A Pickled Post-Mortem...

Why it wasn’t that great: The sun shone on my face till I was a little bit red-boiled-looking (like a newborn baby, and only marginally less grumpy), felt ready to drop asleep any second and I was absolutely starving for maybe about an hour. Also, at times, I felt like I had all the charisma and intelligence of a potted plant.

Why it wasn’t half bad: I got less shy with time (comme d’habitude!), met some very friendly and interesting people and just generally TOOK A CHANCE FOR ONCE. Yay.

What am I on about?

Yesterday, that is to say, Saturday 2^nd August 2008, I went to my first-ever Pickled Politics meet-up. This may have seemed a fatal mistake if I had even dreamed that the majority (i.e. everyone apart from me and two others) would be seasoned writers/bloggers. I spent a lot of time just listening and not saying anything much for a good while at first (which makes a change, I have to admit – I’ve got a bit sick of being with people who expect me to do all the talking all the time).

I’m going to use either a person’s real name or their online name, so as to respect people’s privacy – this may be the same for some people, as it is for me (on PP, anyway). I was the youngest there, which didn’t surprise me, but I wasn’t made to feel it too much. Once Sunny arrived, things seemed to get a fair bit more relaxed, probably because he was the organiser of the event and also because he ushered in the arrival of at least three other people. After that, I don’t think anyone else was really expected, so y’know... it all just kicked off.

I wish I had tried a bit harder to talk to Sid and Sonia, but... I suppose things don’t always go how you'd like. It was quite fun talking about music and Queen Mary with Gege, and really interesting talking a whole load of assorted breeze with Nyrone. There was the revelation that MaidMarian may be a friend of Sunny’s, the semi-revelation that Avi Cohen is either a self-loathing Jew or a Muslim in disguise (I figured something like that, but I can never read his posts without my brain shutting down) and the non-surprise that Sunny wants to move into politics proper, as opposed to being ‘just’ a commentator. Sunny seemed rather chilled for someone who’s always working (apparently :-P), Sonia was tiny and elegant (no offense intended, I just thought you’d be really tall for some reason!), Nesrine Malik was regal, Nyrone was kind, Sid was dressed cool (his friend seemed cool too, but I didn’t really talk to him for some reason, probably hunger) and Rumbold was... a shock. He was a lot younger than I expected, and quite charming (for a libertarian, hur hur). The only person who I was really scared of (at first) was Tom from Boriswatch, because he REALLY knew his stuff and he speaks really fast. I tried to make small talk with him, and he must have thought I was simple (almost everything he said dived right over my head and into the sunny sky).

I am awarding myself brownie points for sharing my paltry pretzel remnants out, and also for speaking up when I was about to pass out from hunger. I spent the length of a debate between Sunny, Sonia and Sid growing gradually more catatonic, until I found myself wondering what the hell I was still doing upright (Thank you M&S, for restoringmy sanity on the Tube home). There were a few disappointments. Firstly, that there was not that much real non-politics discussion – but I suppose that wasn’t much of a surprise given that it was a meeting of political bloggers, who are about as hardcore as you can get (outside of politicians) I suppose. Secondly, that no-one seemed to have heard of The Wire. WTF, mate?! That almost made me lose a bit of respect for them! Third and finally, I was disappointed with myself for not responding to people’s questions better. I never got to explain fully what I meant by ‘politics and the game.’ That’s what I think I’m going to do in my next post. I will also be dealing with trolls, as I found the NY Times article on that particular topic very interesting. Adieu for now.

This post was brought to you by Freda Payne's Unhooked Generation.