London calling to the faraway geeks

15th November 2004

In search of knowledge and enlightenment, an unordered list of UK bloggers - a Brit Pack if you will - came from far, wide, and even Wales to pool ideas, thoughts and beer money.

Lining up in that London were Malarkey, Andy Budd, Drew McLellen, Jon Hicks, Richard Rutter, Patrick Griffiths, Rachel Andrew, John Oxton, Jeremy Keith and my good self.

Using booze as a catalyst, the air was thick with discussion about Union Jack underpants, football, Dunstan and so on, with a little bit of CSS, web standards and (hush-hush) a joint project or two thrown in for good measure. Turns out we’re all jolly nice people who can successfully communicate without the use of email, iChat or blog comments. What joy! Anyway, I suppose you need pictures…

I may have only shared his company for an hour before his date with a stupidly long train journey (yes, I was very, very late), but it was a pleasure to revel in the cut-throat business dynamism of Malarkey (gesticulating above). Smoking tabs like it was some sort of competition, banging on about his new dog, and dressed like a Mod, Clarkey oozed enthusiasm.

Then there’s Big John Oxton (above) - a big friendly giant who called me a “Bastard” at one point - not seriously, mind. Lovely man. It was a pleasure to meet Nice-Guy Hicks, and true gentlemen Patrick and Jeremy (below).

In fact, they’re all just as you’d expect them all to be from reading their blogs. They have arms and legs, wear hats, and can speak without using a keyboard. So, after a splendid round of glorified soup with floating eggs in Wagamamas, a few of us headed off to some pub on the Strand for rounds of ale, some of which I managed to spill over my leg. I don’t know. You can take the boy out of Nottingham, but you can’t take Nottingham out of etc, etc…

There was much discussion in the pub with Hicks, Oxton, Rutter (above) and Griffiths about the high levels of fucking swearing on CollyLogic, and it was generally agreed that it was a good thing. As promised chaps, I’m inviting you all to swear as much as you’d like in response to this article, although Jon must do better than a “WTF”.

To tell you more would be to break some as yet unmentioned code of conduct or Official Secrecy act, so all I’ll say is this: Stand by for more from this assembled rabble of bloggers in the potentially-near future. We’re lean, we’re mean, and we can handle our ale. Oh, and big thanks to Patrick for organising things.

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