And so, the second E2 London "Picnic" came to pass.

The players :

Initially meeting in The George, the early arrivals were unceremoniously ousted, and head to the nearby branch of the Wetherspoons corporate pub entity. Here, interesting tricks were performed with Jaffa Cakes, until such time where more substantial food was required. The assembled noders then concluded activities at Pizza Hut. The traditional Whore Card signing took place, and several cameras were on hand to record the debauchery. I'm sure that one of the other people present will furnish the noding community at large with a more in-depth account of events (including quotes).

Sparklers! Jaffa Cakes! Monkeys! I Like My Job!

Some of the pictures that came out are at: http://www.dizzy.uklinux.net/monkeys/soho-a-go-go.html


London in november is just getting to the point where it gets hard to walk anywhere; the hordes of shoppers make it difficult to move...

Despite such pedestrian obstacles and other impediments like the bakerloo line being closed between elephant and castle and picadilly circus, I managed to get to the george pub about an hour early :-) After about half a bottle of stella artois, hugo rune and spiregrain turn up and show me their t-shirts: spiregrain (ken) was wearing a fetching SOY! SOY! SOY! SOY gives you strength, strength crushes enemies! SOY! black and white number while hugo rune (andy) was wearing a short white tee with a black I got borged by the EDB and all I got was this lousy T-shirt motif.

And very sexy they looked too!

After we had found seats and gotten suitably relaxed, iain (iain) arrived with his little chilled monkey. Iain got more beer, the monkey sat down and started relaxing with that slight smirk of his... sm597 then turned up and got introduced, then grilled as to why she chose her old university logon as her nick :-) Heyoka and gnarl (snarl!?) arrived a little later and said hi, bring our little gathering to, um, lots of people. It was at this point I flashed the soppy grin of doom at heyoka's request; she asked how my weekend went. Um, my memory is very poor - did blowdart (barry) turn up before or after heyoka and gnarl? hmm. Come to think of it, fondue (rob) was sitting next to me - Ah, that's it - he turned up after iain, but before heyoka and iain...

Anyway, many photos were taken at this point, and revenge was exacted upon heyoka for hiding from the camera last time. (quick aside - where are the photos from all the other meets across the world? Hmm?)

Still missing spinynorm and girlotron, we had to leave the george before their private function started; the barstaff graciously allowed us to leave a notice pointing the two latecomers to the wetherspoons next door. Here my somewhat alcohol drenched state caused me to miss the arrival of spinynorm, I suddenly noticed a guy in shorts standing next to me and smiling; I smiled back out of politeness then ran away and sat at our table, not realising it was spinynorm saying hi :-)

At the table people settled into the loud laughter, funny stories, sporadic geeky tales and alcohol consumption. Blowdart bowed out after a little while to, um, go someplace (barry, add a writeup and aid my sozzled memory!) girlotron turned up after much mobile phone direction by heyoka and SOY t-shirt landmarking by ken. She is ickle and really nice! The rest of the evening was pretty damned fantastic:

  • Discovered what you can do with Jaffa Cakes and Archers
  • Were "treated" to andy and ken's singing
  • Watched shirley adopt the monkey
  • Took many, many photos (mine will be scanned in on monday 6th)
  • Ken and snarl got the next batch of whorecards and much hilarity ensued as we signed them all. I protected factgirl's delicate sensibilities by providing a tame "london" card for everyone to sign.
  • Wondered why the table was quite that sticky.
  • Played musical chairs as people, um, made rest breaks.
  • and had a bloody good time!

Another Aside: several people are their nicks - I was referred to as "diz" for the evening, and heyoka, spinynorm and snarl also were called by their alternate names. rob/fondue seemed split, but I heard rob more than fondue... iain, of course, is a bastard for being the exception to the rule :-)

Someone else complete this, fill in the details, please?

Ah yes, the E2 gathering on what will be from now on known as the fourth of nodevember, it was quite late when I though of this name for the node of the event.

What was it like...?

Hmmm... It went something like this... Woke up at around twelve, after a wine-fuelled friday night. Went to get some brunch, then got the tube to Soho. spiregrain owed me some money and so we went to Gerrys, where they sell almost any kind of alcohol you can imagine.

Anyway, ended up at the George at 15:10. dizzy was there waiting, since he'd beaten us to the pub by a few minutes. After ordering some beer a table became available and we sat down to wait for everyone else. I was surprised by how many people came right up to the table, since we were meerkatting whenever someone entered the pub, to see if they were with us. Although, I admit that our everthing2 styled T-shirts probably gave the game away, we either reallly liked SOY or...? iain arrived first with the monkey, then sm597 and the rest of the crowd, blowdart, fondue, heyoka and gnarl managed to get a drink in before we were kicked out, since unfortunately we had arranged to meet by 16:00 and there was a notice on the window that the pub would be closing at 16:30 due to a private function. D'Oh! Still, we had the chilled monkeywith us and so everything would be ok.

Anyway, most people were there by then, except for girlotron and SpinyNorm so we went over to the Wetherspoons two doors up where much more drink was to be had. Spiregrain and gnarl went out once everyone had arrived to get some cards from the phonebox. This was followed by the ritual signing of the whore-cards, which was pretty funny... I won't spoil any of the details, you'll just have to wait until you get one through the mail.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that my cold started to play up, ruining some of my fun. I managed to last out the evening though. Next time... oh yes indeedy!

