Twenty five – London Country, Blues and Folk Gigs

‘Haven’t you got to go do your random thing tonight?’ asked my colleague Debbie, just as we were paying for our meal. Debbie seemed to be enjoying regular updates about all the crazy nonsense I was getting up to.

‘What have you got planned?’

I had chosen an event before we sat down at the restaurant by applying the half hour rule once I had estimated how long it would take us to eat and chat.

‘A country music night in Islington’.

I don’t like American country music. I don’t like the twanging of steel guitars, the wacky clothing (which invariably includes a cowboy hat), and lyrics about open plains. The reason why I struggle with country and western music is the same reason why I struggle to understand cowboy films; I find it difficult to relate to them: I’m a city boy.

This said, I love the blues. I ‘get’ blues in a way that I don’t ‘get’ happy chirpy country music about horses and girls that live in the next village. The more miserable a blues song is, the more I like it. My ideal blues song would begin with a story about how my wife left me, taking the kids, how I then lost my job, how my house burnt down because of smoking a cigarette whilst I was drunk on whisky, how I then gambled all my money away at a casino in New Orleans, and then how I got arrested after trying to steal a gun to shoot myself. I want a blues singer to end up crying on stage, and then end by saying, ‘if you thing that’s bad… stick around for my next song’.

The gig was in a pub in Islington. I figured the easiest way would be to take an Overground train from Camden to Highbury and walk, but it turned out to be a circuitous route. This journey was yet another of those mild adventures that would tell me a little more about the London transport network. I walked past busy high street shops, and onto a quieter street that were lined by imposing Georgian terraces, separated from the road by formal iron railings; houses owned by well-to-do professionals. Within minutes I rediscovered a pub where I once had a disastrous date with a medical doctor, and went around a corner and found the pub, which I remember from a night out about a year earlier.

I ordered a pint, found a table and checked my phone. Five people (including myself) had signed up for this event. I was worried about whether I would be able to find anybody; the smaller the meetup, the more difficult they are to find people. I left a quick message announcing that ‘I am here’. When I was just about to close my phone I saw a message sent by the organiser, Mark. Mark had written a note saying that he had also arrived. He also said that he was wearing a black and white two tone jersey. I looked around.

‘Excuse me, are you Mark?’ I asked the man who was sitting on the next table. Mark looked up, smiled, and offered his hand. I had found the host of the event.

Mark turned out to live in a town twenty miles outside of London, and he had driven down after work to come to this gig. Mark was really easy to talk to. It turned out that Mark had been married for over thirty years and had two kids. Although he was over fifty, he was sporting a full head of hair that was only beginning to show the odd spec of grey. I was jealous. I was ten years younger than Mark, I have hardly any hair, and what little I have has gone shockingly grey. Mark’s ‘thing’ was going to music gigs, which he did regularly. His great love, I was told, was Bruce Springsteen.

Mark looked at his watch, and then over his shoulder. ‘They’ve opened the doors. We should go in’.

Mark wandered straight into the performance room but I had to buy a ticket. ‘You’ve got the last one’, the attendant said, recording my purchase as a tally mark. My ‘ticket’, it turned out, was a heart shape that was roughly doodled onto my wrist with a black pen. I could see sheets of paper with names of people who had already paid for their tickets. It was starting to occur to me that this was a gig of substance; this wasn’t an event that you would just ‘drop into’, but an event that you would deliberately seek out.

The performance room was intimate and crowded; it was standing room only. There was a wide stage which was surrounded by blood red pleated curtains that ran from ceiling to floor. To the right of the stage there was a technician who controlled a mixing desk for the sound and the lighting.

‘Tina! How are you doing?’

Out of the five people on the Meetup list, I recognised the names of two of them. One of those was an acquaintance of mine called Tina. Tina, who was in her early sixties, had done the same thing that I had done: she wanted to do something on a quiet Tuesday night, so she looked at the Meetup site; the only difference was, of course, that her choice was a little less random than mine. The second name that I recognised belonged to a chap called Charlie, but by the looks of it, he wasn’t able to make it.

The warm up act was a three piece: a drummer, a lead guitarist, and a rhythm guitarist, who was also the singer. The drummer and lead guitarist both sported voluminous moustaches and checked shirts. The charismatic lead singer wore a blue denim jacket, blue jeans and a cowboy hat. After a few words to the audience, the band started their first song. The rhythm, tone and lilting voice had a country texture, but it was good: the band was tight, and they clearly enjoyed being there. The audience clapped appreciatively.

It suddenly struck me: this wasn’t the country music that I despised. Although there was a cowboy hat, there were no ridiculous costumes; it was all pretty simple and the songs all had a strong flavour of the blues. The lead singer told us that he lived in Nashville, but he was originally from Dallas; he was real deal. For some reason, I was expecting a singer from Norwich. It didn’t cross my mind that I would be paying real money to see some real Americans.

One song took inspiration from gospel music. It contained a chorus that contained the lyrics, ‘the road to Jesus’, which was sung in close harmony by all three musicians. It was a nice song, but it left me worried: were these guys big amongst the Bible belt? Were other songs going to be like this? Had I stumbled into a night of Christian music? Thankfully, I had nothing to fear. A later song had the glorious title: ‘too stoned to cry’, which mentioned cocaine and suggested that ‘Jesus would save me, but that was a lie’: a welcome counterpoint to the harmonies; a touch of acid to neutralise a distant taste of saccharine.

The lead guitarist was awesome. The notes and rhythms enraptured me with the beginnings of misery. Fingers moved up and down the fret board, notes were picked from the blues scale, complementing the rhythm guitar that seemed to be, miraculously, providing the bass, as well as a magnifying accompaniment. Gentle applause had given way to cheers.

After a short interval it was the time for the headline act: it was just a man with a guitar. The room was now filled to capacity with around one hundred and twenty people. It was starting to get hot. Everyone stepped forward to make room for people at the back who were trying to get in.

This second act was very different. There was less strumming, more finger picking; astonishingly fast finger picking. The guitar was tuned and re-tuned for different songs. There was no mention of Jesus, but there was a respectable amount of misery: we were sung stories of lies, about a death of a motorcycle rider, and how a wife left a husband whilst also taking the kids. I loved it.

‘Houston!’ shouted an audience member.

‘I would love to do your request, but I’m all tuned up in a certain way, so I can’t do it right now…’

The guitarist started a new song, and a good proportion of the audience started to clap and cheer. It was one of those moments where you realise that they know things that you don’t know about. Guitar strings were broken, cheesy jokes were told, and Houston was finally played.

‘Okay, this is the final song, and I’m not doing any more, so pretend this is an encore!’ The audience played along and immediately started to cheer for more. The final song was played at a phenomenal speed and with great gusto; it was almost as if the singer, Robert Ellis, was playing more than one guitar at the same time. When the song came to the end, the crowd erupted.

‘That was better than yoga, wasn’t it!’ said Mark, as we shook hands and said goodbye. He had to leave quickly because of his long journey home. I found Tina, and said goodbye to her too. She too was on her way to find her car.

The air outside of the pub was cool; a great contrast to the hot and sticky atmosphere of the pub. It had been a great night. I had seen and heard something I had not expected to see and had thoroughly enjoyed it. I was also very relieved that I had not heard the sound of a steel guitar. I smiled at the thought of ‘the blues’ as I walked towards Angel underground station to catch my tube train towards London Bridge.

Twenty four – Write Together

I had a couple of hours to kill before going to a comedy night; I checked my phone. The next event was called ‘write together’ and was going to take place in a café called Yumchaa, in Camden Town. I knew the street that the café was on, and knew the café, but had never been inside.

Yumchaa turned out to be a former pet shop that was once called Palmers. You only knew it was a tea shop by peering in through the window or noticing the sandwich board that was standing outside. The original shop hoarding was well maintained: it advertised ‘monkeys’ and ‘talking parrots’; clear evidence of a very different past.

I walked into the café and started looking for a man called Robert. Thankfully, he had made it very easy for me: he had put a sign on the table where he was sitting. Robert was a middle aged man who was surrounded by technology: an Apple laptop, an Apple tablet computer, and an iPhone. I shook Robert’s hand and introduced myself. I had seen a couple of these Write Together events before and was intrigued. I asked Robert asked whether it was okay to have a chat with him.

Write Together turned out to be a group that covers different areas of London. It’s a really simple concept: if you’ve got some writing work to do (irrespective of what it is), you head over to a nice place (which usually sells cake), and simply crack on with whatever writing you need to do. There are generally two parts to each Write Together event. The first part is the ‘get together and write stuff on your own’ bit. This then can be followed by a social event, where people get to chat, and perhaps have a meal or drink; it’s entirely up to whoever comes along and who does the hosting.

Robert lived in Camden and was a freelance copy writer and editor. He was also, apparently, trying to write screen play. I immediately understood the attraction of the group. If you’ve got stuff to do and you work at home, you can very easily go potty staring at the same four walls all the time: it’s a way to get a very welcome change of scene. He explained the rules: you can write whatever you want, ‘we’ve had people writing plays, poetry, and we’ve had some singer song writers’, but you must respect everyone’s space and privacy. It’s okay to talk, as long as you don’t disturb the others who are trying to do their stuff.

I fished around in my bag. I had come prepared: a pad of paper and a pen. I put these on the table, and then went to get a pot of tea.

We were soon joined by Ana. Ana taught Spanish at a sixth form college in London, but was also a part time novelist.

‘Have you had anything published?’

‘No, not yet, but I’m working on my second novel. I have it all planned out; I just have to write it now’. Ana’s novel was in Spanish.

David arrived. He was very tall, wore some studious looking spectacles and was impeccably dressed. He said a quiet hello, and sat down at our table.

