In 1998 I went to London with some friends. It was my first time away from home on my own. It was over a July weekend and we were there for a sci-fi Convention. The con was to be my first in London, it would not be my last. It was Wolf 359: The Alliance. At the time duty free was still available in the UK and there was about 10 of us travelling from Dublin. It is safe to see that we used our duty free allowance. I had some vodka and some rum I believe. We were in quite a posh hotel in Heathrow where the convention was on. The Friday night we got quite drunk. Let me tell you how drunk. We all got into one room to do the drinking (as you do) and we did just that. I have a few memories of that night. I remember one person’s first experience with tequila. I remember drinking an entire bottle of vodka and I think I had an entire bottle of rum. I also had some of that tequila.
I remember us running down the corridors late at night very drunk with a bottle of tequila knocking on lots of doors. I remember we slowed to a walk as we saw the con organiser walking towards us and walked past him with a chorus of ‘Hi Bryan’. The morning after he would comment that one thing he really liked about us was that we were polite drunks. As soon as he was gone we of course continued with the running. Among other things which occurred that night was so much ringing of room doorbells and prank calls that the power was taken out on one floor. I do remember that despite being blamed for much of this, I made no prank calls and knocked on no doors that night. There was also a fire alarm which I also take no responsibility for. I did not set it off.
So there we were running down corridors swigging tequila. Well, give or take a couple of very vague flashes my next memory getting off a plane in Dublin airport three days later. I have a few very rough memories and I didn’t for quite a while. They only came back to me talking to someone about this a while ago. Anything else I just have to shrug at.
It was an awesome weekend.
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I’m now reading A Clockwork Orange. The nedstat speak is getting to me and slowing my reading down a lot. It’s only 140 pages and 90 minutes total on the bus today should have gotten me through at least 100 of that. It was more like 40, but I guess I wasn’t trying all that hard.
Instant live CDs of a concert?
About time. I would have paid for something like this for many concerts I have been to.