Nottingham 1.0: Report

From: mpk@cs.nott.ac.uk (Mike Knell)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: Nottingham-1.0: vague thoughts
Date: 1 Dec 1996 17:19:12 GMT
Message-ID: <57semg$8e8@paperboy.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk>

Evenin' all,

Here are some random thoughts from the Nottingham-1.0 meet, which
happened last night. At least, I think it did. My head hurts, anyway,
so I must have done *something* last night.

Attendance Register
===================

BSL Simes Burr
BSL Simes' BSL brother (Sorry, name forgotten - many afpologies)
BSL Darrell Ottery
BSL Rob Collier
BSL Alan Bellingham
BSL Colette Reap
BSL Claire-Louise Ruffle
BSL Graham "The Fat Aardvark"
BSL Maurice Barnes
BSL Stuart Moore
NSBSOL Mike Knell (aka "yhn")
BSL Mr Fox
BSL Beaver
BSL Dragon
BSL Dave the Clanger
BSL Michelena Riosa (virtual attendance)
BSL Joann's intimidating answering machine (virtual attendance)

The meet convened at approximately 1840 in the Victoria Hotel,
Beeston, with a few of the participants having independently decided
it would be wise to get there early to bag some furniture. We were
soon joined by Graham TFA, Simes&bro, whose joint looming exercise
later succeeded in grabbing the next table along as well, Claire-Louise
and dragon, the Ealing triumvarate of Alan, Colette and Rob, who then
went off to find some food, and finally, after hearing my name called
from the bar, Maurice Barnes. There ensued the usual routine of 
conversation, drinking, duels between Mr Fox and the beaver, more 
drinking, and such. The "beaver" joke was felt to be unnecessary, so
we jumped straight to the punchline, "Thank you. I just had it stuffed"
without preamble. A poster on the wall also informed us that Nottingham
was the home of the finest Beaver (or words to that effect).

The Beautiful South were briefly discussed at one end of the table, 
including the interesting lyric changes in the new single (Don't Marry
Her) relative to the album version, which is a little rude. The phrase
"She'll grab your Sandra Bullocks" [1] was deemed to be amusing.

yhn made the unwise move of observing that nobody had brought any
chocolate things, at which point Colette produced some very
interesting cinnamon and chocolate coffee beans, Claire-Louise
produced an amazing *five* Toblerones, and Maurice produced some Just
Brazils, which were the subject of a discussion as to whether the box
should include a "WARNING: Product contains nuts" notice.

The possibly upcoming afpcon-97 was discussed, with the conclusion 
that we should jolly well get on with organising it before it's too
late, and that someone needs to be a bastard and say "Right, so it's
this date, then? And we're going to this venue? Fine. Let's get down
to some solid organisation." Various candidates for this job were
mooted.

The people at the next table seemed bemused as to what we were doing
there, and made the mistake of asking us as they left. Everybody
instantly, and inexplicably, looked at yhn, who mumbled something
about electronic discussion forums, at which point they looked alarmed
and ran away.

Things tootled along happily for a few hours, with the conversation
doubtlessly ranging around many fascinating topics, which
unfortunately seem to have been blanked from my mind. This may have
something to do with the quantities of beer that were being
consumed. Fairly late in the evening, it was decided to add a virtual
element to the meet by phoning somebody, so we went for the
inexpensive option and yhn's cellphone was pressed into service to
phone Michelena, who certainly sounded surprised when passed around
the group. To keep matters even, we also decided to phone Joann, but
had to satisfy ourselves with leaving a possibly incoherent message on
the answering machine, which no doubt was a surprise, but which will
probably earn me a good kicking at some point. Apologies to you
both. It's fortunate, for the sake of my phone bill, that nobody had
Orin's number to hand.

After closing, the remaining members of the party adjourned to the
Shama indian takeaway, and bought curries, which were then eaten in my
living room while watching a film on the telly ("Volunteers") which
most people remembered vaguely seeing before, but couldn't quite
place. From there, people departed for their homes/caves/crashspace/etc,
with most being threatened by Darrell that terrible things would happen
to them in the event that they didn't attend Reading next weekend.

The Compulsory Quote File (courtesy my Psion)
=============================================

"I detect the buildup of a large cynicism field" -Simes

"I was so busy trying to create the file that I forgot the quote.." -yhn

"I cut bolts, therefore I am. That is my raison d'etre. " -Simes, on 
 the subject of boltcutters.

"I must have had 20 males. It was out of position for 24 hours." -Rob C,
amusingly misquoted (and misspelled, but what the hell)

"It's amazing what you can do with two fingers." -yhn, er, again.

"Size isn't important. It's how you drink it." -T.F.Aardvark
"Only mean say that." -Claire-Louise

"He's a very nice man, but he doesn't half talk." -Rob C., on Hodgesaargh.

"So Mike, you're volunteering to be chairman of the '97 meet, are
you?" -Rob C.
"Yes." -yhn (a misquote, I must protest..)

And finally, a shopping list that also got entered into my Psion when I
bought a round (which provoked much ridicule from the other punters and
the bar staff when I started reading things out of it). Typos are as
in the original.

hemlock
vod/ora
bushmills/ice
jd
nothing
coke 2
tonic&bitttters
cider 1/2

Mike

(This meet report was brought to you with the assistance of Elvis
Costello's album, "King of America", and "Coming Up" by Suede).

[1] Bowdlerisation of .. err.. "fjrngl obyybpxf" (rot13)

-- 
   Mike Knell -- a Good, Safe Alternative to Wholesale Murder. ((c) jldomini)
      Department of Computer Science, The University of Nottingham, UK
  A huge green fierce snake bars the way!  -=-  http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~mpk/

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