This quiet time gave me an opportunity to reflect on where all this randomness was taking me. The fundamental questions were: where am I going, and have any of the groups I’ve been to given me any insight into what I would like to be doing for the rest of my life? Put it another way, have I found some stuff that I get really excited and passionate about? I thought of Chris who I met the other night: he seemed to be in a similar space, a space of existential anxiety. This connects to the profound question of: ‘is this it?’ Or, alternatively: ‘is this what it means to be a grown up adult?’, and ‘what else is there from life?’

Going to all these random events has become addictive. I enjoy the thrill of going to new places. I also enjoy the unexpected; the weirder and the more surprising the event, the more I enjoy them. There’s a passing realisation that I’m starting to become a Meetup junkie, but at the same time, I’m also becoming a London junkie too: my eyes are opening wider, and my city is becoming clearer and slightly more understandable – it is becoming less impersonal: the people that I meet are always friendly, approachable and willing to chat.

I never used to do things like this when I was married. Instead, I felt a strong desire to conform, to do the right thing, to have a steady job, to keep my head down and work so that I could try to build a home for a potential family, trying to satiate a desire that I couldn’t really articulate or put my finger on. I wanted to pay down the mortgage as quickly as possible, to create that illusion that is stability and security, fulfilling a masculine version of a nesting impulse.

The end of my ten year marriage was like a rug being pulled from under me, causing me to fall backwards and fracture my skull. In my injured state, many of my dreams seeped away; I quickly realised that I could never have what I was trying to build, and despite so many talks and so much effort, the idea of a joint enterprise, a family, had disappeared in the space of two long torturous days.

One of the hardest questions to ask when you are practically homeless and wandering around with a broken heart is: ‘now what?’ The simple and obvious stop-gap answers include activities such as going travelling, taking evening classes and learning how to ride a motorbike. Other answers that had crossed my mind included changing ones career, home, or even country.

Over the last year I had realised that I needed to find my own identity again.  For the sake of stability and security, I had supressed some of my idiosyncratic whims and fundamental passions.  I now see that when I was a part of a couple, I supressed too much; I placed the success of the marriage above myself. I know this because of a complete sense of being lost and confused.

I looked up from my notepad. David got up from his table and went to have a chat with two strangers. The strangers both spoke English with different accents. I overheard David telling them that he was making a film and asking what their names were and where they were from. I heard one of the visitors saying that she was from Cuba… David was 'on the pull'.

There are some things that I did know: that I’ve got a second chance, to again try to find that place of security, to do that whole ‘nesting’ thing again. But there is another question: do I really want to? Can I really be bothered? Is this really what really matters in life, to my life? In some respects, these thoughts, this lack of a firm direction was just a simple reflection that I was still hurting.

I realised that there was a simpler way to consider my predicament, and this is to just live, and to forget big dreams for a while. Perhaps the best way to be is to try to stop worrying, to enjoy, and let life offer simple nudges towards different directions, towards whatever it is that might one day be important.

In the café, two more people arrived. It was starting to fill up. There were a good number of tourists, happy to be sitting in a civilised place after having endured the commercial chaos of Camden Market.

I got up and asked for some more hot water for my pot of Earl Grey.

Another question I was gently mulling over was the kind of events that I would like to go to or experience. I do enjoy the technology events for the simple reason that they remind me about the reasons why I found technology interesting and fascinating. I then realised that I probably would need to find a pair of football boots and buy a cheap tennis racket from somewhere; I was pretty sure that I’ll have to go to some kind of sporting event at some point.

An hour and a half into the event, I was starting to feel maddeningly bored. I looked around the café once again and cursed my ‘bitter end’ rule. I had drunk two pots of tea, checked my email, written one Facebook status update, added three comments, and liked six stories.

Time had slowed down; I found it difficult to sit still. I realised that I had a great need to socialise and to chat to other people. I looked around.  I noticed Robert was googling books by Malcolm Bradbury and seemed to be listening to an audio book of George Orwell’s 1984 at the same time whilst writing something in a word processor. Ana was leafing through a notepad, and Dave was doing a very good job charming the Cuban woman. I looked at my watch: fifteen minutes to go.

By the time I had walked around the café and said hello to Katharyn who was sitting a couple of tables away, Robert had started to pack his things up. This was the call for me to go. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to go to the ‘phase two’ of the Meetup, since I had already agreed to meet some friends in a pub in Camden.

‘Come join us…’ I encouraged Katharyn, and Alicia, who were sitting close by.  I suddenly realised that I was potentially going to upset the whole dynamics of the group, so I left the question hanging in the air.

I returned to my table and packed my pen and notepad away. Even though I had been outrageously bored, I liked Yumchaa; they did good tea. I would be back.

I looked at my watch.  I had ten minutes to walk from one side of Camden to the other.  I stepped from the warm quiet of the café and onto a noisy street filled traffic and diesel fumes.  My destination was the pub that was next to the hidden river Fleet.

Footnote: the picture I've used above comes from a site called nickygrace.  Whoever you are, Nicky, two things.  The first thing: thank you, and secondly, I hope you don't mind!  It's a seriously great picture!

Twenty three – Flying Solo

I needed to get to a place called the Yager Bar which meant having to endure the bafflement of Bank underground station.  It took ten minutes of walking between different stations and platforms before finally being able to break free to the surface.

‘Flying Solo’ claimed to offer ‘Quality events for Single People’. I had heard about this group through my friend Carol, who became totally alarmed by the chat-up line: ‘you’re new here, aren’t you?’ which had been delivered in a spectacularly creepy way.

I had never been to a singles event before and I was intrigued. Meetup seems to be packed with them, and I knew that the dice of randomness would take me to one of these events at some point.

The streets were packed with smartly dressed commuters, heading home after a day in the financial district. I found St Paul’s cathedral, walked across Paternoster Square, and then crossed a road; the bar was in sight. I looked at my phone. The instructions were clear: head into the bar, everyone will be on the ground floor, and there will be signs.

The bar had a slick modern feel; it was worlds away from the dark and dingy pubs that I prefer. There was a large empty floor area that I assumed doubled up as a dance area and mingling space. I saw a group of people gathered in one corner but they were all participating in a pub quiz which was clearly not connected to the ‘solo’ event I had joined. Getting desperate, I asked a waitress, and she gestured towards an empty part of the room. ‘Flying solo’ flyers had been casually dropped onto some of the chairs and tables which offered some reassurance that I was at the right venue at the right time. I was then encouraged to visit the lower ground floor by another waitress, but it was also totally empty.

I found the group outside, drinking and chatting. The host, Mel, was wearing a smart jacket and a ‘flying solo’ badge. I counted approximately six middle aged men and one woman. Thirty eight people had signed up to come to the event: it was clear that something wasn’t working.

‘Would you like a beer?’ Mel asked. ‘Help yourself… There are some spares because not very many people have turned up’. He gestured towards a table, where I saw a bottle of wine, and a bucket of beer, both on ice. I thanked Mel and helped myself to a beer.

From what I gathered, Mel didn’t run or manage the group. He was just a designated ‘meet and greet’ host who had been delegated the task of getting everyone to talk to each other. I was disappointed: I wanted to meet the founder, to get the low down on the group and learn more about how it worked. I made a note to try to find more time to chat with Mel, but he was preoccupied with trying to round up people.

I got chatting to Jim, who was a retired journalist, Clayton, who was from Brazil and enjoying a month long holiday, and Chris who worked in a housing association based in South East London. I really liked Chris. He was immaculately dressed and had an easy smile. He told me that he hated his job; he said that it was nothing more than a way to help him get money to pay off his mortgage every month. He had plans to go to Australia next year.

Clayton stood out: he wasn’t middle aged. He was a young man in his mid to late twenties and was trying to find a job in the area of agricultural engineering which had studied in Brazil. He had been in London for two weeks and had a couple of interviews lined up. When the interviews are done, he had a plan to travel to Europe for a few weeks. He said that he didn’t know what was going to happen. If he got a job, he would try to stay. If he couldn’t get a job, he would go back to Brazil. Clayton and Chris, it seemed, were both looking for change.

Jim was nice too. He lived in deepest Kent, which surprised me: he had a very long journey to get home. He told me that he took a redundancy a few years ago, and now spent time working on a local magazine and being a trustee for various charities.

I soon discovered that Chris was a regular at the group and had been to a number of their other events. I learnt about a ‘very good night’, where forty percent of the attendees were women. There were now three women in the group, which accounted for a mere twenty percent. According to Chris’s criteria we had a very long way to go before this evening could be designated ‘a good night’.

I sensed the ‘vibe’ of the group: all the men had given up on the idea that night might help them to meet the woman of their dreams.  The Meetup had mutated into a night for male banter and joshing; we became a bunch of blokes who shared beers, war stories about the perils of internet dating, and anecdotes about the challenges of relationships.

After an hour and a half, some of the group had decided to leave. With all the free beer and the wine gone, Mel ushered the group inside. The pub quiz man, who was now holding a microphone, stood on a small stage and bellowed out an answer to a question about a British prime minister. The event had clearly degenerated into the worst ever kind of single’s party: everyone had to shout, which caused the quiz man to shout even louder. With sensible conversation impossible, and the Meetup clearly disintegrating, I decided to call it a night.

I went home via Cannon Street station. As I walked, I marvelled at all the new construction that was taking place and glanced upwards at concrete walls and massive steel girders that seem to levitate in space. The last time I had been to this area, the building I passed had been a lot smaller. One level had given way to seven, and its reach skyward was continuing. This reminded me of a recent media debate that London’s skyline was under threat, that St Paul’s Cathedral would be soon dwarfed by modern structures.

I found my train, plugged myself into my MP3 player and settled down for my short journey home. Two Meetups in one day: it had been a busy one, but a great one.

