Kentmeet 1.1: Report

From: rachel walmsley <flossie@sheepish.org.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: [F] Report - Kentmeet 1.1 - The Wrath of Charles
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 01:31:38 +0100
Message-ID: <MPG.15f4f6c56b64dfa3989752@news>

The pointless pre-amble:

There aren't very many afpers in Kent. To the best of my knowledge[1] 
there are somewhere between three and six depending on who you count as 
an afper, and possibly one or two more depending on what you count as 
Kent. Not very many anyway[2]. And most of them don't do meets, for one 
reason or another. Now, it's been a long time (for certain values of 
long) since I'd been to a meet (excepting CCDE), but I couldn't really 
say no to this one, seeing as how it was so close to me, and seeing as 
how I couldn't let Aquarion down as he turned up (along with myself and 
one other person) when I held a meet in Canterbury[3]. Fortunately there 
were considerably more people than that attending this meet, most 
probably due to Aquarion having more organisational skills than I do. 
Anyway, without further ado:

The list of those attending:

Aquarion
LoneCat
Kincaid
rachel walmsley[4]
Barry R.
Arwen Lune
Ben "womble" Hutchings
Charles "cookie" Cooke
and, making a cameo appearance by the wonder of modern technology known 
to the world as the mobile telephone, Natalie Mayer.

The legal disclaimer:

This is a meet report. It is only accurate to the limits of my 
recollection. Or in some cases the limits of my deliberate 
misrecollection. The author takes no liability for any misrepresentations 
herein, and encourages all aggrieved parties to take up the issue with 
the High Court of AFP (ie, following up with corrections, elaborations or 
pleas of insanity). Thank you.

The actual meet report thingy:

After wrestling with the Yukish railway system[6] I finally stepped out 
of the train and into the fictional town of Paddock Wood at approximately 
15:15 on Saturday. It only required a brief look around the place for me 
to spot Aquarion, LoneCat and Kincaid walking down the platform towards 
me. Hugs were exchanged and then we headed back to Aquarion's house. 
Topics discussed during this first section of the meet, included why 
Paddock Wood didn't actually exist (it's all Quantum. Ask Aquarion), the 
perennial favourite of "whose chemistry teacher was the biggest lunatic" 
(from memory words and phrases mentioned included "next metal down group 
one", "thermite", "concentrated acid", " through the asbestos mat and 
down into the table", "hydrogen balloons", "tear gas", "rockets" and 
"banned it because it was too dangerous" - you get the picture), rantings 
about how truly dire Connex South Eastern[7] are (like how they had their 
franchise revoked but then had their parent company buy it back) and 
complaints when the meetcam(TM) was moved from its position pointing down 
the middle of the room at absolutely nobody, so that it actually pointed 
at somebody. The complaints were, of course, from the person or persons 
it was pointed at but I am not currently at liberty to divulge 
his/her/their identity(s).

It seemed like we had barely been sat down for long to recover from the 
exertion of walking in the stifling heat when we had to get up again to 
return to the station to go the pub in Tunbridge Wells. This involved 
changing trains in Tonbridge station, where we met up with Barry and 
Arwen. Barry was playing with his devil sticks (obFnar: fnar) here. 
Having someone tossing a fairly large piece of wood around directly in 
front of your face is a strange and somewhat unerring experience. Worse 
than that it provoked autofilking:

Miss me
Miss me
Miss me with your devil sticks
Miss me slowly
Miss me quick
Miss me with your devil sticks

If you don't know the tune to this already then you have my undying envy.

The train from Tonbridge to Tunbridge Wells was fairly uneventful, 
although it is worth noting a few things. Aquarion and LoneCat were not 
being vommish. Nor did they continue to get steadily worse during the 
weekend. Nor have they finally succumbed to the afp dating agency. Nor 
were Barry and Arwen being vommish, due to Arwen being to busy hitting 
Barry (one of the proceeding sentences is true. There are no prizes for 
working out which one).

At Tunbridge Wells station our compliment was increased to seven when we 
met womble. Then it was just a short walk (unfortunately up hill. Minus 
one point for planning there) to the pub. It was an old theatre or 
something like that, so it was quite nice, large and had chandeliers and 
other such things. Which was nice. Cookie arrived not long afterwards, 
bringing us up to our full number. Food was ordered, geeking was geeked, 
cuddly toys were produced (and put in compromising positions. My sheep 
didn't stand a chance with cookie's bondage-cthulhu), drinks were drunk, 
chocolate was eaten (cookie's 80% cocoa stuff again eclipsing my meagre 
offering of 70% chocolate (which just means there's more left for me 
now)) and a Good Time Was Had By All. Unfortunately, I don't remember 
very much of what was said at the pub as it was quite loud, I was sitting 
at the end of the table and I don't have the world's best hearing anyway, 
so I didn't hear all of what was said. One thing that I do remember 
however, and feel the need to share with you, is our discussion of slash 
fiction. As well as touching on the Sith Academy 
(http://www.siubhan.com/sithacademy/index.html fact fans. Don't be fooled 
by the innocuousness of the first few stories) we also discussed possible 
potential slash. These included:

mammoth slash (seeing as Aquarion is currently in possession of a copy of 
Icebones, for puns against humanity)
kincaid/Colin Baker
Jack/The Giant (with a cameo role for the beanstalk)
Lucy/Aslan

