there to be a rather different clientele. On the other hand, I now realise that would be very biased and teacherist of me :-)