Twenty two – The London English Conversation Group

A train ride, a tube journey and a ten minute walk led me to The Barbican Centre. The centre is situated in the Barbican Estate, a part of London that was built in the 1970’s. Initially, I was perplexed by its brutalist design, frightening looking tower blocks and my constant ability at being able to become profoundly lost amidst its floating pedestrian walkways, but after a number of visits I have accepted it as a weird concrete gem amidst a city of increasing steel and glass conformity.

My next event was a ‘conversational English class’ hosted by someone called Andy. Since it was obviously intended for non-native speakers, I gave Andy a ring to see whether it was okay for me to ‘come along’. Not being able to get through, I left a rambling voice mail where I tried to explain what I was doing and why a native English speaker wanted to come to a class about English conversation.

After asking the third man who had dark hair who was in their mid-twenties whether they were called ‘Andy’, I received a text message: I was welcome to come along. I gave him a quick call, and Andy explained that due to an exhibition at the Barbican centre everyone had gone to the Cinema Café, which was another part of the Barbican complex. Andy said that I could contribute if I wanted to. In return, I offered some reassurances that I promised not to be disruptive.

‘We’ve got a chair for you!’ motioned Andy, as I walked into the Cinema Café.

I found six people all huddled around a table. ‘Now, tell us a bit about what you’re writing’. I had already decided to be brutally honest and had told Andy that I was doing ‘a project where I was pretending to be a journalist’. Everyone looked at me. I did my best to explain my quest.

‘Does everyone understand what Chris is doing?’ asked Andy. Some of the group nodded. ‘So, have you been to different Meetups, Anita?’ Andy asked the first student to his left. His class had started.

For the next half an hour, everyone took turns to discuss what groups everyone had been to: there was talk of social groups, business groups and dancing groups. Andy offered every gentle and positive encouragement. When someone had finished talking he would offer suggestions and corrections, whilst at the same time asking follow on questions to make sure that everyone had the time and space to speak.

‘How about you, Chris? What is the weirdest Meetup group that you’ve been to?’ I briefly told them about my trip to the yoga group in Ealing, my brush with socialism in Clapham, and my attendance at the Girls Book Club.

‘They let you in and you hadn’t even read the book?’

‘I’ve read the book now, though’.

‘What was the book about?’

‘It was about two teenagers who had cancer who fell in love’.

The conversation rapidly moved onto the subject of food; in particular, Italian and French cuisine. One of the students, Gabi, was part French, part Italian. We also discussed Korean food and the challenges that could accompany eating fermented cabbage, a Korean national dish called Kimchi.

‘The expression is: ‘it doesn’t agree with you’. You don’t say you agree with the food, but food might not agree with you, if that makes sense?’ said Andy, explaining one of very many odd and unspoken rules of English.

‘Another phrase is: ‘it goes right through me’’.

During these conversations, I kept my chatter to a minimum: I had opinions about Kimchi, views about French food and was dying to tell everyone about the time when I made an idiot of myself by ordering a cappuccino coffee at three o’clock in the afternoon when I was on a trip to Italy.

Remembering my visit to the Clapham Girls Book Club, I was mindful that this was their space: this meeting belonged to Andy and his students. I didn’t want to intrude; after all, all these students were paying for Andy’s time. I took his lead: if Andy wanted me to contribute or offer an opinion, I would do so. If not, I would try my best to keep out of it.

‘Okay, we’re now going to have a game…’

Andy handed everyone a card. On the back of each card was a word, an idiom or an expression. The game was that everyone had to explain what the word or expression was without saying it, and everyone had to guess what it was.

When it was my go, I spoke about a hypothetical party where I was happy to do whatever everyone else was doing, but Andy had chosen a phrase that explicitly connected with my Meetup experience.

'The phrase is about what Chris is doing.' Andy said, stepping into help me. 'He is happy to accept whatever happens when he goes to a group.  He is happy to 'go' with something. What is the key word?’ Andy asked.

‘Flow…’  Everyone got it. 'The phrase was: 'to go with the flow'.  Well done everyone'.

It was a great game.

Out of all the groups that I had been to, I felt that I had accidentally influenced this one more than any others. In some respects, I don’t want to influence, I just wanted to learn, to observe and experience; in other groups you can sit back and not be noticed. In Andy’s class, there was no place to hide: my presence was obvious.

Andy responded brilliantly to the presence of a new person in his group. It also struck me that he had a great skill at making everyone feel at ease: ‘Just go out there and talk; don’t be afraid of making mistakes. People don’t mind if you make mistakes, do they Chris?’

‘No, not at all. People won’t mind at all’.

Andy had also been making the point that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable sometimes; that learning to speak is like developing your muscles in the gym - you need to do the exercise, and sometimes it may ache a bit, and this is okay.

I thanked everyone for having me there; it had been a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting event. I couldn’t help but admire the determination of Andy’s students who were from Indonesia, China, Spain, Korea and France: they were attentive, made notes, made mistakes, tried new phrases, and gave examples. Some of them would be at his next class. In terms of ‘teaching’, it worked really well; it was informal and informative. It was also real and as well as being supportive; his students felt comfortable enough to discuss relationships, families and forthcoming marriages.

After the event, I briefly chatted to Andy.  He was a fully qualified English as a Foreign Language teacher, and he had been running his group for two years.  For a while he had taught English abroad, but had discovered he was able to find clients pretty easily through Meetup.  It was a plan that seemed to be working.

I needed to get some lunch. I left the café and looked around; choosing a direction that vaguely looked promising and started walking. Within minutes, I was in the middle of a crowded street-food market that I had never been to before. Food vendors lined the streets, selling Thai food, Indian food, West Indian food, Turkish food, French food, Italian food, Spanish food, and London food. For a moment, I was tempted by a ‘pie and mash’ stall since this was something that I had never tried. Hungry visitors jostled for space with each other. Some stalls had roped off queuing areas; clear evidence of their popularity.

I bumped into some of Andy’s students who were also deciding on what to eat.

‘You going to eat with us?’ Anita asked.

After ordering a Turkish wrap I followed Anita. We settled down in a park to have lunch; another bit of the city I had never visited. We talked about technology, the joys of visiting Barcelona (I have never been to Barcelona) and the challenges of finding a flat in North London. It turned out that Gabi was only in London for a month, spending time in the city before she returned to Paris to continue her law training.

Three quarters of an hour later, we were ready to go our different ways. I opened my phone to roll the virtual dice. It appeared that I had a bit of time to kill before the next event.

‘Where you going now?’ Gabi asked.

‘I’ve got to get to Old Street Station.  Do you know the way?  I’m not sure where I am’.

‘Yes; this way. Follow me’ replied Gabi.

Twenty one – Networking for business

‘Where you going now?’ asked the waitress. I was in a burger restaurant in Camden.

‘Oh, an event in the city; it’s about business networking or something, you know, entrepreneurs?’

‘Ah, lots of arseholes in suits, right?’

The event I was going to was going be a ‘combined event’.  Three different groups: Networking for Business, London Entrepreneurs, and Technopreneurs were descending on a single venue.

As the waitress took my plates away we chatted for a bit. It turned out she lived in Brixton. She told me that there were parts of it that were being thoroughly gentrified and recommended a visit to the market.

‘I don’t live in the gentrified bit, though. I live on one of those estates that are filled with crack heads’. There was an uncomfortable pause whilst she reached for the payment machine.

‘I live south of the river too’, I said, trying to make a connection. For some reason I didn’t want her to feel bad about where she lived; I sensed that the crack heads were playing on her mind.

My journey to the Meetup was pretty easy: I caught a Northern Line train to Bank, and then had a short walk along Gresham Street to a pub called The Anthologist.

For the second time, Bank underground station thoroughly baffled me; I got lost. Rather than walk around looking for endless exits (hoping that there would be an exit to Prince’s Street or Gresham Street), I went up to street level as quickly as I could, only to be confronted with a summer storm. Rain battered down; commuters hid in the underground entrances for shelter. For once, I had the foresight to pack a rain coat: a lightweight cycling jacket. For ten minutes, I became a slightly self-conscious high visibility commuter.

I was surprised by The Anthologist: it was a fancy restaurant and flashy cocktail bar; I had been expecting a dreary pub. I peered through the windows and saw rows of ordered tables, looked again at the name of the venue (to check to see if I was at the right place) and saw a group of about sixty people at the back of the restaurant. I made my way inside.

‘Is this, erm, the Meetup group?’ I had now thoroughly lost my fear of going to these events. I no longer had Pre-Meetup Tension. There was also a part of me that just wanted to get this one over with so I could just go home, put my feet up and watch telly.

‘Yes, it is. Hi. My name is Eva.’ I introduced myself and we soon knew why each other were at the event. Eva was a part of a company that offered a range of services to new businesses. Her company did things like advertising, corporate identity and branding, website design, and whole host of other business sounding things. I sensed in this event I needed to apply a ‘this is generally true but it’s what I’m going to say for the time being’ cover story: that I was interested in how technology was being applied in real-world situations.

‘Hello! How are you!’ Indra held out his hand.  Indra, it turned out, was the organiser of all three Meetup groups. ‘Thank you for coming! What do you do?’ Indra wasn’t messing about. I told him that I taught about ‘computers’ and gave him my official business card. He looked at it intently for a few moments.

‘You know what, I’ve been looking for someone like you!’ I took a step backwards. ‘Faculty of Mathematics… Hmm. I also run these other groups, and we have some speakers down to talk about different subjects; hour sessions’.

I told him that I couldn’t do any teaching about mathematics, imagining a group of city traders hungry for information about quant algorithms; I said I only really knew about software ‘stuff’.

‘That’s not a problem; it’ll be for an hour – and you can choose the topic, whatever your specialism is, you can choose. Can I email you? Can I add you to LinkedIn?’ He gave me his expensive looking camera whilst he rummaged in his pockets to find a business card holder. ‘Here, this is my card. We should sort something out. I’ll email you’. Indra suddenly recognised someone else, and was gone. Indra had made me feel good; we had networked.

