‘Tis the season of summer socials…or end-of-summer socials, if your team was a little too busy in August.

We had planned to do exactly what we did last year: sports day-style games and pizza in London Fields, followed swiftly by pints in Pub on the Park. a simple day to plan, or so we thought. What we hadn’t really accounted for was good old British weather. The week before we were still hopeful - we were still naively saying to everyone we’d be playing rounders and doing egg and spoon races in no time.

Monday came, and so did the rain. We were still clinging to the dry forecast for Friday in hopes of not having to reorganise the entire afternoon of activities. Wednesday rolled around and we started to realise that, although the Friday forecast looked good, Thursday night was going to be biblical. The day may have been dry, but London Fields certainly wouldn’t be.

Thursday came and so did the Pivot. We finally admitted to ourselves that rounders weren’t happening.

Lauren did a last-minute shop the morning of to get the wherewithal the entertain the team. Her task was simple: cups, a couple of ping pong balls, and CodeNames. She returned with CodeNames and fourty ping-pong balls in a paper bag. It transpires that none of our local shops had any ping pong balls in stock, so our ever-sharp project manager Lauren called Bounce’s head office in an attempt to borrow a couple of ping pong balls and got given nearly 50 of the things.

The team did a photography scavenger hunt first. They were separated into small teams of three and gave them some rather niche tasks. From getting g a selfie with a stranger’s pet to making project managers take pics with falafel. The tasks were not made to embarrass anyone, although it was a happy side effect.

Next, we played Codenames. This was a new thing for most of the group, including myself. For a game that is essentially battleships with words, it took the group a while to get on board, but once we had a grasp on the rules we were on a roll. It got a little heated.

Then, we dabbled in a little beer pong before taking a stroll down to London Shuffle Club to try our hand at shuffleboard. Biscuits were bashed, tangs were thrown, g&ts were sipped on, and sourdough pizzas were devoured. It wasn’t the sequel to the Neverbland Sports Day that we had imagined, a great time was had by all. Roll on the Christmas social!