The reason
This was the follow-up get together from the Elohimcoffee last year. Sadly SRD couldn’t make it for a return visit, although I personally would have wanted a few pints after appearing on “Fantasy Bedtime Hour”.
The venue
After some vacilitation, and at Nav’s suggestion, we’d arranged to meet at the Great Big Beer Festival, at London Olympia - at the time a destination easily reached by several tube rides and a cab had seemed like a good idea! And we’d needed some fixed event to go to or we’d have debated the date until “Revenant” came out!
The turnout
The potential role call was quite strong – at one point there would have been 8 Watchers going – but sadly Loremaster had had to bail, Nav had gone on holiday, and Hierachy had a funeral to go to. No Darth either (although various ‘sightings’ may have proved otherwise). So on the day it was me, CovenantJr, Chrysalis and her friend Aurea. Thankfully even with descriptions of ‘Just look for tall and um…male’ didn’t put a spoke in the works!
The day:
The girls and CJ discover digital cameras are great at capturing them unawares.
As you can see we established quite early on where to obtain the pirate hats – funnily enough the instigator of that plan decided she would refrain from wearing one so the responsibility fell on Cov’ head, literally.
I look particularly rakish in this shot (from the return trip). Or perhaps “anorak-ish” would be a better description!
Sadly in the next one I just look like I’ve had one too many.
As for the beers: We opened with Gales HSB, a smooth ale that both CJ and I took to quite well. Chrys and Aurea had the bartender’s choice, which was a rather harsh beer with a distinctly bitter aftertaste – hence the “sucking a lemon” expressions that were pulled and the hasty handing over of glasses to CJ; although arguably that may have been a result of CJs comment that “the last inch of any pint is largely saliva!”
For the next round, it was a split between IPA and cider. The IPA was hoppy and refreshing. The cider was utterly revolting, and should have come with the sort of health warning used for disinfectants, which was what it smelt like. Photographic evidence showed just how quickly it congealed in the glass. We decided it was better not to contemplate what it would do to us if we drank it.
So most of it was subsequently put aside for Darth, in the event he did show up
There were several possible sightings of the elusive Darth, but alas, this was not to be the case unless he isn’t telling us something...
As an aside, I should mention the live music at this point. If “Knees up Mother Brown” played at a volume roughly equal to a Saturn V on blastoff was your thing, the soundstage was the place to be! If not, it was best avoided. We learnt this the hard way.
After this I have to say the afternoon is something of a blur for me
CJ and I progressed to cherry beer (nice but sharp) while the ladies went on to redcurrant from Holland (very flavoursome) and later decent drinks in the form of Bacardi and Lager were opted for. By this point we’d all had enough standing around, so after a little debate we climbed into a cab and set off…well, somewhere (by this point my navigational abilities were on the blink). Chrys can fill in the blanks for the next part.
One short ride later we disembarked at a lively bar called the Walkabout (a favourite for the girls). It had a distinctly antipodean theme to it (to match Chys’s accent apparently), with a floor the consistency of glue, and reminded me a lot of bars I’d hang out in as a student - so I really liked it. Not sure what they thought of my singing though. Either way the DJ was a major improvement to earlier musical attempts.
We grabbed a couple more drinks here (sampling some Aussie beer and of course good ‘oll JD) before giving in to hunger and going for a rather good Italian meal. After which we were all surprisingly sleepy and decided to head off.
Not before almost giving Chrys a heart attack by stating CJ had lost his ticket home. Thankfully this turned out to be a false alarm.
In conclusion, it was a good day out, if a bit hard on the liver. The general consensus was that we’d try and do something similar somewhere around Christmas, probably in the Midlands; the name Elohimchristmasesh has been mooted but ruled against as hard to pronounce, even when sober.
So did you have any time to discuss SRD or were you too busy having fun? **nurses headache from Tecate pints and shots of JD at a kareoke bar last night 
**
Sadly, we didn't get a photo of Hierachy the octagenerian jazz conductor.
