Sixty – Flash mob Fridays!

It wasn’t a Friday; it was a Saturday. It was also Valentine’s Day, and my new friend Grace had a thirst for adventure. I had met Grace at a comedy night in East London where I had foolishly volunteered to take part in a ‘valentines special’. This meant participating in a tacky (but fun) version of the TV game show Blind Date. The format was familiar: a potential date asked a bunch of suiters a set of questions. One of the questions I was asked was: ‘if you were a biscuit, what kind of biscuit would you be?’ My response was: ‘I would be the Nice one’.

I wasn’t chosen. My ‘inner macho guy’ voice grumbled, saying, ‘this just adds further evidence to the theory that nice guys don’t get many dates’.

An hour later, during the interval, I got chatting to Grace, who lived in East London. We chatted about comedy, computers, and Meetup. At the end of the night we exchanged contact details. Although I didn’t managed to get a date through the Blind Date comedy show, much to my amazement I did managed to unexpectedly manage to get a date with a member of the audience.

Our destination was the South Bank, or more specifically, outside the Royal Festival Hall. We jumped on a bus, crossed Waterloo Bridge, and then walked down a flight of stairs. We found a map, figured out where the Royal Festival Hall was, and since we were early, we decided to grab a cup of coffee. Grace was an interesting woman. Not only had we been experiencing the weirdness of Meetup events, we also had studied the same subject at university: computer science. After our coffee, we left the Royal Festival Hall and stood directly in front of a bookshop.

‘Okay, I think we meet them here’.

I looked around but couldn’t see any groups. I got out my phone but the sheer amount of people in the area who also had smartphones meant that there was no free network bandwidth. Although I had a signal, my phone was unusable. I caught a brief glimpse of the Meetup event summary that suggested the event host had pulled out. I tried to post a ‘we are here’ message, only to receive a network timeout message. This didn’t bode well. Plus, it started to rain.

‘Want to go inside?’ I asked Grace. Grace nodded. We loitered in the entrance area next to the bookshop, eyeballing the passers by, hoping to catch glimpses of confused people feverishly consulting their phones: the giveaway sign of a ‘meetupper’. The start time of the event came and went. I looked at my phone again. Still no signal. The rain had stopped.

‘Perhaps I can get a signal outside…’ I said to Grace. We walked from the entrance to the barrier which protected pedestrians from the River Thames. I had another look at the phone. There was a message from a member of the group! The message read: ‘we are under the green umbrellas next to the Foyles bookshop’.

‘They’re over there!’

I rushed across to a bunch of people standing under the green umbrellas, sheltering from the rain. I asked them whether they were in the Meetup but they all shook their heads. I looked around but couldn’t see anyone who might be connected to the event. There were no groups of people. All I could see were pedestrians promenading on the South Bank. It didn’t look like it was going to happen. A lack of a leader, communication troubles and rain had all conspired against us. Dejectedly, we walked back to where we were standing, wondering what to do. One option was to just to hang around to see if anything would happen. I started to become impatient.

‘Let’s do it anyway’ I said.

‘What… Are you crazy? Propose…?!’ exclaimed Grace.

The event had the title ‘Valentine's Day proposals flash mob and love letters’. I got down on one knee. I proposed to Grace.

‘Grace, I propose…. that you have awesome hair. I am very envious of your braids. I really like how neat you keep it. My time for hairstyles has long gone, obviously, but you still have that possibility and will continue to have that possibility. You wear your hair with style and elegance. Grace, I love your hair’.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a milk-chocolate lollipop in the shape of a heart. I gave my heart to Grace.

Fifty nine – Dance your soul

Carrying my shoes and my bag, I pushed the double doors and walked into a huge empty room; a dance studio. The walls were painted white and curtains covered a huge floor to ceiling mirror. Moments earlier I had caught a glimpse of a ballet class through a classroom window; women were contorting themselves into what appeared to be incredibly uncomfortable positions.  I was feeling uncomfortable: I was at the London Contemporary Dance School.

I put my shoes and my bag down and looked around. There were around twenty people of varying ages. The youngest must have been around twenty five; the eldest seventy five. Three quarters of the group were women. I wanted to leave.

Fifteen minutes earlier, I met everyone in a pub. ‘So, what is BioDanza?’ I asked Iris, who was also a member of the London Spirituality group. ‘I’ve just seen the title of this event, I don’t know anything about it.’ Iris started to chuckle.

