(Click here for the report plus photos)

The Annotated tEC2

This is a direct copy of the first thread about tEC2 on AFE. Each persons comments are colour-coded, Any comments missed out are my bad :( Aquarion

Aquarius's Report, Annotated

Well, this was intended to merely be a tECII meet report, just like all the other ones that have been and will be posted. However, there is also one other piece of bad news; I flipped my car on the way home from tECII. Climbing out of a car which is on its roof is a novel experience, to be sure, but not one that I wish to repeat. However, you can put away the grapes; take off the nurses' uniforms,

Kamion: ObtEC2: That's a quote :)
don't do the mad Florence Nightingale rush to my side. As I post this from my study, rather than the dubious comfort of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, the only injuries to me appear to be some minor cuts on my left hand.

Jehanneton: Oh my god, Aq, it sounds dreadful. I know what you mean about climbing out of an upside down car, it's not a pleasant experience. <shudder>
I'm just glad you're okay. <hug>

Polgara: Oh Aq! :(
Ce' spent most of the journey down to London saying loudly from the back seat - "I wouldn't be surprised if someone has an accident on the way home...." Don't you just hate it when someone's always right??!

Having said that - I almost killed the five people in my car trying to get onto the bl**dy M1. A combination of five people and a bootful of luggage, roadworks blocking my view and five lorries coming past the entrance to the motorway not to mention hardly any acceleration, and you almost had a squashed Ce'UrgyHetLeiaClair mobile!

I managed to stop with about ten meters till the road ran out, and then it was doubly worse, what with having to start from scratch and get up to 40 miles an hour before the lorry catches you up, I was shaking like a leaf and swearing lots for the next twenty minutes! :(

Leia: The thing is, none of us passengers, noticed a thing! We were all still pretty pissed to have any sort of reaction. If Pol hadn't gone into one, we wouldn't have known a thing.
Polgara: I wondered why you were all so calm about nearly being squished flat against a lorry! :)
I just put it down to you lot having gone to sleep or something!
Krager:I will hear nothing against pol, she is an excellent driver, I never noticed a thing.....
Polgara: Oh how sweet!
*BIG WIDE GRIN*
That almost makes up for waking me several times in the night by snoring!:)
Castellan: Glad to hear you're alright. I sympathise, as I know what it's like to undo your seatbelt and drop 10 inches on your head (a Skoda in Essex - built like tanks, thankfully), and I hope your insurers don't add to your stress
:-) Have a bunch of e-grapes anyway ;-)
Kamion: I'm glad; take care of yourself, for goodness' sake ...
Leia: Oh, Aqqy, maaaaaan! I couldn't keep my eyes open and I had these visions of us having a crash. Thankfully, Polgara is a damn good driver and could keep her eye on the road. :)
Tabia: Glad to hear you are okay, Aq... Please be careful...I'm glad the alcohol was out of your system by then too. We'd have hated to have had to come up with bail money for you! (j/k)
Glad you had a good time at TECII..... wish I could have found some way of coming over...
....hmmmmm would I have really fit in though since I don't drink alcohol?....
DaveHowe: Definitely - We had Senji there, who is of a non-alcoholic persuasion. Feel free to arrange attendence at tEC3 - if you can afford the airfare.
Aquarius: There were other non-drinkers there, too; Senji and Simon Nickerson, for example, who had a great time.
Come over next time :-)
Tabia: I'm still trying to see if I can get my Navy two weeks in London this next year... if it isn't the first two weeks of January 2000, then it will be in the summer sometime... If you guys can decide which weekend TEC3 will be on before September 15th, I can put my active duty request in so I have that weekend in the middle of my two weeks... :::keeping my fingers crossed!:::
Bagpuss: Bloody hell....glad your alright...bloody lucky the meet didnt end on a *very* bad note really
Meriamon: Glad to hear you are okay.
Aquarion: /me feels sorry for AqClassic, who should know how to drive in his old age :)
/me suspects the fluffy dice got in the way ;)
Seriously, I'm glad you are OK..
Zubrette I hope that doesn't slow you down too much, Aq :P
Silly bugger. /me tuts gently and starts to organise the nursing rota.
Aquarius: Nah, I'm ambidextrous like that.
Yep, I can type with both hands. Don't know what *you* lot thought I was talking about ;-)
Anyway, I could use the patented Baggy Technique.....
Khendon: You'd type with your feet? :-p
Krager:Aquarius, how many times did I tell you, the car is meant to be driven on the things that go round and round, usually known as tires (Aaaah, I just said yes to putting him up for a week in august....)

