Manchester Meet - March 3-5 2000

Author(s): Caroline Lamb(mirath) (with much help from Madbob)

Organising a meet is, I imagine, somewhat like giving birth. You have one, and you think "never again!". But a year or two later you've forgotten the pain and the screaming and you think "That wasn't so bad. Let's have another!".

So madbob and I got our arms twisted into organising a Manchester meet. This was the second meet I've organised, and luckily we were blessed with a bit more accomodation this time. The Travelodge did some good business, even so, thanks to the Ben(quaestor) & Bob(madbob) contingent.

For Bob and I the meet began sometime during the week - we certainly seem to have spent most nights in a pub somewhere, at any rate. Thursday we had a great curry with the rest of the Manchester-based spods (David - sbj, John - albatros, Terry - mwxutbi, Andy - random, Phil - Phil-99, Andrew - tripwire). Then we went to 5th Avenue, a dive of a club most of us own up to having attended at least once when we were students, and didn't know any better. Lou (nasa) and Pete (big-pete) had arrived early, so they came too and became honorary mancspods.

On Friday, Lou and I did girly things for most of the day. Andrew and Pete spent the morning playing Quake. Bob flitted back and forth across the country stressing about spods, accommodation, jobs, and broken mobiles. Phil acted completely unlike a student; he went to Friday morning lectures.

Midafternoon we collected Kevin (vampyre) from the station and took him shopping for sparkly things at the student's favourite haunt, Affleck's Palace - a multi-floor emporium of all things shiny and tacky. We were expecting to collect Tristan (mercenar) a little later, but together with Mark and Dave (Flippy and Beardy), he was delayed on the motorway by a car fire. They still managed to get to the pub before we did, though.

Over the years, the Wetherspoons on Picadilly has eventually become the default location for Mancmeets - although Barney's and the Goose are putting up stiff competition. Bob continues to agitate for more visits to Yang Sing.

As spods arrived, we gradually took over several tables at the back, haggling over accommodation, and baffling the locals. A few dumped their luggage at the Travelodge, others got gothed up for Rockworld (about half came out).

Unfortunately, Kevin and Andy (bluemeat) managed to not get back to Phil's place; apparently he was sleeping through the phone. Many panicky SMS messages were sent to various people through the night... who also all slept through them. Apparently the Metrolink tram is nice and warm going to Altringham and back all night, though!

On Saturday we met up in O'Shea's. It was loud and crowded, so we lost no time in heading off to different places. Most went bowling at White City with Bob, where a brilliant time was had by all (except the kid on shoe-sanitising duty) who went increasingly pale and had breathing difficulty as the day wore on.

The evening meal was the bit we'd been alternately dreading and looking forward to for weeks beforehand: a meal for 25 at the best restaurant in China Town, Yang Sing (you may have seen this on TV recently in the series "The Yeung Ones"). The staff were absolutely fantastic, extremely accomodating even when most wanted to order seperately and have seperate bills - and they were all correct, too. We rapidly consumed 16 bottles of wine, and threw ten-pound notes at Bob until there was enough cash to pay for it. Delicious!

Later we split into groups, some going to The Grovel. This isn't normally Bob's favourite bar, but there's hope yet, as their standards are getting steadily lower. Some went to the Gay Village, and were refused entry to several clubs on the grounds that they "weren't gay enough". Ahem.

On Sunday we met, as is traditional, in the huge "Moon Under Water" Wetherspoons on Deansgate. What wasn't so traditional was our celebration of St. Piran's Day - patron saint of Cornwall; Pete made us all honorary Cornish people for the day and the staff were very bemused by his huge...flag.

People started to drift off after lunch, leaving just the more determined drinkers and Manc spods, so we went back to our flat, ordered yet more Chinese food, and were generally silly all night. Bob slept on the train back to Yorkshire.

I'd taken Monday off as well to make sure Pete got his flight back to Belgium on time, so we dragged Phil away from his work to eat Haagen-Dazs with us all afternoon.

And that was it... Yang Sing say they'll have us back next year. How many should we book for? :)

 

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