‘It’s like a scientific form of movement’.

‘Scientific?’

‘It’s formed from a set of principles. There are levels to it. You can get deep into the philosophy if you want, or you can just go with the music, move around and have a good time. It’s up to you. It’s based around the idea of musical semantics’.

‘Musical semantics?’

‘Different types of music gives us different feelings. All the music that you’ll hear today has been chosen to lead us to different kinds of movements and get us to different emotional states’.

Before going to the event, I managed to do a tiny amount of research. I had read words about integrating mind, body and spirit. I was worried: was BioDanza a cult? Was it a weird wealth generation scheme for those who were ‘in the know’?

‘Okay everyone. Make a big circle and hold hands. When I start the music, start moving to your right’. I blinked. It was our facilitator, Nina. I walked to the corner of the dance room and found myself next to a chap who was a similar age to me and a fascinatingly tall French woman called Lilly who was in her early twenties. Nina turned on the music. It was ‘All You Need is Love’ by The Beatles.

The circle began to move, rapidly speeding up. ‘Slower...’ warned Nina, but her instruction had no discernible effect; the rhythm and sentiment of The Beatles song was infectious: our circle had acquired a momentum all of its own. It was hard to keep hold of Lilly’s hand; she was tugging my arm up and down in time to the music.

At the end of the track, we stopped rotating and were given a new instruction: ‘what I want you to do is walk in time with the music. I want you to march. March in any direction you want, and when you pass someone, make sure you make eye contact; you can make a gesture, like this’. Nina demonstrated by throwing her arms apart and showing her palms in a welcoming jazz-hands gesture.

Nina started the music again and everyone marched everywhere at the same time; some crossed the room, some went clockwise, some anti-clockwise. We looked into each other’s eyes and threw out our arms in recognition that we were passing a fellow marcher. Everyone passed in a hectic blur of smiles and gestures. I soon became aware that I was ‘messing about’. My ‘march’ wasn’t as serious or as determined as the other marchers. I concentrated on marching sensibly and stopped my flailing disco arms.

For the next exercise we were split into three groups; three circles of seven. New music was started and our smaller circles started to rotate. ‘At any point, when the feeling takes you, move from one circle to another, touching the hands of the other people, so you can join a new circle’. It was weird, but fun. There was perpetual surprise when someone left one group and joined another. By this point, we were all getting a bit out of breath.

‘We’re going to do something about colours. I’m going to shout out a colour, and you go and find the person who is wearing that colour and you give them a shoulder massage’ I preferred the circle dancing. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. New music started. When the colour ‘blue’ was announced, I was pounced on by four women, because I was wearing a blue shirt. I was given another shoulder massage moments later because I was wearing a pair of grey trousers.

The next bit stretched my tolerance for the bizarre: ‘I’m going to shout out a part of the body, and what you’ve got to do is go over to the closest person, and dance, whilst touching that part of body of the other person’

It was then time do some ‘mirroring’. One person danced, and the other person copied, and then we swapped roles. ‘This is where the science bit comes in’, said Nina. ‘When you mirror, you have to think about new ways of movement, and this helps us all to create new neural pathways in our brain; it’s all about neuroscience’.

We then did ‘dancing in pairs’ to newer faster music. For this part of the evening, opposite sex dancing was encouraged, mainly to balance our ‘yin’ and our ‘yang’. We danced whilst holding hands, before moving onto a new partner. I started to enjoy myself. I kept meeting Lilly and Iris who were both wearing huge grins. I was wearing one too.

It was then time to sit down and recover for a bit. Nina put on a classical waltz.

‘In this bit, you learn to be free. To make a bit more space, half of us are going to do it and the other half are going to sit down and watch. I’ll just show you what to do’.

Nina stepped into the middle of the dance floor, flapped her arms like a bird and did some neat turns, making it all up. ‘Can we have all the people who have been here before?’ Half the group stood up and took a space on the dance floor. Nina started the music. Everyone lurched, and turned and flapped, and spun. I tried to pick out Iris and Lilly amidst the dancing tumult. Whenever I found them, my sight of them was immediately occluded by another lurching and flapping dancer.

Then it was my go. I felt like an idiot, but I didn’t care.