Could have been worse, though. Especially if there were someone in the passenger seat, where the roof is bashed down almost flat :-(

Meriamon: Uh. That's not nice especially when considering that the accident must have happened shortly after you dropped me off at the station...
Khendon: /me remembers where he was sitting while getting a lift to the bus station.
/me whimpers a bit and thanks $DEITY
Khendon: BTW, Did the fluffy dice get out alright?
Aquarius: Oh yes :-)
Policeman stood on my Grease soundtrack tape, though :(
Kamion: Lucky that you'd (presumably) dropped Paul off already, then!
So, anyway, I'm OK. All emails gratefully accepted, mind :-)

On to tECII: how to kill Aquarius with alcohol poisoning, by Krager.

Krager:It takes 2 to tango Aq
Zubrette tEC finally kicked off in Zub's house on Thursday night.
The delightful sound of crisply executed orders (directed at hubby) echoed around the kitchen long into the night as the hall filled with foodstuffs, games, a vcr and other delights.
I bounced through the last day of term - collecting 24 boxes of chocolates from my form (later to be scoffed by afers) - and zoomed home stuffed everything in the car and zoomed back over to Badby.
I arrived and ensconced myself in the lovely little kitchen (which was equipt with everything!) whilst everyone else got drunk :P

Paul Baxter and I arrive, in blazing sunshine, at 12 noon on the Friday, and marvel at the gorgeousness of the hostel. Built from stone, I'm sure that it must be at least a grade II listed building, and it stands in a large garden extending front and back. Inside, it's the typical warren of narrow corridors and separate rooms that you expect from old buildings, with three upstairs dormitories and common rooms, kitchen and bathroom downstairs. Those of you at Maeshafn but not Badby: it is vastly different from the Maeshafn hostel, which had two dorms and a large common room, and was purposefully built as a youth hostel. This had two common rooms and a lovely garden, which is where most of the action and fun stuff took place.

Bagpuss: An excessively nice place for a meet...can we go there again? (will they have us again? :+)
Kamion: I'd be amazed ;)
Like I said, though, this is the *real* reason why we have a different organizer every year, so the YHA can't blacklist us. :)
Aquarius: Ah, they can now :)
AFE now has a group membership, under the name of the Cabal's[3] illustrious secretary, Zubrette.

Paul and I, after meeting the lovely Ursula, hostel manageress, getting the guided tour of the place, organising various things with her, and finding out that BBC local radio wanted to come and interview us the following day (of which more later), decided to go for a walk and explore the surrounding countryside, since we weren't expecting anyone to arrive for a couple of hours. Surprisingly (you may feel free to laugh mockingly here) we ended up in the pub, watching for afers going past in cars. Of course, we discounted the Jaguar that went past, despite Aglaranna and Baggy being in it, because it was a Jag and I forgot about Jo's dad running the car firm. After some minor confusion (and some abuse from Baggy), they also got to the hostel with all their bags.

Bagpuss: Cmon Aq...you have to realise that whilst Im a filthy layabout Aggy has *style*...she wouldnt dream of turning up in a beat up old Ford Escort :-)
We chatted some more, and then Nef and Ghnomb arrived. At this stage, I was beginning to plan the lifts: various people needed lifts from various places, and I was allocating cars and people left right and centre. To save you the grief that I went through :-), suffice to say that by 9pm or so everyone had arrived.
Kamion: I think I was one of the last to arrive: Graham (ZubbyHubby) picked up Lisa, Aquarion, Walker and me at Northampton station. I knew I was travelling up with Walker, but not that we'd run into Lisa and Aq2 in the process, which led to me embarrassingly utterly failing to recognize Lisa at Euston train station ...

