So, this weekend was the long awaited meet. Here's my photo-diary of the event. You can click on any image to see it BIGGAH.
Sadly, Paul-the-bard was too sick to travel, so we were a man down, but we put a brave face on it and tried to drink his share of the beer.
Drachais and Shark arrived on the Friday night, and we (Maxis and I) took them to a Greek place on Deansgate. We stayed there until they kicked us out (I noticed that they weren't kicking anyone else out. Were we being disorderly? I think not.)
The next morning Drach and Sharky leaped out of bed at the crack of dawn to go to the Imperial War Museum North. Max and I finally managed to drag ourselves there at about 11:00 and found them playing with a tank. We told Drach to kite it, but he must have been rooted or something. /shrug.
We walked back across the rising bridge at Salford Quays towards the Lowry Centre; here are the lads standing by the bridge...
...and this one is Drach, Shark and me looking back across the dock at the War Museum (this pic's for you, Alex.) It looks nice and sunny, but there was a very cold wind, so actually we are all freezing our tits off in that shot.Back in town, we met Deadweight, then Tammuz and then Jamiesmallicus at Piccadilly. It was fun scanning the people arriving into Starbucks and trying to spot the internet gamers. Harder than you might think, but we identified each other without too much trouble, refrained from screeching in shock/delight, and went in search of some pre-beer padding.
Here we are sampling that traditional Manchester dish, curry for lunch, except Tammuz who for some reason ordered a pizza. Like, yeah, pizza from a curry house is gonna be nice! Deadweight looks happy though (that's him in the stripes). I think Jamie might have said something mildly amusing. He's such a wag.
Here we are wandering aimlessly around central Manchester, on warden speed, looking for a fight. I mean a pub that wasn't too full. From L-R: Shark, Jamie, Maxis, Tammuz & Drachais.
We had a couple of beers in Night and Day and then retired to a corner of The English Lounge, shown here, where Shark, Maxis and I sampled the tasty warm English ales, much to Drach's disgust. We lost Deadweight in between the two bars. I think he pulled or something.
Jamie went home before supper, but the remnants of the group went into Chinatown. The food was pretty good, as it usually is in Little Yang Sing, but they had some kind of weird restaurant-meme going on, whereby someone has a birthday: cue music, singing, clapping, ice-cream with a sparkler in it etc. Then everyone decides to get in on the act and we have at least 5 rounds of this in a row. It was loud. It gave us headaches. We opted not to invent a birthday of our own.And so to dancing. Tamm bottled out of it, so we were down to 4 at this point, but we're hardcore so we hit the clubs. Well, FAB Cafe anyway.
Shark: Maybe if I throw enough shapes, this Dalek will be really impressed and not nuke me down.Dalek: Exterminate!
Drachais: Ah, my pits are as fresh as can be. Come and smell these, everyone!
Everyone: NIPPLES!
Finally, there were 3. The morning after, not feeling too fragile at all (honest) Max and I met Drach in town for a coffee. Shark was meant to be heading back home early; hope he remembered to wake up...
You'd better click on this one to get the FULL EFFECT! This is the MK1 radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, one of the biggest radio telescopes in the world. If you look carefully you can see two little gimpy eldritches standing underneath it.And that's just about the end of it. We took Drach to the airport, took a peek at Concorde, gave him a hug and a kiss (Drach, not Concorde) came home and fell asleep. Three cheers for RL meets, four cheers for GG2, one cheer for Manchester, no cheers for sick bards (Pol, we missed you.)
Looking forward to the next one
xx