More people joined our group: a chap from Sri Lanka who had been in the country for two months, and a tax accountant called Tim who had just come back travelling from South America.

‘I’ve been back two weeks… and I’m already bored’. Tim had been travelling for six months and was now working for one of the big four accountancy companies. He was looking to move: ‘I’ve had enough of giving people advice to do stuff; I want to actually do stuff myself’. Tim was clearly suffering from tax accountancy anxiety.

I made a break for the bar to get a drink (disappointingly, there wasn’t any free beer or pizza), and by the time I returned, I found myself amidst a new group of people.

I chatted with Concha, who was on holiday in London, who worked as a Spanish-English translator (who was taking the opportunity to try to drum up some business), and a guy called Harry who was searching for a new chief technical officer for his start-up company that was a long-term web-facilitated on-line letting agency. I talked about cloud computing, distributed IT and programming languages, but he was fundamentally disinterested in taking anything any further: I was obviously not the chief technology officer he was looking for.

Working my way through the crowd (whilst thinking to myself, ‘what on earth am I doing here?’), I bumped into someone called Mary. Mary described herself as an entrepreneur.

‘So, do you have your own business?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I do. It’s a business life-cycle business’. I had no idea what one of those was. ‘We offer services to help businesses through their whole lifecycle. So, if a business is starting, we can help with offering services and advice to solve some problems, such as HR or recruitment.’ I got it. Mary was, in essence, a management consultant. She was the third management consultant I had met in twenty minutes.

I pushed onward through the throng and got chatting to a chap called Blake. Blake worked for a telecoms company.  He made the move to telecoms after working in property letting for many years. He said that there was loads to learn in telecoms; he had to learn stuff about infrastructure and datacentres. I asked him whether he had heard of a book called ‘Tubes’, which was all about the architecture of the internet. After describing the book and talking about data centres (which I know next to nothing about), he then said that I ought to sell training courses to industry about telecoms and networking.

‘You’re missing a trick, man! You see, I’m always thinking about business, how to make money, looking for business opportunities; you should sell yourself. I would help you if I wasn’t so busy’.

‘I wouldn’t know where to start, really…’

‘You academics…’ he laughed. ‘You’re not interested in making money, are you?’ Blake said that I should put together a four page plan of an ‘introduction to telecoms’ course, and approach chief executive officers of small telecoms companies. ‘You should go do it, man’. I started to think about this: could I really do such a thing? Was this a good idea? Could I really imbibe some entrepreneurial spirit? Could I develop a whole new side line? I thanked Blake for his thoughts.

I soon found myself talking with Rajesh who overheard a conversation with a software engineer who was talking about ‘business intelligence’.

‘I’m out of that game now! I’ve done that for fifteen years!’ Rajesh said. Moments later, my old friend Eva joined us.

‘I run a business that sells chocolate. Not just any old chocolate, but health chocolate. Its chocolate that is sugar free, gluten free, and lactose free. It contains some electrolyte salts, so it’s good for you; it helps to rebuild your body and give you energy’. It turned out that his company was based in America, and he was setting up some kind of import and distribution network.

‘We also have a range of high impact energy products, you know? These are products that have been designed for the health consumer in mind’. Eva was clearly intrigued. Rajesh told her about his different business models and then asked her about her business support services.

‘Perhaps we could have a chat about your business services over a coffee one day. What do you think? Do you have a card?’ he asked Eva.  Eva had run out of business cards, so he asked her for her email address; he was a slick operator.

Rajesh didn’t ask me for my card.

I looked around me and decided that it was heading towards ‘the bitter end’ – it was time for me to go. The area of the restaurant that had been cordoned off for the Meetup was starting to get quiet; two thirds of the networkers had gone home.

As I made my way to the exit I got chatting to Andrew, who was possibly the tallest man I had ever met. Andrew was in his early fifties. He had a glorious welcoming smile and a firm handshake. Andrew ran a business that was all about financial match making; he ran events to get investors and inventors together in the same room. I sensed that he was very good at what he could do; he had a gentle and easy charm. In some respects, he personified what the evening was all about: finding opportunities, friendliness, and trying to find connections with people who might be able to help with your pet project.

When I left, it had stopped raining; the city pavements had been washed clean. I caught a bus to London Bridge from a station that was next to the Bank of England. When on the bus, I started to think about the event. It struck me that all these events were starting to change me. Although a very large percentage of the people that I spoke to were wearing a suit, I didn’t feel that they were arseholes. All these financial-business-tycoon types were just like everyone else; they were just trying to make do and get along in the best way that they can. In some respects, they were just as much into randomness as I was. The difference was that they had much clearer dreams and ambitions than I had.

Twenty – Clapham Girls Book Club

I knew I had a busy day and I knew what time I was going to finish work, so I decided to plan ahead. I stood on the train to Charing Cross and looked at the Meetup app; the first event at seven o’clock in the evening was Clapham Girls Book club. There were two obvious problems: firstly, I hadn’t read the book that was going to be discussed, and secondly, I wasn’t a girl. Throwing caution to the wind, I registered and asked the organiser whether I could come along.  The was my first proper invocation of the 'inappropriate Meetup group' rule.

I received a reply a couple of hours later.  Tina, the group organiser, said that the group wasn’t open for men. I was disappointed, but not too surprised; after all, the title was very clear. I replied, explaining what I was doing and asked whether I could interview Tina instead. Fifteen minutes later, I had received further response: since her group was about books and I was pretending to be a writer (my words, not Tina's), she said I could come along.

I had never been to a book group and had no real idea what happened in them, other than knowing that were an opportunity to make friends, be exposed to new books, and, of course, to drink copious amounts wine.

The book that was to be discussed was ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ by American author John Green, who is known for his young adult fiction. The book was about two characters who had cancer, and was apparently narrated by a character called Hazel. The evening really didn’t sound like a bundle of laughs, but the rules dictated I had to go, and Tina was expecting me; I couldn’t let her down.

‘Do you want to come out with us for alcohol and food?’ asked my colleague.

I looked at the clock in the corner of my computer screen. It was ten minutes to six. She had endured a tough day dealing with timetables and student queries. Plus, there was another colleague who had just finished a tough day of interviewing who I knew would benefit by imbibing a couple of glasses of the red stuff. Two pairs of expectant eyes looked at me. I couldn’t decline, but I felt torn; I needed to get to book group yet at the same time I needed to catch up with all the office gossip.

In the restaurant, we settled down for wine and pizza, and when there was a lull in the conversation I told my two colleagues about Clapham Girls Book Club and my one hundred Meetup quest.

‘Have you even read the book?’ exclaimed Lou, astonished by my explanation.

‘No. I have no idea what it’s about, other than it’s by John somebody, and it’s about two young cancer patients, I think… It was written by… John… No, I can’t remember his surname. Can’t remember’.

‘I think I know the one you mean! My daughters have been raving about it! It’s been made into a film! It’s just come out… It sounds like a terrible book, but they’ve been saying it’s really good, it’s not sad; it’s uplifting!'

Lou told me everything that she knew about the book. Lou’s familiarity with the book had changed her view of how crazy I was (but only by a small amount).

‘What time does it start?’ Lou asked.

‘Seven o’clock’.

‘You need to go! You need to go now!’ Lou said, looking at her watch. ‘You’re going to be late!’

The journey was simple: a tube train from Camden Town to Clapham Common followed by a short bus ride. Clapham is a part of the city that remained confusing: I had no real clue about where the tube station was in relation to The Socialist Party of Great Britain (now a London landmark, but only in my own head) and Clapham Junction (Britain’s busiest railway station). The bus I needed to catch had the destination of ‘Clapham Junction’ emblazoned on its front. Every Meetup was helping me to learn how London was connected.

As I approached my destination, a gastropub called The Marchant, I become increasingly nervous. People were stood outside chatting and smoking cigarettes in the warm air. Inside, I approached a large imposing bar which offered a myriad of different beers. As I walked towards the bar, I unexpectedly saw a familiar face: it was Annie, who I vaguely knew from a comedy Meetup I go to.

‘Annie!’ I said loudly, relieved and surprised to see a familiar face. ‘What are you doing here? Are you here for the book group?’

‘Hello Chris! Yes, I am’

‘That’s great! I’m not supposed to be here… but Tina said I could come along. Is she here? I’ve got special dispensation’.

‘It had better be pretty good dispensation!’ Annie laughed. ‘A boy asked to come along once before, and she wouldn’t let him. He was kicked out.  Yeah, she’s here. We’re all at the back. Come. I’ll introduce you’.

I bought myself a drink a wandered over to the back of the pub. In the corner, sixteen women turned to look at me. Tina gave me a massive smile and gestured for me to take a seat. I quietly sat down, and the conversations that I had rudely interrupted quickly resumed. I felt a set of suspicious eyes upon me and started to wonder what Tina might have told to the others about by presence.

It took me a few moments to get a handle on the discussions: they discussed the two main characters, their relationships, their illnesses, that the sex scene had been clearly written by a man (‘it wasn’t fluffy, was it?!’ chuckled Annie), the incidental characters and how others related to their plight. The discussions were gracefully directed by Tina. When the discussions lulled, she asked further questions, drawing on several pages of notes which seemed to contain questions or prompts. I was impressed: it was expertly run.

I noticed glasses of wine on the table; the drinking and discussions were measured and controlled, it was friendly and thoughtful, and gradually moved into deeper topics: live, love and death.  From time to time, some of the women spoke about how they were touched by cancer: Annie spoke of a friend, another woman spoke of a friend’s father, and I remembered a student I once knew.  All this reflection made me realise that I needed to complete this ridiculous quest more than ever. I vowed that I should live, and live well, by finding all these different groups, that I should continue to be challenged, and continue to feel cautious and uncomfortable.

