Ginny is really gone

Ginny’s farewell drink was last night. It started orderly enough downstairs in a grotto - a throwback-bar that somehow beamed itself from 1977 to 2007. By the time I arrived at seven o’clock, the entire team were tanked and rolling. As the music volume increased, so did the difficulty of hearing the various speeches lauding Ginny while, in a parallel and brutally truthful way, pointing out that she was a one-off and “none of you other consultant losers will ever come close”.

A man dressed in black asked us to leave. We did, only to find ourselves in upstairs cocktail bar of the same establishment. The difference between downstairs and upstairs being the increased music volume, the availability of high-price and poor quality cocktails, and four tubby balding blokes dressed in white suits. Purple and pink lighting fuelled the expectation that a porn shoot was about to get underway.

Four hours and five hundred Euros worth of liquid later, I close the tab, settle up and the party is over (at least the party on company expense). Realising this, the entire crew make their collective way to a cheaper bar on the Noordemarkt.

Something horribly wrong happens with Brenda’s ability to steer and she and her bicycle clatter into a parked VW station wagon. I bail and make my way home.