Tim Key: It's tough to know what to write about in your final column. How to bow out…

(Ping Zhu)

This is my final column. I've severed links with The Independent on Saturday magazine after what seems like 106 weeks.

It was a painless split, almost too amicable. Just a barely audible mutter from me that I might possibly be considering stepping down, followed by a very firm handshake from them. "Yes, you must!" – came the cry. They couldn't have been less obstructive, to be fair to them.

And now here I am. My last day. Cracking out my final column in the relaxed environs of their open-plan offices in west London. Already I sense something's up. I'm getting my head down, whacking out my 700 words, but I know something's afoot. They've got me a cake. That's my theory. Some specially commissioned number from a local bakery. My ugly mug iced on to it. They'll hand out photocopies of my classic columns for folk to use as serviettes. They'll cradle their slices of cake on those, read nuggets of text through the crumbs. Sneaky buggers. I look at Alice, tapping away. I think she's probably organised it. She's not giving anything away though. She's pretending to be typing some opinion piece. I can't help but chuckle.

It's tough to know what to write in your final column. How to bow out. One thing's for certain, I don't want this to become an indulgent trudge down memory lane, me wistfully reflecting on specific columns I've written over the past two years. I've got 'em here piled up on my desk, of course. I reread them this morning and ranked them in order of how proud of them I am. Then I went through them again, had a good old giggle. Occasionally, I've got other columnists over and said things like: "Remember this one?" and they've nodded. "It's set in a zoo," I say. They keep nodding. They don't want me to leave.

I'm trying to slow down. In a way I don't want it to end. But it's hard to staunch the flow when you're in a rhythm. I write fast, always have. One time I joked with my editor that I write my columns quicker than most people read them. He picked one up and pored over it for what seemed like an eternity. He said he could kind of believe that and I swelled with pride. But now I'm doing all I can to put the brakes on. Once this is filed I'm out of a job. And then what? I look at the pile of columns again. I reread a couple from late 2013. I look around. There's a quiet buzz in the office. I wonder whether there'll be speeches.

I start peeling Post-its from my monitor. Ideas for future columns that now won't get written. "Test-driving a car", "picking berries", "following a man". I would have liked to have typed these up to be honest, and maybe still will. No one can stop me writing 700 words about these notions. Printing them out, gluing them to my wall. It's a free country. I carefully stick the Post-its into my notepad while no one's looking. I think about devouring a fig roll. I've got a tin of the sods and hardly want to leave them here. But then again I don't want to spoil my cake. I'm all over the place. I start to cry and pull my cap down. I wish I wasn't leaving, but I know my time has come.

"Leave them wanting more." That's what my editor has been saying increasingly over the past few months. I think it's probably gone beyond that. I think to really get any mileage out of that maxim I would have had to have jacked it in halfway through my first column. Instead, I've adjusted the phrase. Truncated it. Made it into something all my own: "Leave them." And that's what I'm doing right now.

When I started it was always my intention to do two years and two weeks on this, and now I've done that. I'm happy. I'm all done. That's me. I lean back in my swivel chair. Wait for the cake.