The women discussed questions that have, from time to time, preoccupied me (and perhaps preoccupy all of us): what it means to leave a mark, and what it means to be forgotten, and whether all that ‘making a mark’ business really matters in the big scheme of things.

A couple of months ago I read or heard a simple answer to the question of ‘what is it all about?’ (and I fear that I might write this more than once, since it keeps preoccupying me): that the only reason for life, is simply, to live. Being at this random event in Clapham, in some respects, was a simple expression of that elemental will.

During the discussions I was steadfastly quiet. This was their space; I didn’t want to intrude. All I could potentially contribute was opinions based on hearsay, which was a phenomenally lazy way to attend a book group. I enjoyed hearing the discussions and I knew that after the meeting I had to go and buy the book. I also knew I would appreciate the writing more having heard everyone’s opinions. Besides, I wanted to read it. I wanted to read about these two star crossed lovers who were challenged by illness and, ultimately, death.

‘So, what do we think about the end?’ asked Tina. I wondered whether I should close my ears, but I decided to keep them open. In some respects, I felt it didn’t really matter: it was now the reading of the book that mattered rather than how it ended.

When the final words about the book had been spoken and the discussions had been exhausted, Tina turned to me, and said, ‘so, what do you think?’ Fifteen pairs of eyes turned to look at me; it was the turn of the interloper to speak.

‘Erm… it’s been very interesting!’ I babbled inanely. ‘I’ve never been to a book club before. I had heard of them, so I had no real idea of what to expect. I’ve really enjoyed listening to all your discussions’. I told them that I was going to read ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, and said what I was thinking: that everyone’s discussions will add to both my understanding and appreciation of the book.

Within minutes, the group had dissolved, and the tables were empty. A couple of the regulars said goodbye to me, but there wasn’t really the opportunity to chat to people; perhaps the discussions had made everyone reflective, or perhaps I was the strange visitor who didn’t say much, or perhaps simply because it was getting late and people had homes to go to.   I had enjoyed coming along. No one person dominated the discussion; it was friendly and respectful. It was a good night out, but one that had been spectacularly weird.

I walked with Annie to the tube station and we chatted about the meeting for a while. I said that really liked the idea of the book group.

‘There’s a mixed group in Brixton that I go to, but this one is closer’ Annie said.

I made a mental note of this. Brixton wasn’t too far from where I lived. Her causal throw away comment gently pointed towards the different adventures and opportunities that London accidentally offers.

We said our goodbyes, and I dived into the Clapham South underground station to catch the Tube to London Bridge. As I made my journey home, I started to think about my week and how I might find the time to read ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ so I can read about Hazel and the other main character, Augustus. I easily resolved this short debate: there is always time for books.

Nineteen – Carpe Diem – Daytime in London

I emerged from the darkness of Camden Town underground station into glorious sunshine. It was eleven o’clock in the morning; I was bang on time. I was heading towards an event called: ‘historic walk: the lost Fleet part two’.

The Fleet is one of London’s hidden rivers. Today, there is little evidence of it having ever existed; it has been managed, tamed and built over. I was especially interested in this walk since it started, quite literally, around the corner from my office. I was prepared: I wore sensible shoes and had packed a bottle of water.

Through the crowds, I soon saw someone who I took to be our leader, a woman called Helen. Helen was an official council guide. We all handed her some money, were given a short health and safety briefing (‘there is some traffic, so be aware of what is around you’), and we were off.

Our first main stop was close to a pub called The Constitution, half way between Kings Cross and Camden. Helen pointed to an unobtrusive manhole cover. This, she said, was the river, which has its source in Hampstead Heath. We peered into the manhole grate; we heard a hiss saw flashes of light reflecting from water.

We continued towards Kings Cross and St Pancras station, passing by new buildings that were either residential flats or student accommodation. As we walked, I got talking to a Russian woman called Svetlana.  She was in her mid-thirties and worked as an accountant.  She told me that even though she had been in the city for over ten years and enjoyed Helen’s social walks because she always learnt something new about her new home.

We stopped on a corner as Helen climbed a small embankment. Behind us was a huge Victorian building.  Helen told us that it used to be a workhouse.

‘You really wouldn’t want to be there’, Helen said, describing nasty jobs, such as pulling ropes apart (picking oakum) and crushing bones. She told us that women and children were separated, and impressed upon us that the pace of work was relentless. The building was now a hospital, specialising in geriatric and mental health care. What was once just another building on my commute home had now acquired new significance.

A few minutes later we arrived at the grounds of St Pancras Old Church. Helen said that the grounds have been a site of Christian worship since the fourth century. At the back of the grounds, we could see brick walls that separated the grounds from the railway.

Apparently, ten thousand graves had to be excavated to make way for the train line that eventually found its way to St Pancras station. We stood by a tree, known as the Hardy Tree, named after Victorian novelist, Thomas Hardy. Hardy worked on the excavation of the grounds and placed discussed headstones around the trunk of the tree, creating a rough and unexpectedly beautiful monument to those whose death had been disrupted by the arrival of a new technology.

We were soon back onto the main road, passing through a road tunnel that ran underneath St Pancras railway station, following the path of the hidden river. Within minutes, a modest amount of grass had given way to acres of glass. I quickly realised where I was and its significance to London; we were walking though one of the cities ‘newest’ districts: we could see the building of what was to become the Francis Crick Institute.

Helen told me that it was originally to be called ‘the hexagon’, since the building represents a partnership between six different research groups (which can huddle together and share expertise and technology): Cancer research, three prestigious universities, the medical research council, and the Wellcome Trust. (I couldn’t help but realise that there must be an amazing story of how all these different institutions ‘got together’).

I saw the construction site for Google’s new UK headquarters. Close by, there was Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design. All these buildings constitute an amazing concentration of creativity, all served by three huge railway stations. Collectively, they show how London is changing and becoming something new, a place that is connected; you will soon be able to walk between the world of science, past a powerhouse of technology, to a prestigious centre of artistic education and endeavour all within a couple of minutes.

Our group meandered through the recently reopened King’s Cross station, where we marvelled at its graceful steel lattice roof, and then went outside to a square that was now unrecognisable. We crossed a road, assembling by yet another building site, further evidence of the area’s perpetual transformation.

Helen had a lot to tell us. We were told that the area was once known as Battle Bridge. The ‘bridge’ part referred to an ancient river crossing, and ‘battle’ bit referred to a battle between Boudica and the Romans, in AD 60 or AD 61. We were told stories of floggings, Boudica’s journey down Watling Street (now known as Kilburn High Road) and the mysteries that surround her remains. A popular modern myth is that she is buried beneath platforms nine and ten of King’s Cross station.

We walked up an incline and found ourselves at Percy Circus; a roundabout surrounded by expensive looking houses.  From the centre of the roundabout, we were told to look down towards the street. We could see the hill fall, and then rise again on the other side of a road. The road, we were told, was a valley where the Fleet used to flow; this was the hidden topography of the river that Helen had told us about.  Helen then pointed towards a blue plaque that had been placed on the side of one of the buildings.  It was a house where Lenin used to live.

We walked down a flight of steps, which inspired an Arnold Bennett novel called the Riceyman Steps, and returned to an invisible shore.  Our next stop was a royal mail sorting office, which used to be a prison. Helen had more stories for us. Flogging again featured, but this time she included a description of a giant ‘hamster wheel’ which prisoners were forced onto.

‘Punishment was all about pain; they were given very little food, so they all wasted away’ Helen said with relish.

We were then taken to a junction of a pub called ‘The Coach and Horses’ on a kink in the road where the river once meandered. ‘Even the police wouldn’t come down here. There was bear baiting, cock fighting, and a secret entrance to the river so robbers could escape; you wouldn’t want to come here. Priests would come here with bodyguards’.

Close by, we found the ‘well’ of Clerkenwell, which was only discovered during the construction of a new building, and walked past the Smithfield Market and to bottom of the Holborn viaduct.

‘This was the part of the Fleet that was navigable by sea. Back there, you’ve got the market, where cattle were slaughtered. Because the market is so close to the river all the entrails went into the river; it was an automatic waste disposal system. It was a disgusting place.’

Minutes later, we stopped again, and were told of yet another prison and further stories of rape and torture. I was finding all these dark nasty stories hard to take in.

‘You’ll see that the street rises and falls a bit? This is because of the Victorians. Underneath the road you’ve got all these arches that they built to control the flow of the river’.

We were getting to the end of the walk, and our penultimate stop was at a site of what used to be a tutor mansion house. It was now a solicitor’s office.  On my left I could see Blackfriars station, gleaming in the sunlight. As I glanced at it, it suddenly dawned on me that a big part of my journey to my office is over this hidden river; I had been following its path and I had never realised. I also realised that I wouldn’t look at my commute in the same way ever again; that Helen’s tour had now, suddenly, added immeasurable depth to my daily trip.

Our final stop was Blackfriars Bridge and the river Thames. We peered across a safety rail and saw a tiny outlet embedded into the bridge, a concrete pipe. There was a small trickle of water coming from the pipe. This, we were told, was the end of the river Fleet.

Eighteen – Free Meditation and Yoga

I pushed the door and went into the room and immediately saw a spectacular vaulted ceiling. I looked around; paintings adorned the walls. One painting was of King Edward; he was depicted as being severe and formal, his eyes looking downwards into the depth of the room. At the end of the room, there were arched stained-glass windows. I was in Ealing town hall.

I knew nothing about yoga other than it seems to involve some stretching and some people love it. In anticipation for whatever exercise I might be subjected to, I had dressed sensibly; tracksuit bottoms, training shoes, and a simple T-shirt. I even had the foresight to come with a bottle of water. I was ready to whatever unexpected activities the evening had in store for me.

