Gnarl? dude, you have far too good a memory
Hmm, where to begin?
I forgot the chilled monkey. :-(
It was quite easy travelling to the Intrepid Fox. What wasn't so easy was recognising the other everythingians.
Ok, so I completely missed the piece of paper saying "Everything2" sitting by the table. I didn't call myself dizzy for nothing, you know.
After walking around the pub 3 times, drinking a beer and not making contact, I walked down the road to the phoneboxes and phoned iain's mobile. He met me outside the pub and escorted me to the table.
There I met heyoka, spiregrain and fondue. And proceeded to go bright red embarrassed after I realised that I had stared straight at them for several minutes and not seen the aforementioned E2 sign.
Mental Note: Pay Attention!
Sillyness: As the music got louder and louder in The Intrepid Fox, conversation got more and more difficult. As one track stopped, I prompted spiregrain and heyoka to say something, anything, before the next track started. Poor spiregrain, as soon as he opened his mouth - the guitars started up. :-)
After a pint, we decided that it would be best to retreat to a pub where we could hear each other. So, we traipsed merrily to The George, still on Wardour Street. (well, OK, we didn't traipse, but we were merry)
gnarl? Tremendous effort sir!
Gnarl collected some whore cards, which I'm sure will not get through any postal system in the world.
An enduring image was of the asian barmaid in the george trying not to look too interested in us as she tried to work out what the hell we were doing, and why we were giggling so much.
Don't try to deny it, you were giggling.
As gnarl said, fondue left at this time. Although I must defend his honour and state that he was going to see the X-Men movie, not rushing off to see the genuine pre-op transsexual (I hope)
Seeing all these cards, I feel so innocent and provincial. :-)
After the signing we moved on to discuss some, um, burning issues about stuff. Like... noding! ack! Yes, we discussed noding in real life. Are we sad or what :-) (Yours truly even keeps a pen and paper in his rucksack for offline noding, I must admit)
We moved on to the Hi, Sushi! restaurant, in... well, I forget the street. There I discovered that green tea is very nice, and that the noodles served to me were delicious (thanks for choosing them heyoka darlin' :-) (although you'll have to remind me what I had)
I wasn't too fond of the tuna or salmon rolls, a little too much soy (/me runs for cover as the E2 soy coalition starts hunting him)
I feel a little sorry for gnarl having to contend with drunken brits discussing father ted and The league of gentlemen.
This is a local node, for locals only!
After the meal finished (quite cheap, really), we made our excuses and left each other (it being maybe 10pm by now)
Some impressions: I think we all got on quite well, considering that we were all strangers. heyoka and gnarl are easy to get on with, and it's nice speaking to fondue, iain and spiregrain - who, if they wouldn't feel too insulted, I would describe as fellow geeks :-)
I suppose that what is quite hard to put across in a node is the easygoing nature of the whole day - there wasn't any tension (prolly the alcohol helping there)
To those who couldn't make it: You missed out, it was a great meeting, we all got on and had a good laugh. I hope that next time we'll be joined by others.
It was a good day :-)