…was that a large proportion of the Samizdata Team were distracted by Antoine Clarke’s birthday party in London!

Antoine blows his cork!
Adriana and Brian look on as David Carr
does his mushroom cloud impersonation
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The Samizdata Team based in and around London was delighted to be able to meet famed blogger Joanne Jacobs and her daughter for lunch in Central London yesterday. ![]() Joanne and her daughter looked on impassively whilst the Guardian journalists were burnt in effigy for their amusement. ![]() Natalie Solent regaled the room with her ‘The time I went shopping and forgot to leave the Chieftain Tank’s hand brake on’ story. Dave Tepper suggests ideas for a blogger drinking game. I’m not sure we need a game at Samizdata HQ. We take our drinking as dead seriously as 1930’s Hollywood newspapermen. I’m sure Perry can atest to the similarity between the state of his bar after the Samizdatistas went home and an African field after the locusts have gone. Stephanie DuPont has suggested that the female guests at the British Blogger Bash were ‘paid escorts’. Two were computer programers at the top end of their professions, one was a manager with the English National Opera, one was a TV producer and one runs a hotel and a small data services operation. Stephanie is obviously just jealous she was not invited to the bash, or maybe she is looking for a spanking to relieve the tedium of being Brian Linse’s gopher. Yes, she strikes me as the kinky type, that must be it. ![]() At the Brit Blogger Bash: elegant, articulate and easy on the eyes Tentative greetings from Hangover Headquarters. The 1st Blogger Bash in London was a definite success with four blogs represented, and a host of would-be bloggers and blog readers also in attendance, eighteen people in all. Blogs represented were Samizdata (obviously), Aint No Bad Dude, Dodgeblog and Layman’s Logic. Unfortunately Adil Farooq of Muslimpundit sent regrets earlier and was unable to attend and the evil Busheyspon was a no-show. Proceedings started at 7:00 pm and continued until 6:30 am today (I kid thee not) when the last diehards staggered off to an uncertain fate into the cold Chelsea night. It looks like at least two new blogs will probably emerge as a result of the contacts between existing bloggers and interested attendees. Samizdata will also gain two more contributors to the bristling libertarian phalange in the form of Adriana Cronin and Patrick Crozier. ![]() Samizdata Team reminds Brian Linse of Aint No Bad Dude that we have not forgotten the ‘Interblog Gun Wars’
Ben Sheriff of Layman’s Logic was envious of Brian Micklethwait’s finely tuned social antennae The party was characterised by sober discourse and probity
All the attendees were bleary guys with beer bellies Dale was very impressed when Tom Burroughes demonstrated the famous Reuters Break Dance technique Due to the seriousness of the threat against the Samizdata London Citadel, the craic Samizdata Belfast Drinking Brigade is rushing a reinforcement to London. An airdropped supply of deadly verbiage is expected by 21:00 Zulu time this evening at the latest. Rumour has it that Samizdatistas are converging on the area from all corners of London. One of the reasons for the low volume of bloggage here has been the distracting influence of our pet pinko, Brian Linse, who has somehow managed to weasel his way into Samizdata HQ. He has barricaded himself into the downstairs guest room and we cannot get him out. The horror. The horror. ![]() Any British Isles bloggers within range of London who are interested in getting together with the cream of the bloggerati on Saturday, 23rd February, should e-mail us at admin at samizdata.net” as soon as possible for information. We can probably handle a few more. Blog this, you bounder! Bloggin’ ‘ell!
![]() A veritable verisimilitude of Bloggers from Blighty Samuel Johnson Seeing as Will Vehrs of Blog Watch II is moaning about the lack of Valentine party reports, here I go. It all started off rather badly as I had a huge argument with my ‘significant other’. But that was probably just as well so this way I did not have him moping around later at the party like death’s head at the feast. I was joint hostess of this party with two excellent lady friends of mine at a pleasingly nefarious and very out-of-the-way venue that for certain reasons will remain nameless. We expected 30-35 people but eventually got more than 80 I would guess, which proved interesting. I have no idea where they all came from and how they found our semi-private party. The guys running the bar (huge kiss to Marko, DJ Klaus and Dobroslav) had to go out twice and restock, the last time the underside of Marko’s old Trabi was scrapping the ground and making sparks because there was so much in the back and on the seats. The title of the party was ‘Love and Massacres on Valentine’s Day’ and due to the preferences of one of my co-hostesses, the theme was ‘Goths in Love’: so I did radical things with my hair and had a rather fetching ‘tattoo’ painted on for the night. The party took place in a large concrete basement that was quite recently used as a bomb shelter, with two dance rooms, a chill room and a very unusual and, um, ‘sociable’ toilet room. Music in one room was things like Prodigy, Alice DJ, Jaxx, Chemical Brothers, Stromkern, Apollo 440 and Orbital and the other room stuck to the goth theme with things like local boys Gone, Laibach, Weeping Willow, Phantasmagoria and Drinking Skull, plus the inevitable Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees. The place had a ventilation system which seemed to be running backwards and so it got hotter and hotter as more and more people arrived to engage in crazed dancing and innovative drinking games. After a while there was an interesting layer of cigarette and who-knows-what smoke sort of hanging just below the ceiling which did look rather cool. A bit later I had a very surreal conversation when four of us got trapped in the toilet room for about half an hour. I got talking with a very beautiful Hungarian boy wearing a bullet earring, who told me he “knew the people whose party this was and they were all smugglers from Russia”. I would have liked to hear more of this fascinating story but then Marko managed to take the big steel door off its hinges with a huge screwdriver and freed us all. All the waiting people who wanted to go pee pee rushed in and threw us out and I never saw the strange Hungarian boy again. Many interesting things happened later but my memory gets hazy now…at least that is my story and I am sticking to it. It was a terrific party but I am really glad I didn’t have to clean up afterwards. Are you satisfied now Will? I demand *** for this revelation on Blog Watch II! |
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