At the front of the room, I saw a photograph of what I took to be our ‘yogi’. She was a severe looking woman of about sixty with big eyes and long hair. Next to her picture was a flickering candle. The room was also filled with a strong smell of incense. There was also a PowerPoint presentation. These things; the picture, the incense and the PowerPoint all reassured me that I was obviously in the right place.

My journey to Ealing had already been enlightening. At the train station, I sat down next to a man who was wearing a pink cat suit, a purple jacket and a green cowboy hat. We were both heading in the opposite direction of the commuters; the station was empty.

‘The work of a wife is never done, is it?’ he said loudly, smiling. ‘There’s cooking, cleaning – all those chores; it never ends!’

‘I know what you mean’, I replied, wondering where this conversation was going to go. ‘I’ve been busy hoovering today’

‘Ah, yes, hoovering…. You can’t escape hoovering, can you? Where are you going, may I ask? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to… I mean, it’s nice to chat, isn’t it? I mean, chatting helps you to get a connection with someone, don’t you think?’ He laughed.

‘I’m going to yoga in Ealing.’

Our train to Charing Cross station arrived. We sat together and continued to chat.

‘Ealing? That’s a long way!’ he exclaimed, laughing. He was right. I had a train ride and two tube trains ahead of me – it was touch and go as to whether I would get there in an hour. ‘I’ve often wondered about yoga. I’ve heard it’s good for your joints. I’ve got arthritis in one of my knees’, he rubbed his knee. ‘I’m going to a sex club. I’m a bit stressed at the moment; I don’t get there very often but I’ll be okay as soon as I get there. Everyone gets naked, you see. I’ll get more relaxed when I get naked.’

I was mildly lost for words. ‘Is that, erm, in Soho?’ I had no idea about how to make small talk about sex clubs.

‘Yes! Well, it’s close to Soho, not exactly in Soho. You get all kinds of people there, some porn stars go there – they can’t get enough of it! I used to go to this other place, which was like, an S&M place, where people get whipped, you know? They love it! It’s sooo strange.’

I was again lost for words.

His name was Ade and his parents were from Nigeria.  He lived in a couple of streets away from me.

‘Fuck! I’ve forgotten my Viagra!’ Ade suddenly exclaimed.   He frantically rummaged through his bag, just as the train approached its destination. ‘Honestly, my room is such a mess; I can’t find anything! I’m such a hoarder, you see’. Ade then took a slug from a whisky apple and beetroot juice cocktail he was carrying.

At the end of our short journey, Ade complemented my skin, and kissed my hand before power walking towards the ticket barriers, where he had to chat up the train barrier attendant to persuade them to let him through (since he didn’t have a ticket).

Three quarters of an hour later, I arrived at my destination.

The ‘introduction to yoga’ PowerPoint slide was brief. It had five points: an introduction to meditation, ‘self-realisation to achieve a spontaneous meditative state’, how to meditate at home, how to clear left and right channels, and finally, a foot soak with accompanying mantras’.

The evening was facilitated by a woman, who was clearly the lead yoga teacher, and a man called Nick, who drove the PowerPoint projector and made sure that the teacher’s microphone was working.

‘Kundalini is a being that we’re not aware of, it’s a mother force and its centre is at the bottom of the spine. The energy from the kundalini awakening can move through different energy centres, which are the chakras. When it is awakened, the energy that is released feels like a cool breeze.’

I looked around. There were around twenty people who were listening very intently. I also saw that a couple of windows were open.

‘Yoga is a spiritual journey that connects us to nature. We can learn how to harness the energy that is coming from around us, and within us. We’re able to judge everything on the vibrations that we harness, and through a free four week course we’re able to share our awakening with others. This helps us to be more aware of our chakras and you’ll be able to move energy around between different centres’

We were then told to take off our shoes, since our feet apparently contained some important chakras. Nick was then asked to play a video recording of the great yogi. The recording was a part of a course that was held in New York. The clip was proclaiming the advantages of her particular type of yoga.

‘You can be more creative, you become freer to do new things, and you can more readily pass your exams’. There were further claims. Learning the knowledge of the kundalini can apparently lead to joy. By being able to receive vibrations, you learn how to reduce quarrels with partners and family, and there is also the potential that this new knowledge, if shared, can lead to a new society. The claims were coming thick and fast: the techniques were said to help with cataracts, and that the yogi has saved the life of a dying woman.

During the video, we were encouraged to try some yoga meditation. We were told that we need to keep a couple of things in mind; we needed to forgive ourselves, not to feel guilty about anything, and forgive everyone – the idea is to be ‘at peace’. This, for me, was a massive ask. I certainly wasn’t in any mood to forgive my ex-wife. Even though I was seriously worried of the claims that surrounded the kundalini awakening, perhaps this was the point that I needed to take from this bizarre evening; that perhaps I ought to think about not being so grumpy about being ripped off.

The teaching continued. Apparently there are seven seats of chakras on the top of our head, and the centre of pure knowledge is in our lower abdomen. We were encouraged to move our hands and rub our head in a clockwise direction, and to ask the phrase, ‘mother, am I your spirit?’ This was followed by another phrase: ‘mother, I am my own master’. (We were then told that ‘divine is the ocean of bliss, knowledge and forgiveness’, none of which I understood in the slightest). Two further phrases: ‘mother, I’m not guilty at all’ (a phrase which I’m pretty sure I’ve used on more than one occasion), and ‘mother, I forgive everyone’.  We then put our head on our scalp, and said, ‘I cannot take your freedom from you’.

‘Who felt the cool breeze coming out of your head? Please raise your hands’.

I looked around and I was astonished to see that a third of the participants had raised their hands, but then I remembered the open windows.

The next bit of the session comprised of further PowerPoint slides that showed nonsense anatomical diagrams to explain the ‘link’ between the body and our chakras. This was followed by some talk about how you can begin to learn about how to balance out your left and right channels (which connect these different chakras together). A good way to sort out one of your right channel is to meditate whilst having a good old foot soak.

The foot soak was, I have to admit, the highlight of the evening. There were about fifteen bowls of water that another helper had prepared. When our teacher mentioned their availability, there was a mild scramble for the bowls.

‘Would you like one?’ an elderly lady asked.

Sadly, it was too late. They had all been taken by energetic meditators. The second helper went around everyone and added a tablespoon of cooking salt to each bowl, and dished out paper towels. Eventually, everyone settled down to do some meditation practice.

Our teacher offered us some guidance: ‘everyone, raise your left hand. Now put it on the right side of your stomach; that’s where your liver is’. Minutes earlier we were told that the function of the liver was to absorb heat (which fundamentally challenged my naïve understanding that it produced bile, purified the blood and generated enzymes).

After the excitement of the foot soak, we were given candles for a bit of ‘candle practice’. The ‘fire and light’ elements (which are certainly not ‘elements’, according to my high school chemistry classes) can be used to clear our left channel. We were also told that we can make things a whole lot worse for ourselves if we use the power of the candle on our right channel. Not doing things properly or neglecting the left channel could (allegedly) lead to serious mental health issues such as schizophrenia and depression. Of course, we couldn’t use a lit candle, due to health and safety concerns foisted upon us by Ealing Council. Instead, we were told to move it around our body and our head in a circular motion.

At the end of the session, Nick came over to me and asked: ‘how was it for you?’

‘It’s offered me a whole new dimension of enlightenment’, I replied.

Nick chuckled and nodded, and then went back to his PowerPoint projector.

The room emptied very quickly. Some people chatted, others milled around a table where they could buy a photograph of our yogi. As I started to walk towards the Ealing Broadway underground station, I caught up with a fellow classmate.

‘What did you make of all that?’ I asked. ‘Do you think you’ll come back?’

‘It all depends on my work; I’m very busy at the moment’. Within moments, my classmate had gone.

I felt disappointed by the whole evening. There was no stretching, just a bit of ‘unlit candle work’, and a small amount of ridiculous chanting. I had no idea what was going on and I was profoundly unconvinced that any of the ‘teachings’ could increase my powers of creativity and learning. In fact, my kundalini had steadfastly refused to rise, and I sensed that there was absolutely nothing wrong with my chakras.

Seventeen – The Four Hour Work Week

I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when I saw the title: twenty five killer tech tools for digital nomads and solopreneurs. I didn’t want to sit through another tedious lecture about technology but I had no choice; I had to go. And what were solopreneurs?  I had no idea. Looked at my phone to see where I needed to travel to: St Katharine’s dock.

I remember St Katharine’s dock from my early teens; I had memories from a day trip. My dad had heard about a new development in the city and wanted to check it out. All I remember of the day was that it was very long and that I was told, ‘this is where the yuppies live’, without having any idea what he was talking about.

The Meetup was held in a building called International House. My entrance was greeted with a smile from a group organiser who suggested that I should make myself a name badge. Apparently my name wasn’t on the guest list (because I had signed up to the group half an hour before arriving), but it was quickly added without any fuss.

‘Head down that corridor, go left, and feel free to get yourself something to drink’.

The corridor was busy; people were working. People sat in glass cubes, plugged into a laptops and telephones. Desks were filled with computers.  Posters of new tech companies adorned the walls.

The ‘drinks’ appeared to be a couple of jugs of tap water and some plastic cups.  Apparently, the small amount of beer that was available had been snaffled up. About fifty people were stood about, chatting. A chap called Dom introduced himself, and we got talking to another guy called Graham. Dom was the speaker for the night, and Graham described himself as a packaging entrepreneur. Tech, it seemed, wasn’t really Graham’s thing.

I chatted to two other people: Emma and Kim. I confessed to Emma that I had no real idea what the group was about, and she started to talk about income streams through product syndication and outsourcing. Emma, it turned out, was a company secretary.

