I'd like to thank my analyst, my hairdresser...

I'd just like to thank everyone for giving me such wonderful sendoff(s) - after all the Botanist food, tea, cake, cider, more tea and single malt I won't care if I get noting to eat but millet porridge in The Gambia. Thank you also for your very generous contributions to my footwear fund, which I hope to deploy at Camden's army surplus store next weekend.

I can honestly say that it's been great fun working with every single one of you. I could come up with a funny story or a time you've helped me out for everyone, but you'll forgive me if I limit myself to thanking four people by name; Roxana for making the day fun and for the very amusing plaque that I probably won't be allowed to put on my office door (although I certainly intend to try), Imogen, always a pleasure to work with and for a couple of blog posts that made me feel all warm and fuzzy and extremely embarrassed, Dave for giving me the job in the first place, rescuing me from that hellhole of a property developer and allowing me to claim that I'd been headhunted and to Charlotte for stunning me in the pub by asking whether animal eyes acted as a reservoir, a question I had never thought to ask. Which just goes to show, even if undertaking some slightly unsavoury research you should broadcast it about as widely as possible because you never know where insights might come from (although in the context of my PhD, "broadcast it about as widely as possible" might have some rather unpleasant connotations...)

Thanks all. (Dries eyes and rides off into the sunset singing Edith Piaf songs)