Manchester: Solnushka
Created | Updated Mar 11, 2012
You hate travelling. You may have mentioned this before. You cope with this by over-planning. Which usually makes things far more complicated than they need to be, adding to the stress levels. Your husband B has very little truck with this and keeps dragging you off on impromptu little journeys.
Thing is, he's been doing this for so long that he has you almost convinced. So there you were for months, havering about whether to go to the Manchester meet, and inventing increasingly complicated childcare cum travel arrangements, but really thinking that it would be highly unlikely that you would be going anywhere near your old alma mater.
But the Saturday dawned lovely, and you thought sod this for a game of tennis, laid a couple of changes of clothes, some bottles and nappies, many cardigans and coats, lots of plastic spoons, some squeaky toys, a blanket or two, a baby's sleeping bag, some baby food, some rice cakes, your wrap, the spare pushchair and the charger for your iPhone gently in the boot, and slung the baby in the back seat and away you went.
About Oxford, you remembered just how far Manchester actually is from the cradle of civilisation.
About Birmingham, it started raining. Heavily. You crawled along the motorway at 30mph for a bit and then stopped for lunch.
On returning to the car, the Comet screamed all the way to the outskirts of Manchester.
However, from then on things started to pick up. You found the Museum of Science and Industry without fuss. It smells great. All hot coal and steam and iron. You found Pastey with even less fuss. Pastey found you an umbrella, a number of other researchers, and the pub.1
h2g2 meets are a curious thing. Ben says they are like a big family wedding. And they are, excepting that the family are actually pleased to see each other rather than merely resigned and tend not to do embarrassing dancing. Oh and that researchers say 'so who are you?' and call each other by odd names when they find out, often excitedly. They do drink a lot though. And there are speeches. And some people wear hats, much to the Comet's delight. Especially Tim Stevenson. Quite right; it was a great hat. Although personally you were more taken with Mala's tights. And why not? Your daughter also favours stripes.
Anyway, it was fun. Of course, going anywhere with a baby means that you always have half your brain occupied with that, and that's all you have to say about coming second from bottom in the quiz. Of course, it also meant that you couldn't have more than a sip of one of Pastey's gargleblasters. Given that sip made you cough energetically for a few minutes this was possibly a good thing. You imagine that drinking a whole glass was quite an experience. In fact, you defy anyone to ever better that recipe. The stripes! The profusion of flavours! The olive floating exactly half way up the glass! How cool is that?
It was also wonderful to see so many people there, especially the people who had travelled so far, like Witty Moniker and Happy Nerd. The Comet likes Happy Nerd. Not enough to be held, but she was indiscriminately refusing to budge from your arms so that's nothing. But Happy Nerd has been singing her back to sleep at 3am for months and months and months now, so it was nice to get the rendition in person.
You like Milla. She taught you how to send the Star to sleep by stroking her nose. And Titania is also excellent at baby pacification. They can come round yours anytime.
It was also good to meet BrownFurby, who has been entertaining you lately with 42 themed photos for the upcoming Towelcast (check out her ‘how many researchers does it take to change a lightbulb?’). Likewise, you’ve been hanging out with Bluebottle off and on in the Atelier for years, and so putting a face to a name was also really good, if sadly brief due to family commitments. Likewise, Magwitch. And you haven’t seen Candi for years, as evidenced by the age of her son. You remember him being born and there he was, five years old and almost (almost) as cute as your own son. You only found Dr Anthea at the last minute, although your shriek of joy when you did finally catch up with her was probably a bit off putting. Icotan got much the same treatment. ‘I know who you are!’ you exclaimed, and then were too embarrassed to add what you meant which was, ‘You’re the guy who starts such interesting Ask threads!’ Still, he took it well.
You always find it mildly amusing that at the meets you end up chatting to people who online you have only ever had minimal contact with. But then that is what gets you out of your h2g2 niche. This time you’ve been rifling through Spimcoot and the_jon_m’s back catalogues since you came back and very rewarding that has proved. On the other hand there are people whose names you have been seeing off and on for years, like TriG and Menthol Pigeon and Superfrenchie and J'au-amne and Pegasus and Sho. You smiled benevolently at them and lurked their conversations in much the same way you do on site. It’s good to preserve some continuity.
And of course there were your old friends. Ben and Z and Minichessemouse should really should not live at the other end of the country to you in your opinion but at least you could meet them half way this time, and you are secretly quite smug that you went to Phil and MC’s stamping ground after they have made the effort to come to yours for a number of previous meets, although either way it’s really not often enough. A meet wouldn’t be the same without Bald Bloke, MMF, Titania and Bel, so it was a good thing that the three of them had travelled up (in the case of BB and MMF) and over (Ti and Bel).
But new comrades in arms were out in force too! Robbie Stamp made the journey, as did Brian and Aly Larholm and their delightful daughter, and it amazes you that this is only the second and third times respectively you have met in person. Mr 603 is, as promised, very very tall (so is HonestIago). Tavaron, whose artistic talents you worship, came! And Lil, who you know much better these days, despite having attended a number of meets together in the past. It was she, in fact, who reminded you that at the last one you were only two weeks away from your due date last time. You don’t remember being quite so whale-like, but with that sort of endorsement there should be no disputing that the Comet has now attended her second meet.
Last but not least (apart from all the people you haven’t mentioned from sheer overexcited absent mindedness probably), seeing Lanzababy again was delightful given how much time you spend online together these days, even if she did jinx your car. Of course, you were in the middle of giving her an impromptu tour of the entirety of Manchester city centre’s one way system (never trust someone who hasn’t set foot in a city for 15 years when they blithely turn off the sat nav), but nevertheless to condemn you to parking problems by prompting you to say, blithely, ‘Oh I never get parking tickets’ was a bit mean. Still you have exorcised her by symbolically banning her from the car, and this seems to have done the trick. Shame about the 40 pounds you now owe Banbury town council though.2 But a very nice Mancunian man came whizzing across Manchester very quickly when you phoned him to say you were locked in the carpark after the meet because you had lost your ticket and were in danger of not being able to make the hotel room your had eventually booked on the strength that you had driven past it on your way into the city earlier.
Which was very comfortable, quiet, en-suite and the cot even had a very jaunty set of clown bedclothes, which didn’t quite come close to the safari theme you endured last time you went to a B and B but was quite cheerful. And with a cooked breakfast thrown in, which was nice for the Comet who savaged toast all over their lovely carpet and mugged at all the other guests quite as if she hadn’t ladled enough charm over all the researchers she could find the night before.
So chalk up another point to your husband’s theory of travel. And for Manchester, Mancunians and for h2g2ers, all well worth the effort. And for the weather, which delivered the sort of nostalgic drenching you were expecting.
And especially to Pastey, for organising it.
2Actually you got off on appeal. they do an amnesty for first offences like leaving the ticket upside down. Hurrah! Ckearly when you perform an exorcism, it really really works.