Everyone was brought to attention and we were ushered into our seats for the talks. The first talk was essentially a sales pitch by a chap called Stephen. Stephen was a part of a development company that ran ‘programmes’ that gave delegates insights in how to create ‘health, wealth, love and relationships’. He also said that his organisation ran a number of ‘trading system training courses’ which could ‘help you escape the rat race’. Stephen said that everyone who came along to the Meetup could go to his ‘health, wealth and relationships’ lecture for free, and would be at the back of the room collecting names and email addresses after the talks.

It was then the turn of the main speaker. Dom described himself as a serial entrepreneur. He gave us an anecdote from his childhood where he scammed a woman who collected money from kids who paid to go on a bouncy castle. His second ‘business’ was selling goods to record shops.  He now had a number of different roles: he did a bit of financial advice, and trained people to use financial advice software. The rest of the time, he said, is spent learning about stuff. He claimed to work only for himself, and he could do this by using loads of technology.

After about fifteen minutes of listening the purpose of the Meetup finally became clear. The group was connected to a best-selling business book (that I had never heard of) called ‘The Four Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich’; a gloriously compelling title that immediately made me profoundly suspicious. Looking at the blurb, the book describes, ‘a whole new ball game’ and ‘roadmap’ which is also a ‘manifesto for the mobile lifestyle’. It’s a book that is said to help you change your life and enable you live your dreams, by ‘tearing apart conventional assumptions’. It was a book that enabled you to ‘live a millionaire lifestyle without being a millionaire’.

Dom had clearly bought into the dream. Technology, he argued, helps us to become so productive that we only have to work for four hours per week; we can take extended holidays and travel around the world as we ‘work’.  We can do this by ‘being smart’ with different apps; we can outsource some of our admin to off-shore phone answering companies, and we can ask for graphical design work and audio jingles to be created for five dollars. His underlying message was: ‘be second foolish, and hour wise’.

Some of Dom’s tips were, admittedly, useful. He spoke about how to use a phone very cheaply when travelling abroad, and how to create a blog. Also, if you needed someone to do some hard technical coding stuff quickly, there were ‘micro contract’ sites that allow you to advertise your problems.

After Dom’s session, there was an opportunity for members of the group to present a series of 'elevator pitches'. I heard pitches for life-coaching services, on-line multi-lingual secretarial support, a number of new start-up businesses, a recruitment consultant, and a software coder. Finally, Akash, our group leader stood up and said that the London group was now bigger than the group in New York, and that free pizza had arrived. Everyone clapped.

There was a significant part of me that was steadfastly cynical. The people in the group were great, and Dom’s talk was interesting; it was slick and polished. It contained some great tips about how to work smarter, but I couldn’t get away from the feeling that the book conveyed a mystical ‘work related’ ideology. I think my own cynicism comes from my own work ethic: I would be lost without it. If I worked only four hours a week I probably would go insane because I would end up watching way too much day time television.

I found time to have a quick chat with Akash. I really liked him. Akash sorted out the venue, found the sponsors, and booked the speakers; for the next event he had found a speaker who was going to do a talk about public relations. Akash told me that the office area where the event was hosted was something called a ‘co-working space’ where different people from different organisations come together and use the space to run projects and have meetings. He also told me that he worked for a company that was a ‘free stuff aggregator’; businesses put free stuff on the internet, and his company tells people about the ‘free stuff’ it had found. I soon realised that Akash worked a whole lot more than four 'hours per week; he had full-time nine to five job.

The journey home was a new experience. I walked across Tower Bridge and along the south bank to London Bridge. It was dusk and it was warm; my face was cooled by a gentle breeze. London was illuminated by millions of lights.

A newly married couple had photographs taken whilst standing precariously on a wall by the Thames to catch the best possible view of the London skyline. I walked past couples holding hands, and solo photographers with tripods who were trying to get the perfect picture of Tower Bridge.

Sixteen – London on Board

My work meeting finished early.  As soon as I said my goodbyes to everyone, it was time to roll the dice; I was excited. As I rode the elevator to the ground floor, I looked at the Meetup app calendar and saw that there were no events in the late afternoon.  Instead, the earliest event was at half past five and was called ‘Gaming at The Bishop’s Finger’ and was hosted by a Meetup group called ‘London on Board’, a group that played ‘adult board games’.

Being a former member of the geek community (in the sense that I used to watch Star Trek, played the occasional game of Dungeons and Dragons, and enjoy messing around with computers because I didn’t have any friends), you realise that there are many other parallel ‘geek universes’ out there. There are comic geeks, fantasy geeks, electronics geeks, and there are also board game geeks. As a teenager and student I pretty much avoided these other dimensions of geekdom. When I read the Meetup event description, I had a few key questions that I needed to answer: what were these ‘adult board games’, how do you play them, and what is there to get so excited about to make you want to create a whole community of people that meet with each other after a tough day at the office?

My phone offered me some instructions about how to get to a pub; I needed to catch a bus. My bus took me through the back streets of Islington, past the Angel underground station and towards the heart of the city. I got off by The Barbican and had a ten minute walk to the pub, which was situated on a square close to Smithfield Market. The area was quiet; the time for trading had long passed. Motorcyclists and cab drivers stood on a corner, chatting and drinking tea. With about an hour to kill before the start of London on Board, I ordered a drink and settled down with a book at a table that overlooked the square.

‘I’ve been with him for two years, so obviously he’s the one I’m going to marry…’ Two women were talking loudly. After gently eavesdropping for a few minutes I realised that they had both attended the same course and were having a crafty glass of wine before heading off to a restaurant.

‘I’ve been with my boyfriend for six months but, you know what, I find it impossible to be faithful!’

‘You know what, I’m exactly the same’.

I was finding it impossible to read; I had been subject to my ex’s infidelity and this conversation was starting to dredge up some uncomfortable memories.

A phone buzzed.

‘He’s texting me shit about the wedding. I’m going to ignore him.  I don’t have work stress but I do have him stress; I have relationship stress! He’s going to move in to my place, you know? He’s going to move from his parents; it’s best this way – I’ll get him away from them’.

I looked up from the page.  I had been re-reading the same sentence for the past five minutes.

‘I don’t want his family to raise my kids. I don’t want them to fill my kid’s head with rubbish, you know? His family totally does my head in…’

I took a sip from my drink and looked out at the taxi drivers who were having a chat. One driver was sitting in the back of another’s taxi. A motorcycle courier had finished his tea and was pulling on his helmet.

‘He earns, like, fifty grand doing software or something, and I earn thirty, so he needs to give me some money, you know what I mean? He could like, set up a standing order or something, to do a transfer every month – for the wedding, you know?’

I couldn’t stand any more. I looked at my watch; it was time to go inside.

The event took place in a function room on the first floor. I was the second person there. I introduced myself to Lloyd, who was our host for the night. Lloyd asked me about my interest in games.  I said that I didn’t have any particular interest, and told him about my one hundred Meetup quest.  He seemed genuinely interested; he asked me how many groups I had visited and which one I had found the most interesting.

Within half an hour, fifteen people had arrived, many of whom were carrying board games that I had never heard of. Lloyd set up a card game that had one hundred and four cards. He patiently explained all the rules which seemed to be profoundly complicated: ‘each card has got a number on it, and you’ve got to put the card down on the other cards that have a lower number than your card – and if there are six cards, you take them all and put them to one side, and then at the end of the game, you count up the number of bulls you have on your cards’.

‘Bulls?’

‘Yes. That card has five bulls, this other card has just one bull – the winner is the one of us who has the lowest number of bulls’.

None of this made any sense. I was starting to panic.

'The game is all about the bulls?'

Three people sitting around the table nodded in agreement.

We played, and Lloyd narrated every single step of the game so we could all jointly assimilate all the rules. It gradually started to make sense; I needed to get rid of as many bulls as I could early on in the game so that others were forced to pick them up and they would lose. It turned out to be fun!

With more people arriving, Lloyd set up a new, totally different game, which was all about building societies.

‘The winner is someone who builds three temples. The other way to win is to build two towers, or you could use all your huts; you win if you haven’t got any left. Basically, you put down these hexagons on each go, and when you’ve done that you can build some huts, but you can’t build on a volcano, but what you can do is put one hexagon volcano onto of another hexagon volcano, so that way you can build upwards, and only then can you build a tower…’

I had absolutely no idea what Lloyd was talking about.

A new visitor called Keith arrived and sat down at our table. He introduced himself and announced that his game of Zombie Fluxx was ‘a gift to the group’.

‘Anyone fancy a game of Warewolf?’ Keith asked.

‘Don’t worry… its easy; I’ll explain it’ he said, noticing my expression. There were four of us who were prepared to play.

‘The idea is that you’ve got to discover the Warewolf, okay? Each card is, like, a different character and they do different things. You take a card at the start, but this card might change, so you don’t know who you are. There’s a villager who wants to find the warewolf, and there’s the hunter who, like, kind of commits suicide. The hunter can accuse someone of being warewolf, and then shoots him, and that can finish the game, but then the hunter kills himself. Then there’s the see-er who can see what some of the other cards are. There’s the troublemaker who swaps cards with other players so they don’t know who they are. A thief does another swap. The insomniac can see what their own card is after everything has been moved around – and we’ve got six minutes between us to figure out who the warewolf is, and then we all take a vote’.

I started to panic again.

Keith was visiting London; he was on holiday from Los Angeles. Board games were apparently Keith’s ‘thing’. Before the game of Warewolf started, Keith said that he belonged to a similar group in LA, and regularly went to a huge gaming convention in San Diego. He clearly knew how to play Warewolf.

‘What kind of stuff do you do when you’re not gaming?’ I asked.

‘Erm… the best way to put it is that I catch bad guys over the internet’.

‘You’re a spy?’ I asked undiplomatically. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to; I would completely understand if you can’t’.

