The IT crowd

Had a drink with John C and Kevin H last night, in an implausably old fashioned pub near Waterloo station. John, of course, is going from strength to strength at Comet, and it was great to hear that Kevin has got a job at a Financial Services company.

It was good to see both of them, although I don't think I'm speaking out of turn if I say that our discussion about PCI compliance was a low point in the evening. There was good stuff as well.

Earlier I saw Steve, who popped into Ministry to talk about some stuff he's working on. It was supposed to be a half hour chat over a cup of coffee - instead we had An Audience With Rudy Tambala.

I had a Roddy Frame day yesterday; all day shuffle on my iPod. Fantastic. The man's a genius.

I'm sad to be missing out on drinks tonight with some of the zavvi crew - I've got a meeting with a headhunter after work then playing football later. Next time.

Anyway, last night on the way to the tube I noticed a woman stop, bend down and pick up a £10 note that was lying on the floor. And then another.

£20 for nothing? Proof that the glass can fill up at any time...

Old friends

Last night I met with Helzo and Simon, my two partners in crime when we used to be in the corporate communications and event production business. We eventually set up Fingerprint Productions in 1997, operating from a series of offices 'borrowed' from a range of clients who all went out of business, ending up in a fantastic office with a rooftop terrace in Great Titchfield Street. That one was ours.

It was a quieter night than the last time we met, at The Sanderson Hotel with Justin and Kelvin from Illusion Factor. That one was a bit of an epic and probably best forgotten (the bits I can remember that is). My zavvi chums will remember me turning up at around 11.30 the next day with the mother of all hangovers. By the way; thanks, Steve, for pressing ahead with our weekly catch-up meeting at the end of the day... Incidentally, when I did manage to get out of bed on the Friday morning and turned on my phone, I received a message timed at 09.00 from Simon saying "Nearly home now".

Anyway as we enjoyed some very tasty if grumpily served Wagamama-style food at Satsuma, talk inevitably turned to shared memories, and of course the best ones (in retrospect) are where things were going wrong. There were a few of those times - not that our clients would know about most of them. Think of the swan analogy.

My favourite was the Virgin Our Price show where we had Darth Vader arriving onto the stage with sound effects and a cloud of dry ice to deliver the new Star Wars DVD boxset to Doug Morton.

During rehearsals, Simon came up to me and said "We could have a problem with Darth. I don't think he's going to be able to see well enough to do the handover. "How do you know, Simon", I asked, to which he calmly replied "I thought I should do a test, so I put a chair down, asked him to come over; and he tripped over it."

It might seem that Simon is bearing the brunt of those exchanges and maybe Helzo was just a consumate professional throughout. Professional, yes, but Helzo had more japes than an Enid Blyton character. It would take a separate blog to cover these.

I'm off to Aosta tomorrow for a long weekend skiiing, with Chiswick Casuals mates Andy, Graham, Pete, Mark and Alan - who lives there. Should be fun and I promise I won't go on about it when I get back. In any case, there will only be time to get home and switch on the TV for Rangers v Celtic in the CIS Cup Final on Sunday.

Finally, the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that this is the 100th post since I started writing melvtopia all those months ago - a milestone indeed.

The office

Weird, going into the office this morning. Suddenly the place I worked in every day was a strange, empty place.

And a horrible place. They've started to clear out our side of the building so there was hardly anyone there. It was good to bump into a few friendly faces but frankly, I couldn't wait to clear the rest of my stuff and be out of there for good.

Had a nice lunch at Frank's with Lee, Suzanne and Steve, bumped into Ana on the way to the tube, and made my weighed-down way home...

I'm due to speak to a couple of recruiters this afternoon so Project Melvin starts in earnest now.