CMG Wake

The CMG Wake last Friday was a really good night. I arrived at The Knights Templar in Chancery Lane some time after 18:00 to find the place already packed to bursting point. The first impressions on opening the door were of a sea of people and wall of noise. In spite of the high ceiling, the sheer number of conversations taking place in this great hall reverberated round the place and hit you as great din. People were packed so tightly into the pub that it took some 10 minutes, perhaps more, to cross the room and reach the bar. Thanks to a handful of very generous people there was a tab open for anyone waving a slip of paper saying “CMG”. The smart ones had diversified out of CMG shares during the good times, and locked in the profits before the dot.com bubble burst; there were probably a good few millionaires in the room and some people were kind enough to stand us all a few drinks.

I was tempted to buy myself two drinks to save fighting my way back to the bar, but decided against it. One hand had to be free for hand-shaking. And how many hands I shook that evening! After 15 years with the company, there were so many people I’d worked with and lost touch with. And many people I knew by sight, or by reputation. There were people kitted out in CMG ties and scarves, T-shirts and baseball caps. I heard so many tales of what people were up to now. Quite a few still working for Logica; many now moved on to pastures new; some living lives of leisure; others running their own businesses; one or two looking for new challenges as the came to the end of redundancy packages.

The bar tab was finally exhausted by 20:00, but this didn’t deter many people, and the pub continued to be just as crowded for a couple more hours until I left. Photos of the event are available at http://wakeywakey.dreamhosters.com – I haven’t spotted myself in any of these yet, but there are plenty that give an impression of quite how busy the place was. I have a tape of the 25^th anniversary song “Nobody does IT better, and as soon as I can get it copied to MP3 I’ll post it there too.

I’d like to thank John Sharp for organising the evening. I wonder if that’s the last we’ll hear of CMG, or will this become a regular reunion. I somehow think that CMG was such a big part of so many people’s lives it won’t be forgotten quickly.