‘I’m kind of like a spy. I work for a big accounting firm in their security division and we do research into people to help to create cases’. Keith used to work for the US Military before moving into information technology; his current role seemed to cross the boundaries of both these areas.

Keith got out his smartphone. ‘The way the game works is that there’s an app that takes on the role of a moderator; this gives instructions at the start of the game’. Keith pressed play. Spoken instructions told different characters to shuffle different cards around, so everyone knew different bits about who was who.  In the six minutes of the game, everyone had to work together to pick out the bad guy, and the ‘warewolf’ makes stuff up to put everyone ‘off the trail’.

As the timer on Keith’s smartphone counted down, accusations unfolded and bedlam ensued. ‘I think you’re the warewolf!’ someone called Graham shouted. Despite being a mere villager, half of the participants thought I was the bad guy. It was fun, but confusing. I ‘got’ the idea of the game, and understood how its fast paced dynamics combined with the need to talk nonsense could make it quite compelling, especially after a couple of beers.

After a second game of Warewolf, I have to confess that I broke my ‘bitter end’ rule; a migraine that had gently started in the early afternoon had taken hold and I needed to get home. It was a shame; my initial fears of not being able to understand anything had rapidly dissipated: newbies were tolerated and everyone was patient. I could see how everyone was enjoying everyone’s company and the absurdity of the games; they were all wonderfully escapist.

As I waited for a bus to London Bridge, I asked myself a question, ‘would I like to go back to this group?’ The answer was a clear and unambiguous yes: this was a dimension of geekdom that I could happily embrace. ‘I could always come back’ I thought, ‘but only when I’ve done my one hundred’.

Fifteen – South London Social

It was February.  It was biting cold and pitch black. Squinting in moon light, I locked my front door and walked down a concrete staircase, feeling the outline of a handrail. I could hear the sound of waves crashing over the shore; pebbles hissed as water returned to the sea.

Twenty years ago I lived in a small seaside resort called Jaywick Sands due to a combination of laziness, incompetence and luck. At the time I was a postgraduate student at the University of Essex, and I had left sorting out accommodation until it was too late. Luckily, the accommodation service was able to help; they offered a flat that was twelve miles away from the university campus. Thankfully, I had a car and was a driver.  Somehow, I had fallen on my feet: I had had my own balcony and sea view - and I was a student!

Six friends from London visited me at my bachelor ‘apartment’; we were all going to a pub I had never been to before. We all stumbled in and were hit by humid warmth.  Within minutes, we soon realised that we had walked into the middle of a karaoke night. We were faced with a collective dilemma: should we head off to another pub, sit it out, or join in? We decided to join in.  I say, ‘we’ quite loosely, as what I really mean is that my so called ‘mates’ insisted on putting my name down for a range of songs, some of which I had never heard of before.

I sang the songs to the best of my ability and I was surprised by everyone’s reaction; my mates cheered me on as two elderly couples (who made up our entire audience) clapped appreciatively.  It was one of those nights when everything was perfect: it was a gloriously happy time, and I discovered that I was able to do something that I never thought I would ever do.

I felt a tingle of excitement when I realised that I had to go to another karaoke night. Although I had been through this bizarre exercise in positive public humiliation twice before, I had never regained the feeling of excitement or the accolades that I received in my debut performance.

The Meetup was held in a part of London called Tooting. All I know about Tooting was that it had a very silly name and it featured in a seventies TV comedy show called ‘Citizen Smith’.  After searching for the pub and looking at a map, I realised that the easiest way to go was by motor scooter.  I could clearly see the main arteries I had to follow: the south circular, and the road that went all the way to the south coast.  It was a pretty easy ride.

The night was run by a lovely woman called Sharon introduced me to all other members; all of whom were women.

‘Are you going to sing?’ Sarah, another group member, asked.

I had been given a pen and a ‘track slip’, and told to choose something from the ‘music folders’.

‘I’m not sure if I will… I’ve just come down to say hello, really’ I replied, suddenly becoming nervous.

There were thousands of songs to choose from, all neatly organised alphabetically according to artist. The karaoke DJ had his equipment set up at the front of the pub: there were two television screens, a mixing desk and two sets of lights that illuminated the floor and ceiling. The DJ put on a track and started to sing a Sinatra number to make sure everything was working.

Satisfied that everything was working, the DJ called for Sharon.  ‘Come on!’ Joanne, another member of the group shouted. ‘Let’s give her some support!’ gesturing that we should all follow her. We all made our way to the illuminated ‘dance area’ to give Sharon as much support as we could muster.

Sharon admirably belted out the first number of the evening.  Although it was a bit rough around the edges, she did a pretty solid job.  Her timing was good and she was roughly in tune, which was more than I could say for the next singer.

One by one, we all got up, in various states of inebriation and sang our hearts out.  I sang two karaoke standards: ‘I’m on the way to Amarillo’ by Tony Christie, and ‘Daydream Believer’ by the Monkees. As I took the microphone from the DJ, there was a small part of me that asked the question: ‘what on earth are you doing, man?!’, but then it suddenly didn’t matter anymore, because the track had started.

I then had two worries: the first that I really didn’t know the song well enough to do a good job (and be able to sensibly second-guess the lyrics as they appeared on the television screens), and secondly, that I might not be able to hit the high notes.

Both of these fears materialised.  I didn’t know the songs as well as I thought I did, and I couldn’t hit the first few high notes. To cover up my obvious inadequacies, I used bluster; I sang with gusto, improvised ridiculous hand gestures with the intention of trying to get ‘the audience’ to sing along, and stamped my feet at appropriate points during the chorus.  When my first track came to an end, everyone clapped and cheered.  I had prevailed, even though all the regular drinkers appeared to be thoroughly disinterested in the painful spectacle they had just witnessed.

As I walked towards the back of the room, basking in my unexpected success and my delusions, Rachel, a fellow group member and karaoke accomplice whispered, ‘you’re a dark horse, Chris; I wasn’t expecting that!’

Fourteen – Zero Defects

My train was half an hour late getting into London Euston.  Had it been on time, I would have had to go to London Tall People. The Tall People Meetup was a film screening; I don’t remember the exact detail.  There would have been a downside. There is nothing more infuriating than going to the cinema and being sat in front of a giant who blots out your view, ruining everything.

Instead, I went to Zero Defects, which was the first event at half past six.  It was located in an office building situated between Liverpool Street station and Bank.  I soon found the office and after pushing an entrance buzzer I was told to go to the second floor.  I discovered a room filled with people.  I quickly found a seat.

This event was mysterious. The description consisted of only two sentences.  The first was about ‘uniting around a cause’, and the second suggested that there going to be loads of other interesting events that would take place.  When I signed up to the Meetup group, there were some weird questions, such as, ‘what are your views on testing?’ Answer: ‘it’s important’. ‘What do you think about devops?’ Answer: ‘I don’t know this term, so I can’t form an opinion’.  All I knew was that it was a technical group about software.

I soon realised that this event was a bit different to the other technical Meetups: there was no free beer. Two banners were displayed at the front of the lecture area: one that related to a company that developed user interface components that be used in websites, and the name and logo of a consultancy company that I had never heard of.  

‘Is anybody looking for a job?’ our leader, Andy, asked.  Andy was an immaculately dressed middle aged gentleman who spoke with an Essex accent.   From what I gathered, Andy’s main job was working at the consultancy firm, but he also had a connection with an IT recruitment agency, hence his cheeky question.

There were two presentations.  The first one by a chap called Dan, who talked about his journey from an academic in the biological sciences to his current job as a software architect.  ‘I didn’t do computer science at university; I immersed myself in learning… I got to see a presentation at a conference about software which changed how I looked at everything’.  I was mildly baffled: why would you make that change?  Surely the biological sciences (of which I knew nothing about) could offer a rewarding and challenging career?

The second presentation was by Andy, who told us that he was also going to talk about software architecture.  He began by asking the audience what they knew about the concept of ‘zero defects’ before talking about Japanese manufacturing processes.  He mentioned the challenge of gathering requirements and spoke about different views of a software development process, and (for some reason) the organisational structure of advertising agencies.

Within the first five minutes of Andy's talk I realised I had to endure ‘Death by PowerPoint’.  Whilst I was sitting in that office, hearing about critical paths and project management, I had a flashback to my university days.  To appreciate Andy's lecture to its greatest extent I felt as if I should have been bleary eyed, have ringing ears and a mild hangover all from a heavy night at the students’ union.

Even though I had lost the will to live a number of times throughout the one hundred and twenty seven slides of the presentation, my interest in software and software development was occasionally piqued.  Creating software isn’t just about writing computer instructions in a weird computer language, it's about philosophy.  It’s about creating a representation of a problem (or set of problems) in a language that can be understood by both humans and machines.

As coloured boxes moved randomly on the presentation screen I asked myself a question: what are the ways in which the software development cultures differ?  The software development process that Andy was talking about was very different to what the people at Yammer were talking about. There was also something else that I detected: Dan talked about software as an ‘engineering discipline’ whereas Andy spoke of it in terms of being ‘a craft’.  

There were clear tensions and differences between the two speakers.  Developers and architects, it was argued, need to find time to practice and develop their craft; creating software can be a bit like painting.  On the other hand it could be a bit like engineering, where developers bolt together known components together according to a well defined schedule.

When the presentation ended, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief; I had been subjected to more PowerPoint slides that I could stomach: one hundred and ten more, to be precise. I hadn’t learnt too much; I realised I should have gone to London Tall People.  I felt tired, hungry and grumpy; I wanted to go home. I didn't chat to Dan and Andy as I should have done; my patience had been thoroughly exhausted.

I went downstairs and out into the cool evening air and soon became lost.  London was empty; this part of the city was deserted.  It felt unusual.  I walked in the rough direction of one of the sky scrapers I recognised; the Shard, figuring that I could find a way to catch a bus to London Bridge station.