Well, I have survived my first everything2 bash...just.... How was it? Well I'll just say that I can't wait to go to the next one.

Until next time, people. You may have read this before, but fondue and dizzy neglected to inform me that they had already written a node!

Well yesterday seemed to pass in a confused alcoholic blur of chilled monkeys. sparklers and a general state of happiness.

I woke up mid-day Saturday regretting the vast amounts of beer I'd drunk the night before, with vague memories flashing through my head of at some point having gone to see a Black Sabbath tribute band, with the consequence that my night's sleep had been filled with disturbing dreams about Ozzy. Putting all that behind me, my hungover head then started telling me "You have to get up, there's an E2 meet in a couple of hours". So, to all those who were there, my apologies for being slightly dazed and confused.

I made it to the pub, got myself a pint of Stella, and sat down with the guys who were already there. It wasn't long before I was being pestered to let the monkey out of the bag, so I brought him out to sit on the table and chill for a while. Soon more people were arriving and the poor thing was being subjected to all sorts of indignities -- but it never managed to lose the appearance of being mildly under the influence of narcotics.

A couple of pints later and we went onwards to the J D Wetherspoon pub up the road, due to the management at The George being thoughtless enough to book a private function at their pub without checking E2 first in case we'd decided to meet there. The remaining stragglers turned up, the chatter moved on to the fascinating subject of alcohol-infused Jaffa Cakes, so ever one to put practice over theory I nipped over the road to a ridiculously expensive Soho convenience store and bought a couple of packets of the soft orangey delights. Soon we were making our very own lethal but lovely concoctions (just what IS Aftershock anyway?).

Eventually tummies started rumbling and we went searching for food. First of all we delighted the tourists by lighting up sparklers on the street outside the pub. Extraordinarily, despite everyone's extremely pissed state, nobody lost an eye or suffered from serious burns at all. The Gods smiled upon us that night. After a brief discussion about what sort of food we somehow ended up at Pizza Hut, after which we seemed to all gradually drift off towards various tube stations and on our ways home.

I've done it twice now, and it just keeps getting better and better.

My story of the Nodevember meet really starts on the previous monday with a visit to some copy-shop or other to get the aforementioned t-shirts made up. I also picked up some sparklers on friday and packed a bottle of water. It's all about preparation, see?

On arrival with Hugo Rune at the George, we found dizzy, proping up the bar, and supping on a bottle of stella. A bottle, mark you, not a pint. After some idle chit-chat, he pointed out that the pub was shutting at 4.30. This was to be the only flaw in an otherwise fine evening out.

Later arrivals included (the) iain, sm597, heyoka & gnarl, fondue. Although I'm hazy about which order they came in.

When blowdart rolled in, he immediately launched his coat overarm at a nearby chair before announcing himself. He said something like, "I'm only doing this to worry you". So it worked then. After the introductions, he set to goading dizzy about the nature and purpose of his recent visit to the states and eventually to goading Heyoka with a camera.

On leaving The George, it was decided that it was Sparkler Time. It was a struggle to get the first one going, but then the others went off OK. So we stood around holding them up for a while, and eventually got photographed by a random passer by. I cooled down the remains with the bottle of water, in case you wondered.

Our next port of call was a J.D. Whetherspoon's, for more ales. At this point a chap in one of those "cd pub,more beer" t-shirts approached and was identified as SpinyNorm. Here we gathered in girlotron, too, who was guided in by phone. This new venue saw some more organised shenanigans as well as the GTKY stuff. Someone (it may have been iain) ventured forth to buy Jaffa Cakes. Which we tried alk-e-hol-sytle, and very tasty they were too. Even teetotalers agreed!. Then came the traditional Distribution of The Whore Cards, before hitting The Hut.

We seemed to lose quite a few folks on route, perhaps to rival fireworks displays, but by my estimation, there were at peak 11 noders and a chilled monkey gathered. Not a bad showing.

It's really wierd to get up in the morning, switch on your computer, and read about what you were up to the night before.

Arriving just before 4pm, I was warmly greeted with a we’ve-had-at-3-pints-you’re-too-sober tone by Hugo Rune and Spiregrain, who promptly bought me an Archers and Lemonade and settled into the "host with the most" mode by introducing me to "the" Iain and "the" Dizzy. Then the teasing of my imaginatively thought name begun.

Fondue arrived soon after to relieve me of being the youngster of the night. Tales of T-shirts and monkeys and unimaginative node names continued through the arrival of blowdart, Heyoka and gnarl.

dizzy and his I-Mac camera, Blowdart with his rather sneaky digital camera and Hugo Rune with his huge one kept everyone on their toes and the monkey in some rather rude positions until we were forced to move the Wetherspoons pub down the road at 5pm.

Settling into a booth and scaring away the surrounding people precipitated fun and games which included the arrival of SpinyNorm and girlotron, Jaffa Cakes and Archers, Aftershock and yet more rude positions for the monkey until I took it upon myself to adopt the poor dear. Then I was introduced to the whore cards phenomenon so we all spent about 30 minutes trying to write some witty lines and laughing at the pictures.

We then trooped off to find food at Pizza Hut where the monkey felt as drunk as we did as it wouldn’t stay upright or was it that we were so drunk we couldn’t put the monkey upright.

Roll on the next London meet. However I did come away wanting:-
Heyoka’s funky box
Hugo Rune’s camera
Spiregrain’s t-shirt
SpinyNorm’s fortitude (for wearing shorts in London in November)
Iain’s monkey

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