My boss from my 2006 moved to Canada a few years ago, and left my company last June. She had just started a new job however, and was making a quick trip back to London to see old friends and catch up with people before getting really down to work.
In the morning, I was a bit disappointed to have to go into the office to meet my old boss for lunch, as it would have been a perfect Friday to just hang out with the Young Dutchman. As it was, he convinced me to sleep in and stick around for much too long, such that I barely made it into the office before noon. And when I left my flat, he was still there, getting a slow start to the day. Was definitely sorry to leave him behind!
But it was fun to have lunch with my old boss, who is only five years older than I am. It was good to just talk and catch up and hear about her new job, as well as catch her up on the comings and goings of people in the old job. The one unusual thing I found about her new job was that she now has to commute to the office every day. I guess I really do live in an alternate reality where that seems like an impossibly difficult requirement for a job to have...
After work, I again joined her and a few of her friends for drinks. After a debate about where to go, we actually went to a classic bar that is physically in the same building as the office, which while not a creative choice, proved to be an easy and cozy place to just sit with drinks as it rained outside.
I'd at some point thought I might leave and go to a party down in Brixton (i.e. stupidly far away) although perhaps I wasn't even supposed to go.. This guy I know was having a Halloween/birthday party and had invited ALL of our mutual friends, to the point that all this past week people had been saying to me, "I'll see you at Cain's on Friday!" Except the thing is, I'd never actually been invited. I'm sure it was just an oversight (with a party that big, you're bound to miss one or two names) but one of the biggest faux pas in life I can ever imagine is showing up to a party that you weren't invited to. I've actually had that problem in the past with people who don't understand to beg an invitation is exceptionally poor manners. Hence I never like to go anywhere unless I've been formally invited. So although I didn't mention the lack of invite to anyone, it was really unlikely that I would have attended, even if I'd been free.
Plus, I didn't even have a costume, and after all of the activity of the past week, I was absolutely exhausted. No way was I really up for a party, when it just seemed easier to spend time with some overall pleasant company (even if it was more my boss' friends than anybody I knew).
Interestingly one of the guys in the group was someone I knew my boss had an long-running flirtation going on with, even while he was married. He showed up for drinks no longer wearing his wedding ring, as apparently he and his wife had filed for divorce six months earlier, putting the entire length of their marriage at 2.5 years. It was an interesting discussion, as I can't believe that at 37, this guy is already married and divorced, saying that he jinxed it by asking his groomsmen, "So what's the spread on how long this will last?" in the moments before the wedding began. He did say that he wanted to have kids soon however, which makes me think that guys in their 30's have biological clocks, same as women...
At around 10 PM we realised that we couldn't get any food in the bar we were at, so we walked to another bar, where we got a sampling of bar snacks and another round, and just kept telling more and more funny stories. Finally the bar kicked us out when they closed at 11, meaning that my "early night", and "just one drink after work" was all for naught...
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