Last week, I was left an odd message on one of my Entries. It was an article I wrote over a year ago about a walk along the coast path, and the message simply read:

Subject:The Ship, Cockwood...
...does a great curry on a Tuesday night.

Now that might not sound odd, but Cockwood isn't a place you could stumble on by mistake. I knew the writer of the message well; he's a regular player of Fantasy Krikkit, a recipient of my Christmas CD and someone who I've even had proper post from. Seeing as he lives in Australia, he'd either made a very long journey in the name of research, which seemed unlikely given the brevity of the message, or he takes great pleasure in Googling very obscure strings. Further messages established that he was planning to visit the Newton Abbot beerfest, which pushed me towards the former - though it seemed just as likely that he was still having a weird time on Google.

I called his bluff. I offered to meet him for a pint.

And so it was that at 1pm Lainey and I found ourselves sitting outside the Ship Inn in Cockwood, waiting for Trout Montague to join us. Most people would wear a h2g2 T-shirt or a pink carnation or something, but I'd freshly shaved my head to mark me out in the crowd. I hoped there wasn't a skinhead convention on. It worked, though - Trout picked us out immediately, partly because there was no-one else there, and we grabbed beer and got a seat in the beer garden.

It turned out that it was the first time Trout's real and online lives had collided, and this took the pressure off considerably. If I came across as a nutter, that would have been expected in a way, so as long as I wasn't one it would be a bonus for Trout. Even so, it was fairly brave of the fella to appear in a tiny Devon village to meet a virtual stranger.

Sad circumstances had brought Trout to the county. His mother had died, and he'd made the long trip over from Australia, alone, to support his stepfather. We left the subject rather quickly, in fact, but it was interesting to realise just how global h2g2 is; that you could be almost anywhere in the English-speaking word, and there's a Researcher around somewhere.

The beer was good - too good, if anything, with Tribute, Doom, Timmy Taylor and Butcombe all on draught - and the afternoon fairly raced away. Trout was generous enough to buy us lunch, and we shared a remarkable number of common interests. If I've got someone to talk wildlife, cricket and travelling with, I'm normally fairly set. And there's nothing quite like being sat outside a Devon pub on a warm spring afternoon, whiling away the hours with a few warm beers. I do get a bit carried away under such circumstances. We stayed at least a couple of hours longer than we'd planned to, almost arranged to have our wedding in Australia instead of The Gambia and probably did arrange to drive a camper van to Australia for a return Meet. Trout, for his part, made a note to take our tradition of drinking a toast to Arthur Perkins - a legendary London hippy - back to Australia with him.

Late in the afternoon, some of Trout's family joined us; partly I suspect to check he was still alive after meeting the stranger from the Internet. Generosity clearly runs deep in the Montague family, and it seemed rude not to stay for another pint. Even so, it was time to go; we stopped for an Official Meet Photograph, and headed for home.

So, anyone up for the h2g2 Spring Queensland Meet in 2009?

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Skankyrich

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