The end of one era....

That's it - yesterday I cleared out my desk, said goodbye to my colleagues and am no longer an Editor after 17 years in the job. The Reading office doesn't officially move to Andover until the end of the month, but they were good enough to let me go a little bit earlier than that - course, there's still all the goodbye parties, but that's the last time I'll be in the office.

Here's a few of my colleagues who I'd like to pay tribute to:
This is slug features... he belongs to Little Al.


This is Little Al - as opposed to Big Al who's Rose's brother. She worked on lots of areas of The Times but I especially remember her working on Feature articles. She has a very weird body temperature and is ALWAYS cold and has been known to wrap her blanket round her when it's around 28 degrees in the office. She runs belly-dancing classes in her spare time and we used to do Flamenco classes together with her friend, Toad. Al is always frank and very funny. (around 15 years with the company).

This is Rose. She is a very good friend and we have sons about the same age. She's running the department now and is very funny when she gets in a bit of flap, which doesn't happen very often, quietly ranting in her soft Canadian accent. She always has way more to do than is humanly possible to get through both inside and out of work and I completely admire how she's handled the recent changes in the department and how dedicated she is and wish her luck for the move to Andover. (around 20 years with the company.)

And here's Trevor. We sat opposite each other for around ten years. We used to chat about tv shows we'd watched, films we'd seen and theatre shows we'd been to. He's a budding artist and writer and has a very dry sense of humour. He works on Business news or will be until the end of the month... then he's a free man. (10 years with the company).

And this is dear Sandra. We worked together for many years as Editors and team leaders and went through a lot together hammering out differences between The Times and the Financial Times indexes. She's a very loyal colleague to have and I wish her all the very best for the future (around 35 years with the company.)

And the lovely Loig. What can I say? For the first ten years of working together, I couldn't actually understand what he was saying (sorry, Loig!) He used to work on Le Monde and is now working on digital archive projects. And my memories of him? He was an honorary hen at my hen party. And he came to the housewarming party of the very first house we bought and fell backwards off a chair into a bush and went home promptly after that - little did he know, by the end of the night, another colleague had slid down the wall and two more people were found asleep under the garden fence which had collapsed during the party - ah, those were the days! Good luck in Andover, Loig (20 years with the company.)

And an extra special goodbye to Paul who wasn't in on Friday and probably would've cringed to have his photo taken anyway. We talked a lot about holidays, cats and cars..

The end of one era and the beginning of something new...