I have just returned from a week spent working and partying hard in Norwich. A week which culminated with one of my friends getting married. I had the pleasure of going along on the stag night as well. I also had a meeting with an accountant which was pretty informative.

I spent the week staying at Greg’s and had a pretty good laugh hanging around and doing bits of coding. On Tuesday I met up with Rob from Studio Soup and Mike to have a drink and talk work at lunchtime. Afterwards I went over to Studio Soup’s new offices to have a look around and say hello to all the gang. It was good to see them all again and I jabbered and jabbered with them all. I discussed plans for business quite a bit and got some interesting advice from the management.

On Wednesday I went to see Ben Th’s new pad in Norwich, very nice. Afterwards we went down the pub and talked about making replica G5 cases. Ben is an apprentice welder and is fast learning skills. He wants to be a bit more enterprising however, and one day will probably strike out on his own. Hopefully the G5 cases will give him an avenue to start thinking about his own business and making some proper cash.

Thursday the accountant came. He was a nice guy. This was a free initial consultantion, but he stayed for a good few hours and we got some really good advice. He told us the pros and cons of starting a company. There aren’t many cons and there are some good pros. We would be limited liability for a start. Also, trading as the company would tighten things up in terms of salary and such. The more I think about it the more it sounds like a good idea. Just to formalise things and create a platform on which to build and build. For a while I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go the full ambition route. My main reason for going freelance was that I wanted more time off :-). But I’ve realised that if I really want to put my feet up then I will need a support group in the form of a company around me. Greg and I can only handle so much as well. In the longer run employees would also allow us to concentrate on thinking up cool software, getting the employees to do the implementation.

That night we went to Peter’s stag do. It was fun. We went to a casino in Great Yarmouth. We expected it to be a dive, but it wasn’t actually too bad. The gambling was quite fun once we’d had a few drinks. Roulette sucks, you just throw your money away, but Blackjack was much more fun, there being some element of skill. Plus it involves cards, which is always a bonus.

We all lost a moderate chunk of money, the mode average being about twenty pounds. Greg managed to win himself twenty quid mind, which was damn impressive all things considered. Gambling is funny. After having been in there for about half an hour I spent a good few minutes discussing with Greg the fact that the most sensible thing to do would be to just stop gambling. I guess he proved me wrong though.

After the casino we went to a lap dancing club. That was kind of weird, but, honestly, pretty good. The girls were beautiful and the dancing very sexy. The atmosphere was interesting, the men all being completely docile and the women being in control. We bought Peter a dance and also got one for Norm too, as it was his birthday. Rich, Greg and Charlie also got private dances. Only the single guys (and those with excuses) got dances though, so we were pretty well behaved all in all. We didn’t even get too drunk and I was only marginally hung over the next morning. That didn’t stop it taking us three hours to get breakfast though.

Yesterday Peter and Lucy got married. Congratulations to them, they looked very happy. We all went down to the Arts Centre in Norwich and got merry with them and many friends and family. It was really nice actually, good beer, lots of people to talk to. Even the dodgy music didn’t stop Louise and I dancing. There was a party at Thickthorn afterwards as well, which was a bit weird as Peter and Lucy had of course gone to spend their first night of marital bliss in a hotel. The party was good though, involving some very fine hats.