What a weekend

Wow,

The past 2 days have been rather hectic. Friday was the RM sales and Marketing Kudos awards ceremony and yesterday I got back, went to bed, got up and went out to see Gogol Bordello and Bedouin Sound Clash in Brixton.

Friday lunchtime after 3 hours at work we set off to Heytrhop Park for the 2006 Kudos awards, where basically, sales pat each other on the back and Marketing get have a good old drinking session.

After John (Sales Director) and Rob (COO) told us what we were doing for the next 12 months we were treated to a motivational speech from some woman that used to be on Grandstand and some other programmes that rowed single-handedly across the Atlantic, pretty motivational but I can think of better ways of spending 3 months of your life.

Nick (Marketing Director) was up next, this was a bit more relevant and I could play spot the stat, as Nick had come to me to get some stat's off me earlier on in the week and used some of them in his presentation.

About 5pm we all got chance to leave the auditorium and go back to our rooms. I went and lay down and watched neighbours along with some kids programmes that I wouldn't normally be home in time for. (spookily we were in the same room as last year (223).

After a shower and doing my hair. I get dressed into my penguin suit and wondered downstairs, back to the auditorium for the awards ceremony. When I got down there there was Champaign, beer and various games. Martin and I beat Al and Dave Denny at Table Tennis and it was then off to sit in the same room again for another couple of hours whilst sales whooped and hollered as they patted each other on their backs for doing their jobs. The Marketing video was shown, my ninja debut in a film entitled 101 damnations but the 1 minute time limit we were given didn't do the script credit and we were outdone by primary sales with their film called 'Office Olympics".

Finally around 8 with a few people passing out due to hunger it was dinnertime. Each table had been allocated a country and Marketing Services (our table) was Tanzania. Before the started had arrived we tucked into a couple of bottles of wine on the table. It was at this point that I noticed that Anne was already quite drunk after as she put it "only 3 bottles of wkd and some Champaign", Luckily it was Al that was sitting next to her.

After dinner were some more awards, with Mark Bowerman missing out on a trip to New York with all the trimmings thrown in for the award of "Specialist of the year" the award was won by Dave Denny so all was not lost.

After polishing off all 6 bottles of wine between the 8 of us the night got into full swing with the Casino opening and the Disco beginning. I did quite well on the Casino finishing with more than I started with. Unfortunately it was only fake money, otherwise I would probably been well down.

The night continued with crazy dancing, most of marketing being completely legless by this point thanks in part for Adam deciding that we should all be drinking Sambucca (I vowed not to after last year). The last thing I remember was talking to Scottish sales guy Gordon Donald about hunting Tartan (I don't know anything about hunting tartan!!!)

I must have gone to bed at some point between 1 and 3 and was awoken at about 10 the following morning by the sound of Mark vomiting on the bedroom floor. Apparently He was carried back to the room around 5 in the morning.

After breakfast I got a lift home with Mark Berry, my boss (not the mark who was vomiting on the floor). On our way out of Heythrop we saw a horrific car accident. An RMer had collided with a range rover and the rang rover had turned over and was sitting on it's roof, the entire back end caved in.

Got back home about 11 and went straight to bed.

At 4:30 I met up with Mark Bowerman again to get the bus to London and it started all over again.

Went out for some Persian food at a lovely restaurant off Edgware Road, with some of Mark's friends from uni. Must remember how to get there because it came to £58, shared between 6 of us.

Got the tube to Brixton and got into the Academy just in time to see the end of Danko Jones' Set. He was a bit rubbish to be fair, very Andrew WK but generally quite annoying too.

Bedouin Sound Clash were next up and played a really good set, including a medley of Clash covers.

Headlining were Gogol Bordello, by this time I was starting to wilt but the Gypsy punks livened me up, great version of start wearing purple and some crowd surfing on a big drum. The whole crowd seemed to have so much energy.

Got back to Victoria to catch the bus at around 11:50 and had to wait another 10 minutes for the bus to turn up. Once I got on it then took forever to get home. Finally crawled in at about 2.

All in all a good weekend, Wolves won 3-1 and Leon Scored again.