Noder Meat! This is the official aftermath writeup for
The not at all wittily titled end of 2002 London noder meet - well, it's officially
my aftermath writeup, anyway. Were you there? Log it! If not, then you missed out, baby...
Got things off to a smooth start by turning up 2 hours late to my own nodermeet, which is either spectacularly stupid or amazingly cool, depending on how you measure these things. Me and JodieK rolled in about 8pm, walking straight past the flunkies guiding people there, pretending we knew exactly where we were going. The Conrad Hotel is seriously swanky, there was a sultry lady singing sultry, smoky tunes, and I felt seriously out of place amongst the ballgowns, wearing my "I PITY THE FOOL" t-shirt. It seemed to go down well with the warm, shiny noders anyway, and that's all that matters. The happy hour was supposed to be extended till 9pm for us, but the bar staff sometimes had trouble with this. Here is the actual conversation I had with one, at 8.55pm, at least three times:
Me: Shouldn't these drinks be half price?
Troubled Barman: No, is over.
Me: Sorry?
TB: Happy hour is over.
Me: Yes, but they extended it for us, until 9pm.
TB: That's right, yes.
Me: And it's not 9pm yet.
TB: That's right.
Me: So they should be half price?
TB: No, happy hour is over.
Me: But it's not 9 yet!
TB: That's right.
Me: And happy hour is extended till 9, for us!
TB: Yes, I know.
Me: So why aren't they half price?
TB: Happy hour is over.
At this point I became the dragon, calmly grabbed him by the ears, bit right through his neck, and ripped his head clean off. Just before the life went out of his eyes, I showed him his headless body, and what I was doing to it, roaring in triumph and foaming at the mouth. He won't mess with me again. But it all balances out - I got overcharged for one set of drinks, and Lila got away without paying for hers: she waited so long for the guy to come and take her money, she just assumed he had died, and walked off. Top!
Just after 9pm, we decamped to go to the Lots Road diner, so me and JodieK had to slam the drinks I'd just fought for, but it got us quite merry so that was okay. The diner also kicked ass - the table was booked for 15, Pandora quite rightly assuming that half of the slackarsed noders wouldn't turn up, considering everyone thought the location was halfway up an Alp, but roughly 8 million people arrived, looking for food, drink, and goats. We all got seated, and I ordered a steak sandwich.
Let me explain something here, and why I kept going on about this bloody sandwich. This is what a steak sandwich is normally: a poncey little baguette, with 6 and a half thin strips of cheap beef. What I got was a fucking huge steak, medium rare, slapped between two thick slices of toast. It was, quite literally, a steak sandwich. It was fucking gorgeous. In future, in restaurants, I shall ask for my steak to be served this way. It's fab. Very tasty, with "Big Chips" that lived up to their name, and a salad that I was too full even to go near. I kept waving my sandwich at people, shouting "It's a fucking steak in a sandwich!" over and over, through mouthfuls of steak. Well it was... I don't get out much.
Went to the toilet at one stage, ascorbic behind me - there was a corridor with 4 self-contained toilets leading off it. I went into mine, and heard ascorbic try my door, not knowing I was in there, so I stuck my head out into the corridor and yelled, in a West Country accent, "You'm can't comes in 'ere!" - right into the face of some woman I'd never seen before. ascorbic disappeared into his toilet, leaving me to embarrass myself. I swiftly locked myself in, and flushed my head down the bowl.
booyaa had a tiny camera phone satellite laser weather-control device, and was taking photos - but it was too dark to see if they came out, the screen was a black square every time. On several occasions I was able to demonstrate my psychic powers, by predicting the appearance of said black square.
Highlights: fondue's bizarre, terrifying sock monkey; Lila's fabulous cow (Mr Eric Moo); the food; the location; meeting people I hadn't met yet; meeting lovely people I'd already met; somebody pointing at wertperch and yelling "Listen to that man! He's important!"; ReiToei's "mangina"; continually being congratulated for organising such a splendid meet even though I merely wrote the writeup and let Pandora do all the tricky stuff.
Lowlights: fondue's bizarre, terrifying sock monkey; seeing how young some new people are - scary purely because it makes me feel about 400 years old; not getting a chance to chat with everyone, yet again, because of the size of the group, but that can't be helped. Oh, and there was the whole thing with the gang of dwarves on hoverboards, who we battled in the streets with flaming torches and tactical nuclear missiles, but that's another story - my case comes up on Wednesday, so if anyone knows Cherie Blair, could you get her to phone up my judge and quietly sort it out for me? She'll know which one he is, he's the mad old racist bastard with a wig, shouldn't too hard to track down. Cheers.
Still, it was great to see everyone, and I had a groovy time - noders are a bunch of staggeringly attractive, interesting, witty, urbane individuals. Especially me.
Them what turned up: Me, JodieK, Pandora, Lila, TallRoo, Great Neb, CatherineB, HamsterMan, Hexter, BaronWR, wertperch, Gritchka, call, fondue, Tiefling, StrawberryFrog, ascorbic, Oolong, booyaa, ReiToei, ponder, Nol, theboy, jobby - 24 folk in all. If I've missed anyone, msg me, my memory is shite, especially with made up names... (thanks to Oolong for prodding my brain) Ooh, someone left a message on my voicemail saying they couldn't make it, but didn't say who they were - who are you??
booyaa (BOOYAA! BOOYAA!) has a selection of photos, although they seem to have really been black squares after all... go here to see them:
http://igor.gold.ac.uk/~booyaa/snapshots/The_not_at_all_wittily_titled_end_of_2002_London_noder_meet/
If you really, really want to, go here for a picture of fondue's bizarre, terrifying sock-monkey:
http://www.babysewsoft.com/images/20monkey.jpg
If anyone else has piccies, let me know, I want to see them, touch them, and do terrible things to them involving jelly.