Thursday 16th September

Tonight is the launch of a new photo book in which a British photographer, Jason Bell, has documented people from the UK who have relocated to New York and become successful – so some celebrities and others who've done well in business and so on. The photographs themselves are being exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, so after getting home and making a slapdash attempt to make myself look a bit smarter (i.e. putting a shirt on) I hop on the tube and head for Leicester Square. The gallery is busy and music is playing as the museum-evening events start, and it takes me a while to actually find the exhibition I'm looking for. It turns out to be a small, but popular, affair tucked away around a corner – so after quickly taking in the photos and failing to recognise anyone, I wander around the adjacent rooms for a while waiting for my colleagues to turn up. Thankfully they make an appearance before long, and after saying a couple of hellos we have a look around the BP Portrait Award exhibition – which is a pleasant-enough mix of painting and photography; though the prevalence of hyper-realistic photo-style painting bothers me a bit. I don't understand why painters would try to ape the style of photographs, other than to show off their ability to do so. I am, as is often the case, later told that I'm merely being ignorant.

After the gallery, we are invited to a rooftop bar at a private members' club on Shaftesbury Avenue. It takes a little while to find, as I suppose members' clubs should do – as it is a mostly anonymous door. The door, however, leads to floor after floor of bars and restaurants, which we scramble through to reach the rooftop bar. The bar itself is deceptive – all seems normal when we walk through and take a glass of champagne, so it takes a while to realise that there's no roof. Luckily it's a clear night – and we spend a very nice couple of hours chatting and drinking champagne. We head out to grab some food before long, though, stopping at a place called Soho Joe's for a decent, cheap pizza before the girls demand fine ice cream from a well-known fancy ice cream place. I abstain – Honey, Coffee and Ricotta ice cream? Not for me, thanks.

It's nice to spend some time out with colleagues catching up and talking out things other than work for a change, but the night wears on inevitably and we all make sure to catch the last tube home to bed.