• Works Madrid office has a bookable meeting room named London, and the London office has a bookable meeting room called Madrid. This does not make it easy to work out which room to book but, boy is it funny how many times we mention it.
  • I want a company-branded lanyard, but we’re not allowed them because of security reasons. Also because of security reasons, visiting staff to the Madrid office don’t get access cards, meaning Liz (Hi Liz!) and I got stuck in the fire escape stairs.
  • Ran our first Madrid Office running crew with a load of mixed ability runners. Proudly ran as a tail-walker in the hope that no one would get lost, or die in the 28 degree heat.
  • Went to some interesting restaurants in Madrid, one of them was a bougie take on deco styling, furniture like they’d ordered everything from Swoon’s 2020 catalogue, gold-chrome, Deep-green/neutral pink velvet and half-circle details. It was focused on the Madrid crowd; mass-cooked and cut ingredients, plates ‘kept warm’ to serve. Super-quick service (because everyone eats at 9-10pm), each plate of food had a slight tinge of “it’s been here a while”.
    • The menu in this place was QR coded, drawing everyone to their phones straight away, and each menu item had an embedded Augmented Reality model that could be ‘placed’ on the real table in front of you. It felt a little like Yo Sushi with the rotating travellator replaced by Britney Spears-miked youthful Madridians. We ended up going twice.
  • The smooth Air Europa flight back, soundtracked by doom-metal and vintage rock, was marred only slightly by the arrival in the UK. A broken train line meaning a 1.2hr trip from Gatwick to Seven Sisters became 4hrs.
  • Got to spend some excellent time with the family after not seeing them all week. A bike ride chatting about school with the eldest and a family walk around Walthamstow Wetlands; bird spotting and watching the local fly fishers catch rainbow trout. Then our littlest finally plucking up the motivation to go back onto the pitch at her football training, and winning “Player of the day” in her full spurs kit, then a pub lunch with extra yorkshire puds.
  • Finished reading Ministry of the Future. One of plenty ways we can reverse man-made climate change.