The Same, But Different

On the way back through London from a hairdresser's appointment down in Richmond, I stopped off at Broadcasting House for the first time since I left a month ago.  Sitting in my old office with some of the Factual Studio Managers, everything felt familiar and yet different.  The team will shortly have welcomed three new members - one to replace me, one to replace my former team-mate Dave who's retiring in July, and one to temporarily backfill for my friend and former workmate Vic who's going on a year's maternity leave at the end of this week.  I gave Vic and her husband Stu a gift of some clothing to join the other little outfits ready for their baby's arrival in a month's time.  It wouldn't be the BBC without cake and, in true form for my old team, there were two which we soon devoured.  And I found my old china mug still in the drawer to fill with a sneaky drink of frothy hot chocolate from the office machine.  Old habits.....

After emptying my locker into a huge carrier bag and handing back the key and my work mobile to my former manager, then bumping into numerous other lovely people for chats, I sat alone with a cup of tea in my favourite little niche in New BH and took my blipfoto.  It was exactly a year before that I took this picture from more or less the same spot. How very different my life has turned out to be than I thought it would do then.


After finishing my tea and reluctantly leaving the building, I hung around on the Piazza while they filmed a sequence with some baby alligators for The One Show - two photos of that have been added to today's entry as extras.