There wasn't quite the confusion for all concerned that there was last year, trying to remember everyone's faces (though that was fun); there were about five or six I hadn't met before. That meant I could get straight down to the drinking without having to worry about forgetting who everyone was. :)

Krager:journey there, M1 and M25 chocca, had to navigate via A-roads, got there, even after meeting baggy, caalador, it etc. in the supermarket who told us to follow them, we arrived before them :)

We then come to one of the parts of the weekend that I have been looking forward to for *months*. Earlier in the year, I wrote a letter to D&LE, telling them about tECII, the pronunciation thread, blue stones as prizes, and various other things. (The letter will be available for perusal at http://www.kryogenix.albatross.co.uk/afe/tecII/index.shtml) at some point over the next few days, but I haven't done it yet so be patient). Instead of writing back, he sent an *audio tape*, which not only wished us a good party, but also (a) contained his standard "no computer games and films" rant, and (b) correct pronunciations for various words, one of which was "Riva".

Aquarion: Aq2 @ tEC2: "And the 'Merkin fool can't even pronounce them right :0)"

Dear me, the look on some people's faces was priceless.

Kamion: You mean "one person's face", HTH, HAND :)
Bagpuss: 'some peoples'???
you mean *one* persons :+)
Well and truly stitched the bunny up!!! :)
Kamion: The best bit was that the Bunny knew about it beforehand, as Aq couldn't resist getting it out [4] at the Astellian Council in June. He knew *exactly* what was coming :))
Aquarius: Should have kept it as a surprise for everyone, really, but I just couldn't help myself, so those people at tAsC knew about it already. And the karaoke, but that fell through owing to me not being able to find a laptop with a soundcard. Only a couple of people knew about Van, our glorious FAQ-maintainer, coming to tECII, but in the end that fell through as well, which was a shame.
Months, I've been looking forward to that moment :-)
Zubrette: Kudos to Aq :)
Jehanneton Bah! What would *he* know? He says himself his wife comes up with the names! ;-)
(An MP3 of the tape will be available at the website in due course).
Krager:What does DE know?

So, the rest of Friday night passed in a bit of a blur for me;

Zubrette: As it did for most people I think :)
lots of chatting and lots of drinking. Got to bed at, er, some very late time like 6am, after playing a game called "Psychologist" or some such, which got a bit boring after a while but did give me the opportunity to stitch Itagne up ;-)
Bagpuss: 'One of the high points of the meet :+)
(it should be noted here that it took Aq about 2 and a half minutes to work out how the game worked...and it took the psychologists about 2 and a half hours...they all knew at the start the same thing...points to Aq there I feel)
Krager:Missed that, think I was singing in the garden
Kamion: That was the night I didn't even bother to go to bed; I just fell asleep on one of the sofas, to be awakened by Zith coming in to (try to) paint Itagne's face. I saw very little of my bed, actually; about two hours of sleep on Friday night, three and a half on Saturday, and one and a half on Sunday. I slept more last night than I have for about the last year ...
Polgara: Sleep??? With Hettar, Caalador and Dom all snoring within ten meters of my bed!? The place was hardly quiet! Het snored so loudly at one point, he woke himself up! [2] :)
Aquarius: Apparently, he once snored so loudly that he woke himself up from a general anaesthetic.
I am not making this up.
Leia: LOL! There will be an MP3 available soon. Dave? Sorry, sorry, ouch, ouch!!
Then *cough* Leia and I had a bit of a giggling session at 4am on the Sunday morning and Het told us a story about "wee #9900FF dwarves" in a thick Sean Connery Accent!! The joke normally takes about two minutes to say, but it took him an hour to complete that night! He'd almost finished it when Gaia came in to ask what all the noise was about, and he had to start all over again! :)

Saturday: day of blisters. Those of you who were at tECI will remember the long walk in the countryside. Being hidebound to tradition,

