Thursday

The team at work is still down to two as illness keeps two of the ladies at home. It is the last day of a four-day week thanks to it being Easter weekend, but rather than being completely pleased at getting four days off, we have so much to do in the office that another day would probably be welcome.

This feeling quickly fades when I leave work and head into town to meet Andy. I arrive at the pub early and get two pints in in anticipation of him arriving - only to then glance at my phone and find out that he is in fact in the pub already and upstairs waiting for me. We eventually find each other and spend a while chatting before various others turn up - and before long we are four or five Alpines gone and locked into a serious football discussion. This is important stuff, including naming our fantasy Match of the Day line-up, (one presenter, two pundits, one commentator and one analyst - from memory I think we ended up with Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen, Martin O'Neill, Barry Davies and Andy Gray) and the usual All-Time Premiership XI conversation. This is fun and noisy and eventually we leave The Cock at kicking-out time.

We stumble through Soho trying unsuccessfully to find a bar that will let in five drunk blokes with no women. We end up at Lupo - the same place we will be for Andy's proper leaving do on Saturday night - and pay a fiver to squeeze in. We're not there for too long (one Jager-bomb, one extortionate bottle of Tiger) before Andy and I head back towards my house, stopping for a seemingly-necessary Burger King on Tottenham Court Road. We get a taxi and wearily discuss the relative merits of Lady GaGa and the Kings of Leon (I, predictably, argue that there are none; Andy is as ever more diplomatic) and get home around 2am.

After a couple of episodes of South Park on Comedy Central and Andy inexplicably eating a bowl of cold soup, we're both ready to pass out - so I grab the lad a sleeping bag and sneak into my own room, anxious not to wake the snoozing K.