It’s the annual village raft race this afternoon. In a slight fit of insanity I agreed to run half of the safety cover for it. Of course, that means the day is now hot and sunny, perfect climbing weather - I even have a place to go climbing that has 26 short climbs that I want to do. It’s really funny reading descriptions for six metre climbs when you’re used to climbing 60-70m multipitch routes. Reading things like “the climb starts out on hard ground, getting progressively easier towards the top” makes sense on a long climb. On a short climb I can probably reach over the ‘hard’ bits. I’m trying to contact Angus, which isn’t so simple since the bugger keeps turning his phone off. If I can ever get through to him I’ll try and go climbing tomorrow.

Anyway, the raft race could be funny. Drunken people on home-made rafts… I’ll get lots of practice at pulling people out the water anyway. I’m taking my camera.

Yesterday I got back from the Llamasoft London thing. It was excellent fun, meeting up with loads of people I’ve spoken to on IRC and the forum (well, not so much “spoken”, more “spammed the crap out of” Here is my somewhat hazy recall of what happened…

It all started on Friday around eleven when I suddenly realised I needed to pack my bag and was due at the station for the half twelve train. Remembering to put the memory card back in my camera I stuffed some random underwear into a bag and was carted off to the station by my parents. Manchester Piccadilly is being done up and it looks really good now, and finding the right platform is insanely easy. I found the right platform, and my train was waiting on it. With half an hour to spare, I went to the bog to empty myself, then wandered to the train.

After spending 10 minutes walking the full-length of the train I realised my ticket had the carriage on it too, and I wedged myself into my seat, cleverly folding my legs up behind my ears.

The journey down was utterly boring and the air conditioning was broken. I also couldn’t buy anything to eat as I’d forgotten to bring some real money (plus I was having a curry when I got to London). We arrived in Euston a mere 3/4 of an hour late, baked to a crisp, and bored out of our tiny minds.

I wandered off the train, up the platform and thought “hang about, where do I go now?”. Pulled out a tiny map I had and attempted to read it. It made no sense so I took a random exit out the station and hoped for the best. About 10 minutes later I realised I was walking in the totally opposite direction and turned round Eventually I found the St Pancras YHA and checked in, and double-checked it would let me in early in the morning (something that would prove very useful later on).

I claimed my bed and “unpacked”, then headed off to Waterloo to meet the others. I bought a tube ticket and managed to bed it in such a way the machines would have a fit when I inserted it. Got off at Waterloo and again wandered the wrong way out the station, doing a nice circuit around the railway bridge After finding the right pub I met up with several bodies that introduced themselves. Meeting people form the forum would turn out to be fun as you had to mentally match their nickname to their real name to their face and their avatar

After empting a pint of Guinness into myself (Guinness on an empty stomach… I did that the last time I arrived at Euston too, and it had a similar effect in that the world went a bit wibbly and I felt weird) Yak arrived along with a few others. Decided food was good, we all went off in search of a curryhouse. There was one about 100yds down the road from the pub! There was 18 of us and we managed to fill the top half of the place Much curry eating and talking ensued until we left to go back to the pub.

Pubs in London are weird… they shut and kick you out at 11. After being booted out the pub we dispersed and, having nothing much to do, invaded Yak’s tiny hotel room. How we managed to get 18 of us in that room is beyond me, but we did. At around 2am I decided it would be wise to go to bed - a bed that was across the other side of London, with a shut tube system. Applying the law of ignorance, I went outside and stood around waiting for a Taxi to appear. Several dodgy looking people claimed to be taxis, but mummy told me not to get into cars with strange men, so I pretended to be waiting for a bus Eventually a real Taxi arrived and (after giving vague directions) I was transported off to the YHA at warp factor 9 (it was probably just the beer and curry reacting, but it felt like he was doing 90 down the roads). I was dropped off at the end of Euston road and ambled up to the YHA (avoiding the drunk people threatening to kill each other).

The next day I came round at half seven, showered until my brain had realised I was awake, had some food, then went to meet everyone at Waterloo again.

Today was the day to visit the Game On exhibiton, which was excellent, although it could have done with some sort of order instead of just being three rooms full of games to play on. Seeing a real, live Robotron machine was very cool, even though it didn’t work. There was an interesting little video playing about the history of the games, and a few loud shouts went up when several Llamasoft games were shown It also had the bloke who wrote Manic Miner talking on it… he’s definately not on this planet, infact I don’t think he’s in our Universe!

After Game On we showed how disorganised groups of men are by spending too long working out where to eat some dinner After refuelling, we went off to the very expensive Odeon in Leicester Square to watch Minority Report, which is an interesting film with some good bits in it and worth watching. Somehow a timewarp happened because when we came out it was half seven. More tubular fun ensued and we were transported back to Waterloo in time for another curry and some more of the funny Southern beer that is flat with no head

The (now) usual kicking-out session at the pub happened again (and this time they resorted to using strong tones of voice to get us to leave!) and people were once again ejected onto the street to mill around like lost sheep. Me, Rik, Harlequin and Yak wandered off to Yak’s room to sit and talk rubbish all night again. I also got to play the new Gridrunner++ version properly and clocked up a very nice 3.5m points - you will hate the Tempest level… It’s just evil. Again night turned into day and I caught a taxi back to the YHA and shutdown for a few hours.

Sunday was a day of much laziness… I was booted at half seven again, but due to a consciousness failure I went back to sleep, coming to finally at 9am. Realising I only had half an hour before they stopped providing free food, I had a shower, fell into my clothes and staggered off to refuel.

Once suitably awake I checked out of the YHA, locking my bag in a locker to keep them safe, and ambled off to the station to go and meet the remaining survivors. Me, Yak, Partzzz, Rik and Dreadz (I know you all have real names, but I can’t remember them congregated in a coffe place at the station and consumed caffienated drinks until we could cope with being awake. Having not a lot to do, we were going to find a pub and watch the GP until it was train time. Only pubs don’t open until 12, so we killed time looking for a public toilet and eating dodgy hotdogs from foreign people by the Eye.

I had another curry for dinner (although it wasn’t a patch on the ones I had previously, all runny and tasting too much like tomato sauce for my liking), and discovered the pinball machine in the Hole in the Wall had gone strange and given me three credits for the price of one!

Eventually it was going home time and we all parted, I collected my bag from the YHA, took some pictures of the British Library and went to sit on the floor of Euston station until my train arrived (three of them went before I could get on mine! Think I’ll get an open return next time). This train had working air-con and was only ten minutes late! I also had a free seat next to me. Four hours later I was home feeling rather knackered.

I have taken some photos, and once I’ve worked out how to get them online (filled my webspace!) I’ll provide a link.

http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1268