Thirty two – London International Meetup

Andy sent me a text message. After meeting Andy at Ken’s Twilight Stroll, Meetup number one, we had been trying to make time to have a beer. He was going to the London International Meetup in Camden and asked whether I wanted to come along. He had asked me on a day when I was going to ‘do a random’ anyway.

I was in a dilemma.  Should I go?  Would this be breaking my randomness rules? I then remembered a lesson from my Improv class: it is okay to break rules as long as you go back to them afterwards. Besides, meeting Andy on the first ever event was pretty random in its own right: this meant that his invitation counted; I was going.

I left the office, crossed the road to a restaurant for a bite to eat, and then crossed another road to the Holiday Inn hotel, the same venue where Caitlin Tindle had held her money making neuro-linguistic programming session. The instructions I had received were to look out for a chap called Mike who was wearing a bright orange t-shirt.

Mike turned out to be a quietly spoken Englishman who used to work in the city. He had given up the city life a few years earlier to run a website, and effectively became self-employed. I asked him about the group: it was ten years old. Mike had taken it over from someone who was (apparently) using the group to spread the word of Jesus. The group was no longer extolling the virtues in believing the good work of the Lord, instead it had become a group to meet people from different parts of the world, and generally have a nice time. A surprise was that the group had over ten thousand members. It wasn’t just the oldest group I had been to, it was also the biggest.

I found a table and introduced myself to some members. I met Greg, a Canadian who had been in London for fifteen years and Christine who was from Spain who worked at a ping-pong themed restaurant; Christine had come with her friend Laura, who was a Spanish teacher. There was also Massimo from Italy who wrote financial software. My half-German half-Greek friend Andy was nowhere to be seen.

I looked around. There were about twenty people sitting on sofas chatting. Mike had secured a whole mezzanine level for the group and had even managed to get a sign organised. Mike said that he had been moving away from his finance and website stuff and was enjoying doing some ‘guiding’. Guiding, he explained, meant helping to move groups of people from one place to another. He sorted out airport transfers for groups of visitors from China, and has done some of his own walking tours around London. It was work that he obviously enjoyed.

‘I recognise you from, is it the business networking event?’ I introduced myself to a smartly dressed middle aged South Indian chap called James.

‘Was that the event at Paul?’ he asked, referring to a restaurant. I shook my head. ‘Was it the one in Chancery Lane?’ I again shook my head. He couldn’t quite remember me, but I remembered him. James was a commodity trader who worked from home. We had chatted about technology stuff and computer programming languages that were currently in fashion amongst finance people.

‘Andy!’ My mate had finally arrived. We gave each other a man hug.

‘How you doing, man?’

‘Good! Thanks for inviting me’. I introduced Andy to a bunch of people I had never met before. Despite being a regular at this group, I don’t think he knew them either.

We quickly caught up. What I really like about Andy is his humour and his honesty; he loves playing with language, making jokes from nothing. As soon as you’ve finished laughing at one joke, he’s onto another. Sometimes they’re a hit, other times they’re forgivably obnoxious, but mostly they’re hilarious.

We both got chatting to an Italian woman called Isabella who had been in London for only two weeks. I told her about a bilingual comedy night: half of the performers spoke English, and half the performers spoke Italian; the audience (who were mostly Italian), could understand both sets of performances. Isabella was struggling to understand the concept. I showed her an advert of the event on my phone. She took a photograph of my phone (which was showing the advert) with her phone, and said she would check it out.

After two hours, Mike said it was time to go to a pub. He gently rounded everyone up and persuaded everyone to accompany him onto the mean streets of Camden. As we left the hotel to discover Camden, an intoxicated tattooed and body pierced French girl staggered past the group and threw herself roughly in the direction of the elevator.

‘Alternative! I hate alternative!’ Andy was on one of his rants. ‘I don’t get all this alternative stuff! You can become so alternative that you become exactly like everyone else who is also trying to be alternative. What do you really have to do to become alternative these days?!’

Mike escorted us down a road called the Parkway which eventually leads to Regents Park and London Zoo. As we walked, I remembered the madness of the dance walking group. We also passed the café where the silent writing took place.

I suddenly realised I now had my own Meetup history; a network of secret interlinked events that randomness was helping me to uncover, all connected by place and time. By being invited to this event by Andy and recognising James, these events were now becoming connected to each other in terms of people.

I started to wonder whether James, like me, was trying to discover something new; attempting to find meaning amongst all these different people, places and groups. I also wondered why Andy and I went to that first event, which took place not too far from the road that we were walking down. Perhaps there was no explanation. Perhaps it was a simple as that we were two bored divorced technology infused souls who had nothing better to do than to walk around a park with strangers on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

We ended up at a pub called The Spread Eagle. It was quiet; Mike had chosen well. We bought more beers and continued to chat. Andy ranted some more, this time about how he hated people who used Latin in every day conversations. (I don’t think I’ve ever heard people use Latin in every day conversations, but that didn’t matter)  We sat next to a chap from Rome, a guy called Hakim who was studying information technology at college, an English guy called Alan, a Japanese girl and another Italian chap called Massimo.

We drank and talked until last orders.