Bagpuss: Is once a tradition? and if we are so hidebound where was the Obligatory horse? :-)
Gaia: Well, we /made/ it a tradition by repeating it: "once is never, but twice is always"... And as to the horse: Aq actually had flashbacks and was about to run away, when we pointed out, that the slope in the field was in the other direction, so that horse couldn't be there. :-)
Aquarius: Other than that, the field was remarkably similar to the field in Maeshafn where the Horse was. Scared me a bit, I can tell you....
we decided that at some point on Saturday we would walk to a nearby vineyard where they did very cheap tastings. While we were deciding this, Anja Lichterova from BBC radio Northampton arrived to do an interview. (Amusingly, given the fact that she was quite good looking, her surname is pronounced as licked-her-over ;-) She talked to myself, Ce', Urgit and Kamion about what afe was, what we were doing in Badby (we all said "drinking a lot" but it was cut from the interview ;), what our plans were, and so on. I blamed^H^H^H^H^H^Hcongratulated Helen on doing all the organisation, and all four of us were really pathetic, saying "it's great to be around all our friends" and the like :)
Kamion: She looked dead confused throughout, which probably explained the strange presentation on the radio. It was practice in explaining AFE from first principles, though ... lucky we didn't bother to use nicks at that point. :)

But, like I say, if you *ever* try to get me to speak on radio *ever* again ... ;)

Leia:/me appologises for having volunteered you three (Urgy and Ce`, too), but you seemed the appropriate choice, and I wanted to save us all some time. <g>
Mind you, I forgot to volunteer Zubrette, but Aq remembered and asked me to drag her to the back garden where the interview was held. :)
Zubrette: It was trully heart warming stuff.
This poor woman was totally confused as to why we were doing this stuff - and then to have to try to make sense of four random mad people was a sight to behold.
Apparantly we all love each other :)

That was actually *on* on Monday morning: an MP3 will shortly be available at the above website.

A major portion of the rest of the day was occupied with the extremely long walk to the vineyard, on which most people went. In the end, we never even made it to the vineyard; we went into a pub all of two hundred yards down the pub instead :-) Krager complained about how long his sandwich was taking, and I won three games of pool and lost one, so that's OK. Long walk back; my feet still hurt.

Kamion: It was *miles*. Lucky there was no Horse en route, I feel. We amused ourselves by watching Ce' trying not to fall off her boots [1]. :) Some people had hay-fever, which made for a bit of coughing and sneezing on the way ...
Leia: /me has to thank her lucky stars for providing her with one Walker, whose hands helped keep her on her feet during the walk. I s'pose there'll be plenty of pictorial evidence of this, anyway, as I banned my face from being on any of the websites, so my posterior was a fair game. :) Oh dear. And Walky could also open all those fences, which proved to be impossible for the sun-dazed Lely. :)
Aquarion's Note: Of *course* there is Photographic evidence... Coming soon to a web-site near you!
Aquarion: Watching Ce' walking in those boots was amusing
Krager:The service in that pub was crap, but it was noted that 3 smokers made it back first.....

Then, the trivia quiz, which was its usual amazing success: Simon did a stunning job, there, and I suspect that he will post the questions to the ng, or set up a website (Editors note: He has, it is here), or both: look out for it. We (Ce', Urgy, Gaja and me) came *third*, which is not too bad; at least we beat Baggy's team who were last right from the beginning ;-)

Zubrette: Whereas our team did better each round - and managed to come second :)
Cheers to Simonbunny and Dom for organising ace prizes.
Now I want to know when Ce` stopped wearing frilly dresses, why parents insist on making kiddies wear sailor hats and why someone thought I was Aquarius!
Aquarius: erk, didn't know that. I didn't realise that you were such a good looking child, Zubby ;-)
Bagpuss: As I have already intinated we knew that we could win hands down...so to be fair we decided to allow others the chance (very public spirited of us I feel)

More beer. Discovery of secret AFE sign and catchphrase after the funniest off-the-cuff comment of the weekend from Dom.

