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It was to be expected. Why can’t every other European country seem to get it right, but our capital can’t? We returned yesterday from our travels in Provence, and had to go straight to The O2 for an appointment with Madonna, and true to form, getting there took way longer than it should have done.

Transport for London had in their foresight, decided to close the Jubilee Tube Line, on what was probably The O2’s busiest weekend of the year. That meant a taxi ride to the Greenwich Peninsula, and after standing in a 35-minute cab queue at St Pancras, we eventually persuaded a driver to ferry us across the city, even if he was very reluctant to do so.

One of the road tunnels at either Blackwall or Rotherhithe was closed, so traffic had been backing up all day, but by scooting around the southern part of the city and crossing Tower Bridge, we arrived within 30 minutes, much less stressed than we would have done had we have taken a very crowded and many-stops Tube ride.

It still meant that it took us an hour to get from the centre of London to the east, though, when we had sat in five-star, high-speed TGV comfort for only 2.5 hours to get from the southern France Avignon TGV station (above) to Paris, a journey of over 700 miles. The irritable cab queue (due to a lack of a steady flow of carriages), meant that we missed our behind the scenes tour, too. All in all then, very frustrating, but very London.

It’s funny how you work somewhere for a considerable amount of time, but actually don’t know that many people. It’s funnier how you don’t realise this until much later, but that’s what I found out last Thursday. The Shy and Retiring Party Planners (you know who you are) arranged a get together in central London for former Printing World staff members to celebrate 130 years of the UK’s premier print title.

The respected UK printing trade and graphic arts industry title earned a good reputation for itself throughout its century plus 30 years, and reported on the great, good, and not so good from the world of the presses. It was largely owned by one company, CMP Information through its incarnations, and started life when the owning firm was known as Benn’s, becoming Miller Freeman, ending up as the CMP of today.

Printing World continually moved with the times, too, its editors steering a course through calm and sometimes stormy waters. It went through a redesign while I was there – and at least two subsequently – ending up belligerently incorporated into its arch-rival, Print Week. Owned by publishing giant Haymarket, it was the West London publishing house that played the role of the wicked stepmother and eventually killed the title off earlier this year.

But we didn’t dwell on that. We remembered the good times, the bad times, what a happy place it was to work it was, and how that we’d all left better people, with new-found skills. We lamented on the friendships we’d made, and with around 70 people attending, there was much talk, laughter, and reminiscing. There were familiar and not so familiar faces, familiar and not so familiar stories, but overall, a celebration of the publication that had brought us all together.

Yes, there were notable people absent (from my short stay at the title anyway), but that didn’t harm my enjoyment of the evening. We’ve all moved on to bigger and better and not so bigger and not so better things, but the long lunches, late press days and industry stories unite us all. So, as we did last Thursday, grab your rose-tinted specs and raise a glass to Printing World, the greatest graphic arts title the UK has seen, and one of the best publications on which to work. I’m pleased to have played a small part in its story.