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?