Krager:Did we really do that? Nooooooooooo.
Game of Confessions, where we found out that Zith fancies Norkan
Leia: Was that before or after we found out about his streaking history? :) And his singing talents ("Taboo, taboo!")? :)
(note that you never saw them apart after this all weekend!), Lisa had the opportunity to be a hitman, Ce' was a spammer (bastard!),
Kamion: I so much should have guessed that one, given that she'd been telling me all weekend that I was going to love her confession ....
Aquarion: And that Aq1 should really learn to lock doors...
and Baggy has way too much time on his hands.
Kamion: Um. You mean "feet", there. ;)
Polgara: Did he show anyone how to do that little trick, then???
Kamion: He did, more's the pity. I'll have nightmares for a week ...
Loki: No, I'd expect he had something else all over his feet...
Zubrette: Amusingly enough any confessions that were related to acts of depravity were a close contest between Krager and Baggy (no suprize really).
Itagne cheated outrageously and managed to win the comp - by guessing more confesions than anyother person (but only cause I told him three of them!). It was most disconcerting for him to turn to you after a confession was read out to be told point blank, "That soooo has to be you" and for him to be dead right :)
Aquarius: They were both vaguely annoyed that *every confession* saw each of them get a vote :)
Bagpuss: And thanks a F***ing bunch to all those who voted for me being the spammer
Krager:OK, why did I get a vote for every confession (why me?), even, the "I fancy Norkan one", I ended up with 17 peices of paper (beeting Ce' and baggy into joint 2nd with 13.5 each) as most likely to do things and when it came to my confession, only about 3 ppl voted for me......

Sunday: a day of rest. Well, perhaps. Started drinking at 12 noon, with Krager. This was when he made his serious attempt to kill me :) The two of us (a number of people this weekend suggested that the two of us should be kept apart as we egg one another on to bigger and better things) drank, according to my reckoning, over the course of this one day: A bottle of vodka (mine)

Bagpuss: Umm...actually it was barbecue lighter fluid
Nine bottles of red wine (mine and Krager's)
Bagpuss: What? I thought on general principles you were only dinking wine you could scrounge :)
Two bottles of rose wine (Itagne's :-)
Two bottles of white wine (one ours, one stolen?)
Twelve cans of various beers (Itagne's, Norkan's, mine)
Some of Ce's Blossom Hill -- absolutely gorgeous
Two cans of lager (not sure where they came from :-)
Some Archers (!)
Kamion: Ye gods. I knew you'd been drinking a lot, but not that much. You also had a bottle of my beer, for the record ... I managed to get through a fair amount that day, given that I was still drunk when I got back home on Monday.
Aquarius: And we had some weird blue things belonging to Krager, which I'd forgotten about.
When the accident happened, the police breathalysed me. Bit worried for a bit, there, but it came up clear, so that's OK....
Kamion: I have to admit I was wondering about that. Good stuff ...
Cho-Hag: Blue pills?
Krager, you mean you brought *those* to tEC2? Rather optimistic, aren't you?
Kamion: *choke* Don't *do* that to me when I'm at work :)
It took me several seconds to get that. It's obviously been too long since tEC2, 'cos I'm not automatically thinking in innuendoes any more!
Krager:The blue stuff was Essence of Orb, hey I thought it was appropriate :) Oh what have I done, I said yes to aq staying with me for a week, oh dear /me starts looking for new job
Aquarion: The best bit was watching Krager pissed out of his skull, trying to paint Aq1, simmerly inebriated.

The day passes with lots of drinking.

Krager:Yup
Zubrette: And a bit of a BBQ. I managed to fall asleep and miss my hubby visiting (oops!) as well as all of the clearing away of pots and rubbish (thanks Gaja and Dave :) ) I told you those Cumberland sausage slice things would be a success.
Aquarius: <fx: guilty look> Sorry, forgot to mention the barbecue, which was a remarkable success despite no-one letting me eat any of their crisps. The sausage slice things were remarkably nice.

Sunday evening was the best of the weekend; drank a bit more, went for a walk (which was nice), had some chats.

