I didn’t know I could go to the B4L meetup until about 1530 on Thursday, and jumped onto a train after hurriedly packing a bag. A few minutes later I realised I’d forgotten to print out the details of the venue. My Nokia 7610’s web browser isn’t up to much and kept crashing, but after three attempts I finally managed to find the postcode at the B4L site. I plugged that into the surprisingly useful Google Maps for Mobile application, which downloaded a street-map of the area and showed the nearest tube stations. I also had the iPod London Tube maps loaded, so checked which line I had to use. This all took about ten minutes, so isn’t much good if you’re in a hurry, but I was quite impressed it was all possible.

I was sitting on the Tube when somebody sat down opposite. I thought I vaguely recognised them from a blog photo, but wasn’t sure. I then started wondering who else I might recognise from photos, and promply stopped concentrating and missed my stop. I’m obviously getting comfortable travelling around London - that’s never happened before! I made it to the venue without further mishap, thankfully

Clockwise from the lamp - Andrew (hidden), Tom, Kerron, Baby Washington, unknown (can’t remember his name - am a bad person), Paul and Andrew. Luke was there too, but left before I took the picture.

It was a fun evening. Conversation ranged from what next for B4L to Doctor Who to whether we’d require payment if we were King of Canada (it was decided that we’d forego a salary if we could declare such things as ‘everybody must wear a red hat’-day). As always my brain wants to overanalyse it and obsess over every time I said something stupid (I seem to remember making up and using the word ‘deradioactify’, for example), but I’m trying not to. I was maybe a little quiet, but was comfortable and had a good time. Definitely glad I was able to go - they’re a great bunch of people.

Other write-ups here and here.