Nina had two more things in store for us. Nina put on a gentle lilting pop song: it was time for the group hug. We all gathered in a small circle, and put our arms around our neighbour. The regulars had closed their eyes, trying to find some peace and tranquillity, whereas the newbies where looking around, all bug eyed, sharing expressions of uncomfortable bafflement.  The circle started to sway in time to the music whilst the track went on for a very uncomfortable three minutes. At the end of the track, the circle dissolved.

Nina then put on a faster track, and we were encouraged to give an individual hug to every single member of the group. I gave and received twenty hugs. When all the hugging was done, we messed around, doing some more ‘dance marching’, jazz hands and offering eye contact.

When this final track came to an end, everyone clapped. It was time to go to the pub. I liked Biodanza.

Fifty eight – London writers’ café

One word best describes my journey to Liverpool Street Station: hectic. I was on my scooter again, surrounded by buses, taxis and cyclists. Rush hour was in full swing. I stopped at a junction. A swarm of pedestrians crossed; the city’s workers were heading home.

I knew where I was going. I needed to turn right onto a side street where I could park. I was going to a pub that was opposite an office where I visited Meetup number thirty five; the event that had the talk about the ‘random walk’.

‘Hello, are you Lucy?’ I asked.

Lucy, our host, gave me a smile. I confessed that I had joined at the very last minute and hadn’t paid the fifteen pounds Meetup fee. Lucy said that it was okay, and that we could settle up at the end. I sat down at a table and introduced myself to other members of the group. I sat opposite Amber who had written an eighty five thousand word erotic novel. There was Julie, who had written a science fiction and horror novel, but needed to do lots of editing.  On my left was Natalie, who had also written a novel, but was struggling to find the time to do any more writing; she was a full time city lawyer. I confessed to everyone that I was writing some ‘nonsense non-fiction’.

After fifteen minutes of chatter, it was time for our speaker: a professional editor called Sebastian, who used to work for some of the ‘world’s most prestigious publishing houses’. Seb, as we knew him, looked a bit like a hipster. He wore a light tightly fitting sports jacket, a smart tailored shirt, skinny jeans, and a pair of expensive shoes. Seb also sported a hipster beard and what was undoubtedly a very expensive haircut. His slick and tailored appearance made me feel jealous and self-conscious; my Doc Marten Chelsea boots had acquired a hole that had started to let in the winter rain, and the cuff of my winter jumper had started to fray.

The Meetup was all about editing. I quickly learnt that there were four types: structural edits (which are pretty major; where an editor offers you constructive advice), line edits (to change and enhance phrasing), copy editing (which is all about punctuation and grammar), and proof reading.

‘When you get to the proof reading or copy editing stage, you shouldn’t really be making many changes’, explained Seb.

Seb mainly worked on children’s books. He talked through an example of some ‘structural editing advice’ that he gave one of his clients. ‘Although this is structural, sometimes you can’t help but dive into the other levels to suggest changes here and there’, he said, working through an example. His comments were wordy as well as direct; they had a slight literary feel to them.

He returned to one example time and time again: the Harry Potter books and the work of J K Rowling. I don’t like Harry Potter. I’ve tried to read fantasy books before, and I just can’t get into them. I don’t see the point. In fact, I struggle to read any fiction these days. My reasons are simple: there are so many fascinating and interesting things happening in real life that I find it hard to understand why we have to invent even more crazy stories. I do, however, appreciate some of the arguments: through fiction you can express and feel emotion; you can connect and discuss stories with others. I also understand that a novel is vehicle through which you can play with and explore language and I get the point that you can learn about the perspectives of others. You could also make the point that all fiction comes from real life anyway. These things said, I still don’t buy into the dream of wizards who go study magic at a nonsense public school, but there isn’t any denying the fact that J K Rowling struggled for her art and is now stupendously rich.

‘When it comes to writing’ said Seb, ‘a great tip is to show, not tell’. This was a phrase that stuck in my mind. When I was writing about all these events, was I already doing this? Were there instances when I should do more?

It was time for the question and answer session. I looked around. There were now around forty budding novelists in the room. I was struck by the gender difference. Eighty percent of the group were women. One of the questions was: ‘how do I go about finding an editor?’ This led onto a longer discussion about self-publishing, internet shysters, literary agents and the role of luck.

‘What happens if you don’t like what your editor says?’ one writer asked.

