LPUK pubbing it large

Over at Samidata, Brian Mickelthwait has a write-up of the first vaguely official LPUK meeting. This was held, naturally enough, in a pub across from the Houses of Parliament (where else do you expect us to meet, eh?).

As I made my way there, I feared the worst, namely a little clutch of social dyslexics as old as me and as badly dressed as me, but even fatter and even uglier, some of them clutching grubby plastic bags full of newspaper cuttings. I got there nearer to 6pm than 3pm, and immediately thought: oh dear, I am too late and they have all gone. The first floor of the St Stephen's Tavern was, you see, full of normal people. But just as I was about to leave and go home again, the guy who turned out to be Mr Devil's Kitchen himself hailed me. He even recognised me. So, I went over, and asked him which of this enormous throng of people were the UKLP. "They all are", he said.

I did not stay long, because I was trying to recover from a nasty cough and cold. Also, what with these people looking so normal, and hence of potential political significance, I did not want to infect them. But I stayed long enough to discover that they all seemed to have lives and jobs and brains, and social antennae, and the looks to match. Mostly they were twenty somethings or thirty somethings, mostly male but with a few young women.

Indeed, the whole event was, I think, rather successful; the range of ages—from those in their teens to those in their sixties—was very encouraging and everyone seemed to get on very well. I don't think that we achieved much other than getting to know people through the medium of booze, but then that was the object all along.

I met some excellent people too including the redoubtable Falco, who was on fine form...