Various IF people in London

2001-05-26

So I'd arranged to meet some net.friends in London. I also had a digital camera which I'd bought recently and hadn't used much yet; while I didn't want to be Krazy Kamera Boy, I knew I'd be lynched by the US contingent if I didn't get some photos. But I think I resisted the technolibidinous urge to snap everything in sight reasonably well.

It starts with Dylan O'Donnell in Leicester Square.

Actually, Gunther and I arrived first and had been waiting for Dylan for the last twenty minutes. So here's Gunther, belatedly.

After some lunch and shopping we went to King's Cross to wait for Jon. My organisational skills were called into doubt as I realised that the train from Cambridge didn't arrive at the main set of platforms, and also that I didn't have Jon's mobile number. Jon somehow managed to find us anyway, and pointed out that he didn't actually have a mobile at all. The moral of all this is unclear to me.

Amid the confusion I forgot to take a picture of Jon.

But I caught him later as we decamped to Euston to collect Storme.

Then I got all four of them. The camera-frenzy begins to take hold.

We headed towards the London Eye, me hanging back and taking furtive landscape shots. None of them came out very well, sadly.

Having reached the Eye, we decided that it was too busy and hung around St James' Park for a bit instead. Dylan found the conversation so interesting that he fell asleep.

He then connected to the ifMUD via his Psion and mobile phone. I feel this narrowly edges out my camera in the geekiness stakes.

Finally we went to the Bedlington Cafe in Chiswick, which was ostensibly the main point of the entire exercise. There we met Roger Firth, and Dylan stole my camera and took a photo with both of us in it. (Roger's in pink, I'm in green.)

The Thai food was pretty good. The wine flowed freely. The conversation was witty and sparkling and stuff.

All in all, a really nice evening.