[F] Report - Kentmeet 1.1 - The Wrath of Charles
rachel walmsley
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"
Stuart Longley
more newbies) but I feel compelled to reply to this:
On Tue, 28 Aug 2001 01:31:38 +0100, rachel walmsley
<flo...@sheepish.org.uk> wrote:
>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].
Well you can add one to that list (namely, me.)
>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.
It's actually an old opera house (and bingo hall) hence it's name "The
Old Opera House". It's a Wetherspoon's, and one of the cheapest pubs
in Tunbridge Wells, and for mostly that reason (well, also because I
just live up the road) I was probably in there at exactly the same
time as you lot. I then headed off to Sevenoaks quite early, possibly
on the same train you took back to Tonbridge... If only I'd joined afp
a few weeks ago :)
Stu.
--
Stuart Longley
http://www.stus.net/
Kincaid
> mammoth slash (seeing as Aquarion is currently in possession of a copy
> of Icebones, for puns against humanity)
> kincaid/Colin Baker
You do know that I'm going to have to kill you all now, don't you? I don't
recall that *at all*
--
Kincaid Labs
Tampering in God's domain since 1975
Karen
>The pointless pre-amble:
oh lord are pre-amble's supposed to have points? I always wondered where
I was going wrong. I feel positively liberated at the prospect of
sanctioned pointless pre-ambling :}
>
>There aren't very many afpers in Kent. To the best of my knowledge[1]
>there are somewhere between three and six
Hey there San Francisco, Inverness - you are not alone, Kent is your
soul mate.
>depending on who you count as
>an afper, and possibly one or two more depending on what you count as
>Kent.
Stuff with Kent postcodes?
[..]
>rachel walmsley[4]
>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.
I may well steal this paragraph...
[...]
>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.
or an expansion of it? Were we all perhaps a part of the Greater Kent
meet in reality?
>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.
Yesh from MiQ just posted and hopefully with comments from Patrick if
recovered. But please add yours too.
>I will say that it was also Good Fun,
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
[..]
>[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...
yeah yeah ok - its almost traditional now that I get at least one easy
name mispelt, miss out a name of someone I had several conversations
with and throw in the odd member of the spirit world. Put it down to pre
senile dimentia.
But I'm very glad you made it to this one, and now you just *have* to
come to the next Green Man to test my spelling has improved doncha? 0:}
ttfn,
--
Karen/hypatia Ka...@lspace.org
** AFP will be 10 years old in 2002 **
Want to come to a world wide party?
http://www.lspace.org/fandom/afp/afparty/