Seb had a very good answer: writers need to trust their personal instinct and their inner voice. He made the point that if a publisher has agreed to take you onto their books this means that they are investing in you and your work, and this is an expression of trust. At that point, Seb argued, you should feel able to stand your ground.

At the end of the session, everyone gave Seb a big round of applause. He had done well. He had talked for well over an hour and the feeling in the room suggested that the London Writers’ Café event had been a resounding success. With words of ‘good luck’ and ‘see you again’, the majority of writers climbed out of the pub basement where the event was held, and made their way home.

I caught up with Lucy at the bar. I was surprised to learn that her group was nine years old; one of the oldest groups I had been to. Lucy, however, had been running it for five. She didn’t start the group; she took it over from someone else and had made it her own. Whenever a group loses a leader, or ‘steps down’, someone can ‘step into the breach’, start pay the group fees and take it over. Lucy’s group now had well over three thousand members. With events happening six times a month, she’s clearly onto something. Like Eddie’s ‘fill my weekend’ group, Lucy’s group had become a source of income: her events are there to serve a particular community, but also to make some money too. A side effect of all this is, of course, a great set of contacts and networks.

Before I left I had also found a bit of time to chat with Seb, who had been very busy chatting with many of the other writers. ‘Check out the artists and writers handbook’, he said.

Outside, I donned my high visibility jacket, zipped up my biker’s jacket and put on my helmet. I had learnt some stuff. I had never realised that there were so many people out there who were chasing the dream of becoming published.

I looked at my watch. It was getting late. Thankfully the streets were now a lot quieter. I fired up my scooter’s engine, set off, and immediately got lost around the streets of Aldgate.

Fifty seven – London art and cultural exhibitions

I finished my spreadsheets; everything was in order: my timetables were done. My brain was tired; there was nothing more I could sensibly do on a Friday afternoon other than have another cup of tea and walk aimlessly around the office disrupting colleagues.

I looked at the clock at the corner of my computer screen. It was time to roll the dice. I tapped my phone and looked at the result: a short tube ride, followed by a five minute walk. Easy.

‘Are you Erik?’ I asked a man who was wearing a grey parka jacket.

‘Yes! How are you?’ Erik offered me a broad smile and his hand.

We were stood by the information desk at the British Museum. Whenever I come to the museum, I’m always struck by the interior of the atrium area, which is known as the Great Court. Above us hung a vast glass roof that appeared to be gently draped over a central tower, creating a light airy space.

There were five of us; four guys and one woman. One chap, called Harry, had also come straight from work.  Another guy was in London as a part of a project he was working on. There was also a retired artist called Colin who was enjoying a day out.

‘Do you know much about this subject?’ Harry asked. The Meetup had the title: The Parthenon Marbles Spotlight Tour. The Elgin marbles had recently been in the news because the British Museum had loaned some of its exhibits to a Museum in St Petersburg. A couple of months earlier there had been reports of Russian bombers flying close to British airspace, testing air defences. The arguments for loans were simple to understand: art and culture should transcend politics and national sabre rattling.

‘I don’t know much. Obviously, I’ve heard a bit about the marbles, but I don’t know too much about them. History isn’t really my subject’.

Erik gently ushered us across the great court and towards a gallery entrance, where we loitered until our tour guide arrived. Our guide was about six foot tall, wore prominent black glasses and sported a tidy hipster beard. I immediately took an irrational dislike to him because he looked outrageously cool.

‘Hello everyone, my name is Ben, and I’m your guide. I work here as a volunteer for the British Museum, but I’m a teacher in my day job. I’ll be taking you through two different galleries and telling you about the Parthenon and something about the exhibits that you’ll see. When you’re walking about, do be aware of your surroundings since this is the biggest ever group I’ve had!’ Ben had a clear, commanding and authoritative voice. We followed him to the first gallery, which had a model of the Parthenon.

‘A key year in the story of the Parthenon is 479bc’, he began. Ben spoke about the Persian wars, the Peloponnesian league and the Athenian Empire.  He told us that it was made from marble, and described it as an astonishing gleaming and shimmering building, that was finished in 432bc. Much of what Ben said went over my head: I didn’t have the historical frameworks or knowledge to connect to what he was saying, but I was enjoying how he said it.

