A huge thank you to everyone for your trouble in coming along and your great company. It wasn't like meeting strangers. It was like meeting old friends. Nearly everybody was pretty much how the rest of us had imagined. And what a lot of effort went in, all the travelling you did, all the things you prepared, all the trouble many of you took with maps and pub-finding and ideas . . . It was an absolute privilege to have something like that to organise and I hope to do it again soon. With all of you who came, and more!
Jules came up with the best adjective for the evening: "memorable". Let's say things didn't exactly go according to plan!! Well, virtually everyone was ready and waiting as we left after Sir Patrick's session had finished, those delayed had let me know, and we found the pub . . . but contrary to what I'd been told on the phone (as had Chris, too, I believe) they wouldn't accept children. To avoid possible embarrassment, I won't say who had brought along three extremely nice young classifiers, who ought to be welcomed everywhere, but that had been planned in all along. The manager seemed to think it would solve everything to promise to have a go at the person who'd told me the kids would be fine. Then we were told we couldn't eat my muffins in the pub. When the manager had a go at me for bringing them 3 Cokes outside the pub, a couple of people who will also remain nameless - but who I am extremely proud of!! - argued along with me, and we effectively got thrown out.
You two were brilliant by the way, I wish I was a fluent arguer like that . . . Anyway, I was so sorry to go in and disrupt everybody's evening to announce we were leaving and going somewhere else. But everyone was quite cheerful about it! To be fair, the pub itself was very nice, wasn't it? Anyway, some lovely people did a quick reconnoitre of the local area to report on potential pubs, and we found a very noisy one where we couldn't hear each other, but did excellent wine and scampi. People began to trail away as trains required catching and so on, but quite a few of us stayed wandering around London looking for venues where we could hear each other. After a lot of walking alongside a very pleasant but unfortunately closed park, we ended up drinking tea in a hotel! (Nope nobody stayed there.) The last of us got to bed around 1am.
I'd like to publish the guest list and it would be very nice to have our photos on the forum. But first I need everybody to agree to that - if you don't want your username posted, or if there are photos showing your face and you don't want them to be put up, please let me know!
And we must all get working on another one as soon as possible. That is an urgent priority!
PS Kinda hoping we haven't gone and brought the Zoo into disrepute. Mind you, the manager was on about the children's safety. Er, so, if somebody's behaving in such a way on his premises that it'll endanger a teenager, then it's best to get rid of the teenager and keep the troublemaker? The obvious explanation is: the drunken idiot will spend more. But deeper down, I see there a contempt for civilisation.
We were just too civilised - we were only going to drink moderately, be quiet and have a wonderful time. I guess that doesn't bring in the big bucks.
