Entirely unaware of my new status as a
surprise guest noder I was dragging my feet behind
bol,
(darsi) and
call on the way to a landmark none of us had ever visited or knew the location of, when I was mysteriously ambushed by a beautiful florist's shop where an unwanted
cream rose leaped into my arms and, drawing me into its palest-pink
vortex, begged to be taken for a walk in
Hyde Park. Things were definitely looking up.
Several hundred yards along the road we stopped at an ice cream van and had a Flake War. (darsi) demonstrated her conflict resolution skills by paying 20p for an extra Flake to go with my rose, as I wasn't having any ice cream. I tried to stick it in, but chocolate and flora obviously don't mix well, because it fell off.
We wandered quite aimlessly through the park for some time, although call and (darsi) claimed they were navigating. In the end we fell upon the rest of the assembled noderage almost by mistake. StrawberryFrog, spiregrain, mkb, booyaa, Catchpole, ascorbic and princess loulou were already there, devouring the latter's excellent refreshments. A little later Oolong strode down the lawn and joined us.
Things start getting hazier from here. The Pimm's and lemonade was actually spiregrain's idea, and as for having strawberries and cucumber in it, it was not strange to all the other noders. The posh ones knew where I was coming from. A truly excellent spliff started making the rounds (or maybe it was many spliffs that just kept coming, which will explain my condition), the sun was warm on my back, the vortex at the centre of my rose was hypnotising me and Oolong's hair glowed and glittered, blinding what little reason I still had left.
I rather sketchily remember having a bit of a domestic with bol, expounding tha apparently radical theory that people have just as much right to a good life as animals do, calling up my non noder friend and trying to talk him into coming goth clubbing with us and talking some truly atrocious bollocks at booyaa, who, saintly sweet thing that he is, smiled at me all along and even gave me a hug (though that may have been later).
Somewhere in all this Decimeter, who I swear to god is 12 years old, joined us. But I was pretty far gone by then.
Then we went to the pub. Well, we tried anyway. There was a lot of aimless perambulation, and by the time we finally settled down and I was recovering my wits enough to want to talk to people, booyaa left (sob, wail, whimper), Oolong was in a coma and call was asleep on the table. So naturally bol and I had a political argument.
My non noder friends showed up and joined in, then we all (call, bol, (darsi), Oolong and me) were invited to their place to drink coffee, smoke more reefers and crash out. The rank and file slept on the living room floor, but I got the guest bedroom by virtue of being old and decrepit.
On Sunday K9 was to join us and we were all to go and watch Attack of the Clones. Except of course it's sold out until next August or something, so much aimless toing and frowing followed. Eventually we decided to go and join bol and (darsi) in the pub, which was conveniently located in a place that you can't get to by tube - just perfect for visitors with one-day travelcards. The venerable native wanted us to go from Old Street to Bank, from thence to Embankement, onwards to Waterloo, and there "get the overland". What an overland is we still haven't established, but in the event it was very lucky that K9 said bollocks to that and came up with the mind blowingly revolutionary notion of taking the bus.
Yes, I really did write this whole boring old report so that I could tell everybody what a crap navigator bol is. I've been promising him I would.
Then we had drinks and then we went home.
THE END