We left the pub fairly early, as it was getting stupidly busy and headed 
off back towards Paddock Wood. I am guessing that while standing around 
in Tunbridge Wells station was the first time that threats were made 
against Aquarion's life for excessive bad punning. These continued all 
weekend, and while they came from just about everyone the most persistent 
offenders were cookie and Barry, presumably due to their being the most 
intimidating due to having a gerber and a Barry respectively. Hence the 
very bad meet subtitle. The reason I guess this was when it really 
started was that we set him a challenge. He was to go pun free for an 
hour and a half. Ninety seconds later, when he'd had to try hard to 
resist about five feed lines that weren't intentional, things weren't 
looking good, but he did make it. Which was a relief to us all. It was 
also at around this point that we had Nattie phoning in from Merkia, 
where she was *ahem* regaled with tales of what had happened already.

The night was finished off by watching The Nightmare Before Christmas on 
DVD back at Aquarion's. Philistine that I am, I found this pretty boring 
so I slept through most of it. Not the best way to judge a film, I'll 
admit, but I was tired. When that was done we banished cookie upstairs[8] 
for fear of snoring, spread ourselves out across the various floor, 
chair, and sofa spaces, and went to sleep.

Sunday's section of the report is, I feel, going to be somewhat briefer, 
partly because for various reasons my recollection of it is not good, 
partly because I don't think quite so much happened, and partly because 
I've written about 8K already and I'm starting to flag.

Sunday saw several more DVDs being watched. Pleasantville (though I 
didn't really see much of that), Galaxy Quest (which I have now seen 
three times, all at afpmeets. I think "count the gratuitous cleavage 
shots" was attempted here for a while as well) and Sleepy Hollow to be 
precise. I have a vague recollection of some sort of card game being 
played at some point too, but could tell you nothing about it beyond that 
(and may indeed be hallucinating the memory).  Cookie also made his 
famous three ginger soup, which I was far too much of a coward to try, 
but was apparently excellent.

The train from Paddock wood to London to meet up with the Green Man meet 
was the end of the Kentmeet in a recognisable form. The most notable 
conversation here was cookie, Aquarion, LoneCat and rachel doing much 
plotting and scheming towards a truly evil website. It is still largely 
in the planning stages, but it will be... interesting, should half of 
what we have planned come to pass. And I shall say no more on the 
subject. Bwahaha.


The Quotefile:

There is none. Feel free to make up eight out of context innuendos and 
attribute one to each of us. Feel free, also, to make up eight truly 
painful puns and attribute them all to Aquarion (except the one about Old 
Kent Road. That one was mine).

The Aftermath:

If you think I'm going to write a report for the Green Man meet then 
you've got another thing coming. I believe one is forthcoming from 
elsewhere. I will say that it was also Good Fun, and it was nice to be 
able to put a few more names to faces and faces to names. That night I 
crashed, along with four others[9], at Barry and Arwen's. Trying to sleep 
when you have snoring in three way stereo about you is interesting, to 
say the least. We became non-quorate at about 15:00 when we went our 
different ways on the tube, and I finally got back to Canterbury at about 
17:40 on Monday.

All that remains is to say thank you to Nick for organising and hosting 
the Kentmeet, Karen for organising the Green Man, Barry and Arwen for 
Sunday night's crash space and Monday morn^H^H^H^Hafternoon's fry up, and 
everyone else who attended either meet for a thoroughly enjoyable 
weekend.

Phew.

The signoff:

RW. 

The altogether too numerous feetneet:

[1] After suitable consultation with Aquarion this weekend.
[2] Yes, I do expect about thirty to come out of the woodwork when I send 
this, but I can deal with being wrong. Or at least I managed to deal with 
it the other time it happened.
[3] The good thing about this is that it allows me free reign in the 
arbitrary numbering of this meet. I considered 1.1.3 but decided it would 
be silly.[5]
[4] Note spelling, Karen. I decided following up to her not-a-meet-report 
just to correct a spelling mistake would be petty[5], but that I can 
safely get away with doing it in the middle of a vast nest of footnotes 
that nobody will read. "lmsl" isn't all that unusual a combination of 
letters, honest...
[5] Why that stopped me I don't know.
[6] This involved being told the route I was going to travel wasn't 
valid, a pompous ticket-officer with an over-inflated sense of self-
importance and superiority being condescending at me and then giving me 
incorrect information about train times, arriving on a platform just in 
time to see the train pulling away and hunting for a phone in Ashford 
station having realised I had left my mobile at home.
[7] The company who run the trains in the south east corner of England.
[8] Where he got a bed. The lucky puppy.
[9] Cookie, LoneCat, Aquarion and Adrian Ogden.

The .sig:

-- 
http://www.quoth.org.uk/ - Quoth the Rachel...
"Better dead than smeg"
"If only we were among friends... Or sane persons"

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