We’ve had two more cases of the dreaded swine flu, not sure if this is the milder cases, as it’s absolutely floored poor Hamish and Claire. We’re not sure how they caught it, hanging around in the countryside together probably, although Claire swears blind the culprits, the 452 bus to Ladroke Grove that’s a breeding ground for tropical diseases, many that haven’t yet be cataloged by St Mary’s Tropical Disease Centre.

Sian’s jetted off to the tropics, to try and bring back more strange bugs, but we’re not sure lying on a beach for 10 days counts as “medical science”, Nick’s jetted off to Leeds for a week of R&R (think Leeds and R&R is a contradiction) and Lisa’s been back from LA, but actually been out, more than she’s in with various International jet-setting projects, but she has just confirmed her photography course, which she’s really excited about.

We also haven’t actually properly announced the arrival of Lucy, who’s heading up our 2012 offering. After heading up Adidas at H&K it’s great to have a sporting guru amongst us (although we’re a bit worried as she sits next to Sian who’s a mad Spinning fanatic and we reckon between them they’ll have us all doing 15 minute step classes before each meeting).

We’ve also got our 1st Intern on-board, Hannah. Very lovely and very hard working. Nice to have her on-board and next week sees Folu join us to work across a number of projects, helping drive our digital offering already nicknamed ‘chief seeder’.

We’ll be happy if we’d have thought of this. Simple, yet genius. 100 Best Youtube Clips in 4 minutes. 2.5m views in a week.

We got the photo’s back from Tom Oldham, he has the unbelievable knack to make us all look vaguely human and actually quite good. Think it’s the way he puts everyone at ease. He gave Nick a big man hug to cheer him up as he was in such a bad mood, so Tom gave him a bear hug, which seemed to do the trick. As we’re growing quite quickly it looks like Tom’s going to have to come back next week to do more shots.

We’ve also been busy with our secret spirit brand with Sven, who we’re lucky to still have with us, as his plane had 3 abortive attempts at landing last week as it tried to land in a tropical storm in Taipei (glad you made it Sven). We’re quite close to revealing more as we’ve had trade-mark approval on the brand name, and John and Chris those design legends from DF are just readying the artwork to go to print on the bottle. Needless to say we’re very excited about the actual brew, “smooth, complex, refreshing, traditional, refined for a more modern” etc etc. and the distillery goes into full production in about a months time. We’re hoping to have sample bottles and product around the same time. It’s going to be a lively Christmas!!!

It was lovely to see Paul Bonhemme win the Air Race World Championship last weekend in Barcelona, thoroughly deserved. We’ve also been having a lot of fun with new TV series Red Bull Rivals. Some great wipeouts!!!!. And of course we’ve got the new Energy Shots to play with.

Mandy’s been out eating a lot of desserts for Nando’s (yes we get paid for taking new desserts to media etc and eating them with them, not sure how we get away with that, they do rock though).

Jess and Mike have been working like little beavers trying to deliver a new sampling and experiential campaign for a new Client, for November. And as part of ensuring our brainstorms are kept creative Jess went out and bought some footballs (not sure quite what we’re meant to do with them), but had a lot of fun round the office. Current game is to try and get them in the the recycling bin launched from any place in the office (rule is any breakages you need to pay). It’s a bit disconcerting when suddenly a ball flies past your ear, even more so for Coco who sits with her back to the bin.

Strings was playing Lame to Fame again, as he was having a meeting at Soho Hotel (top secret new team talks!!!) but it became somewhat distracted by the fact that the boys from X Factor were all being filmed with Peter Andre. It caused lots of debate in the office. Claire hates afro man, Graham hates the twins, Mandy thought they were all quite ‘fit”, Strings didn’t know what any of them were called, but was amused to see the twins asking Peter to sign their shirt as he left etc etc

Anyway nearly the weekend, Monday might see everyone in the office at the same time, which will be a 1st for Clerkenwell.