Last shift at the BBC yesterday. An easy office day, updating a chunk of the intranet I’d been responsible for, followed by a trip to the bar. Can’t imagine an American company providing the perks of the Beeb. Seven weeks holiday (okay, that includes bank holidays). Final salary pension (mine got cashed in). Bar. Bar! That last is the most surreal.

Mmmmm… Bar…

Asked my line manager to let people know via email I’d be in the bar from 7pm. Unfortunately only asked him to do this on Saturay. Due to the nature of shift work–ie. not everyone gets to read an email in the first week you send it–only two colleagues made it, plus one former work mate. I got a lift home, though, which was nice.

Apparently there’s still a card knocking around at Television Centre with my name on it and many many signatures. Hopefully Greg Dyke popped a twenty in there too. I hear he does that a lot. Not.

Most amazing thing was leaving my car at St Albans City Station car park in the morning. It costs £3.20 to park there but down at the end was a complete gypsy encampment–mobile homes, brats, dogs and a no-doubt inconceivable number of burglary tools. I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering about the car.

This morning I woke up at the crack of dawn, 6am, wondering if the car would be a burned out wreck. It seemed a bit too obvious if I played the script in my head for an insurance claim. Yes, I am leaving the country. Yes, I haven’t sold the car. Yes, I did park it next to a gypsy site and leave it for the night. No, it never really occured to me that perhaps they’d torch it.

Somehow I managed to get back to sleep and Pete gave me a lift to the station around ten o’clock. And, wonder of wonders, the car was still there. Intact. Even with the aerial still attached. No sign of the gypsies. I guess more than one of the commuters stumping up £3.20 made the point.