Zubrette: Yes, when I woke up I had a lovely time.
I was treated to a new game unvented by Baggy and Itagne which involved pointing at me everytime you said the word 'bitch'.
Tres amusement ... :P
That night we played "Person most likely to ..." and I am now the proud owner of a piece of paper handed to me by Senji as the person he would most like to dominate ... :)
Oh, and I am the person most likely to hog the duvet.
Krager:Sang drunkenly and told stories

Monday morning: a day of chaos, goodbyes and hugs. Get up, record radio interview, get packed, tidy up hostel, suffer abuse from American cleaner woman, give Helen bunch of flowers,

Zubrette: Thank you.
They were and still are beautiful.
No-one has ever given me exotic flowers before :)
The orchids are stunning!
try not to be too sad as people go away, get hugged, get hugged again, wave goodbye sadly, drive home and flip car.
Zubrette: I load up the car with far too many people and drop Lisa, Aq2 and Kam off at Northampton station, before entertaining the Bagster for the rest of the day. never have my wallpaper borders been put through so much quality testing :)
Krager:I missed the long goodbyes and stuff due to been in the shower...

That about covers it all. A big thankyou goes out to Helen, without whom none of it would have happened, Dave for doing the t-shirts (which were excellent), Ce' for sorting out the CDs/videos and showing me new things to do with nails, Simon N for doing the quiz (wait until you see the picture of the *real* Happy Bunny ;-)

Bagpuss: Big thanks to Aq as well...who actually did do some of the work (even if he tried to hide the fact)
Zubrette: Unfortunately it has to be said that Aq did actually do a fair bit of work organising tEC - you should hire him for the next one :P
Thank you to everyone who came and made it lots and lots of fun - and for not complaining too much or too loudly about the food :)
Krager:Thanks to everyone, organisor or not, and it would seem I volounteered to do tECIV, which I am aiming for November/December 2000 (SNOW!!!!!) in a nice wee village I know in The Lochaber region (where the Axes come from), nice hostel, next door to pub and the railway stop is about 5 minutes walk, much more interesting landscape (in the shadow of Ben Nevis), good mobile phone coverage (those sad gits with mobiles at Badby know what I mean), and best of all it is in Scotland :) Any other ideas mail me
Ok other things. Got back to London and went to see a film with Ce', Urgy and Calaador, while waiting for a decision to be made I espied a gentleman interfering with himself by a tree (note in Leicester Square at the time several thousand ppl where in evidence), I pointed this out to Ce' who was a wee bit shocked :) (And you wonder why I think the english are weird ;¬)
Well its back to work, catching up on all the stuff I missed and getting very stressed out at the mo, so any offers of a new job are welcome, preferably highly paid with nothing to do... or failing that how about a mini meet next weekend, my place, drunken frenzy?

See you all next year....

Zubrette: Not if we see you first :)
Castellan: I will darn well get to tEC3 if I have to take 4 weeks off and bloomin' well walk !! :-)
Aquarius: You will be there because I am going to *drag* you there by your hair :)
Kam threatened to drag you by your nuts, so think yourself lucky
Dallan: At least you *could* walk...if you were completely insane. Maybe there'll be a meet on *this* side of the pond that I could get to... <sigh>
Kamion:Definitely. Aq has been repeatedly nagging me to look into holding tEC3 somewhere near Cambridge. I promise [2] to at least see whether this is possible when I get back in October. I can't guarantee anything, mind ... and somebody will still need to do the food. :)

ObPathetic: You're all lovely, lovely people. :) I had the best weekend I've had in ages; I got to crack bad jokes pretty much continuously for hours, which can't be bad ;), I got to drink a lot of other people's alcohol, and I got to just sit and chat with people for ages. Anybody who feels like going to a meet but hasn't yet, *do it* - it's absolutely worth it.

Polgara:It was *fantastic* I had a great time, and I'm definitely coming for the next one. If only to listen to Hettar and Dom snore in unison again! :)
Kamion: Cool :)
Any votes for dates? (I know it's early, but hostels need to be booked well in advance ...) Taiba was asking about potentially January. Is six months too early, i.e. are people likely to be still bankrupt after this one? ;)
Khendon: Next Weekend?
Leia: March would be better, yeah.

Let's try and make tEC3 March at the latest - and any of you who are in London over the summer, drop me a mail and we'll try and organize something. :).

Aquarius

-- No sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked, but they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed; no sooner sighed, but they asked one another the reason -- Shakespeare

[1] Bad move this.... [Back]
[2] - I swear it's true! :) [Back]
[3] the tECII organisational cabal. tin-other-afe-cabal, obviously [Back]
[4] Not *that*, you lot, the *tape* ;)[Back]