P.S. This is a first draft, with no pretty pictures or pretty grammar. I'll tidy it all up when I get back from "that London".
I'm going to London, but I'm not sure whether it's a business trip or pleasure trip. It's probably a little bit of the former, some of the latter and also a fair chunk of the old self-discovery flung in there as well. Or, to put it another way, it's a "let's do something really baffling just for the heck of it and then see what happens". But there'll hopefully be a blog entry that'll follow, inspired by the latter, as part of this trip involves the somewhat romantic notion of the flashmob. You remember the flashmob, don't you? It was a Noughties thing. The decade that's just been and gone. Hence, now that the Noughties is no more, the wonderment of the flashmob has been tempered somewhat and what we have in it's place is the far more mundane "flashpub". Or "guzzlemob".
This "flashpub" was dreamt up in a combination of inspiration and boredom by Ian Martin, one of the erstwhile scribes of "The Thick Of It". He's perhaps mainly famous for his profanity-imbued kisses upon the scripts, hence his unofficial job title of "swearing consultant". Part of the inspiration is because there's an awful lot of tittle-tattle on Twitter, but not an awful lot of physical movement apart from the punching and tapping of keyboards. How about, he suggests, getting a lot of the tittle-tattle-Twitterers away from the virtual world and get them interacting in the 3D real world of a drinking establishment? In that way, it's very possible that as well as swapping fun anecdotes and the usual Twitter tidbits, we do it in the luxury of getting increasingly inebriated in each others' company. In fact, it's almost a nostalgic throwback to the time when people used to meet up in the pub for a drink and a chat anyway, before the real world became full of muggers and murderers and we all decided to hide at home, playing with our machines.
Anyway, here's the plan.
- Arrive at Stansted airport at approximately half-eleven in the morning.
- Travel to my hotel and arrive at half twelve - it's the 4 star hotel at 1 Kings Cross. It's got a sauna. And a swimming pool. Although it's maybe doubtful that I'll use either. Except as a possible hangover cure. Oh, slash that, yup, I'll definitely be using them.
- Grab a bit of lunch. First appointment of the day, meeting a charming BBC friend of mine.
- It'll now be about 2.15pm. Dump my stuff in hotel room and then head down the road toward Dean Street, near Old Compton Road. Destination? The Crown and Two Chairmen.
- En route, also meet my second appointment. She's a fellow tweeter (RoxanneLaWin), blogger and raconteur. And Goth. We'll get along like the virtual Siamese twins we've found ourselves to be. And if we don't get along, I've been reliably informed that gin will help us through.
- At about 3.15-3.30pm, meet a (probably sozzled) Ian Martin. Also likely to meet a (almost certainly sozzled) Caitlin Moran. I suspect she's another one who'll write about this flashpub event. The main difference between her writing about it and me writing about it? She gets paid by The Times to do it.
- Mingle expertly with a large number of tweeters. In the real world, no less. This is the bit that should go relatively smoothly. We're all interested in the same things, natter about the same stuff online and, in the real world, are not limited by 140 characters per breath.
- Probably eat a donner kebab at about half-seven. The level of inebriation will be in direct correlation to the amount of kebab I eat, so hopefully it'll just be an eighth of one, as I'll be slightly merry. If I actually finish an entire donner kebab, we're talking about sending me back to the hotel in a Cockney Cab service before I pass out of alcohol poisoning.
- 8pm. Depending on how rowdy Mr Martin is, this'll either be a pub conversation that'll involve Tony Blair at the Chilcot Iraq war inquiry or it will involve him shouting abuse at Vinnie Jones on "Celebrity Big Brother" screened on a pub telly (he's a Lady Sovereign fan, you see).
- About midnight. End up in my hotel room with the ceiling spinning.
- Wake up. Have a sauna. Have a croissant. Leave London.
I mention this plan in some detail because, if I put this on a public blog and I then get killed, there will be a forensic trail. For example, I could get killed by serial killer tweeters. Or, alternatively (and more likely), I land in London when the terror alert is at the "severe level" and Tony Blair is in full terrorist target sights at the Chilcot inquiry. In the resultant explosion, police won't need to check dental records of the charred figure about to bite a mouthful of donner kebab in The Crown and Two Chairmen. Oh dear, I've just had a thought. To think that my final few moments could be during a Noughties flashback flashmob in the company of a proud swearing consultant, a drunk Times journalist and a load of tweeters in sudden close physical proximity.