We moved to the main gallery where the Elgin marbles were housed. We stood by what I later discovered was the Selene Horse, which was carefully lit to highlight its bulging eyes and gaping mouth. Ben told us a story about the horse, but it was difficult to hear due to the crowd and the acoustics. Everyone then walked towards a sculpture which depicted a fight between a man and a Centaur. A heroic death, we are told, is one where we are naked.

‘Imagine the worst possible bar room brawl!’ enthused Ben, talking about fights that were presented in other sculptures. He was becoming passionate and animated. Through his words, the statues in front of me were becoming more life-like, showed more action, and were becoming more important.

As we walked through the gallery, Ben told us about the later history of the Parthenon. It became a church, and then under the Ottoman Empire became a Mosque, before being partially destroyed when the Venetians attacked Athens.

As Ben was talking, I was struck by a thought: ‘Could I do that job? Could I become a tour guide? Could I inject inanimate objects with humanity and excitement?’ I thought of a new computing gallery in the Science Museum that I had yet to visit. Another question was: would I want to do that job? It was something I had never considered before.

Ben finished his talk. Everyone clapped. He had done very well, and I had learnt some stuff; my feelings of dislike had dissipated; Ben had won me over.

The Meetup group reformed around our illustrious leader, Erik. It turned out that this was Erik’s first time hosting an event. Erik had apparently been doing a bit of research into Athens and the Parthenon. He had seen the tour advertised at the museum, contacted the group owners, and asked whether he could run something, and they agreed.

We wandered around the gallery, as a group, for around twenty minutes. As we looked at various exhibits, I remembered that Erik had mentioned the poet Lord Byron on the event description. I asked him about it. I turned out that Erik was studying the works of Byron and was a bit of an expert.

‘Byron was really angry about what Elgin had done; he had even written about it in one of his poems’

‘That's interesting... There’s an interesting connection between Byron and computers...’ I said, thinking out loud. Erik looked at me strangely. ‘Byron had a daughter who is considered to be the world’s first ever computer programmer’. I paused, noticing that all other members of the group had tuned into our conversation. ‘Apparently, she was discouraged from studying poetry, or arty stuff, since this had made her father into a bad man, so she was encouraged to study mathematics instead’.

I suddenly had an audience. Even though I was in the wrong museum, I talked about Victorian computation engines, gambling, time, astronomy and drugs, whilst feeling slightly guilty that I had inadvertently dragged discussions to my pet subject.

Ten minutes later, we found ourselves at a coffee shop in the Great Court. For the next half an hour we talked about tea bags, the growth in the cake industry, aliens, beards, visual theory, hipsters, the actor Brad Pitt, chimneys and tattoos.

Fifty six – Python for Quant Finance

I missed the Richmond Scenic Cycling event; I had been working constantly: there had been an emergency at the office. I needed to chat to human resources, figure out procedures, speak with colleagues and send endless emails. A part of me screamed: ‘You must go to a Meetup! Forget your job! Your quest is what is important now!’ I felt anxious and started to imagine scenes where I were pulled into a meeting and asked an inevitable question: ‘So, why don’t our students have a tutor? Where is their support? Isn’t this your job to organise things?’

I was putting myself under pressure with the quest and the pressure of my job was growing. For two days, I had got up at eight in the morning and shut the computer down at nine at night. I did this because I wanted a whole day to myself so I could go to a daytime Meetup. Number fifty six, I told myself, would be my reward after I had solved a whole raft of issues.

‘Can I have you name please?’ asked the receptionist of a multinational financial information company.

‘I’m not on the list. I signed up at the eleventh hour’, I said, showing the receptionist my phone, which contained an email notification. I again applied the tactic of hiding the line that said I was on the waiting list. She nodded, satisfied. ‘Sit down over there. Sarah will be with you in a moment to show you upstairs’. The receptionist gestured to leather chairs that were an extraordinarily long way away from the reception area.

Just as I had sat down, Sarah arrived. Sarah took myself and two other people through security. I was impressed. I gave my name and showed my driving licence so they could check who I said I was. They then took a picture of me and handed me a personalised visitor badge.

After passing a security guard, I took an escalator to what appeared to be a busy café area, where I then met another security guard. I asked for some directions, and then went down a flight of stairs to what appeared to be a cavernous area that must only be used for speeches and entertaining.

I then caught sight of a meeting room. I could see people setting up laptops. I went inside. I had found my destination.

The Meetup was all about Python for Quants. Python is a general purpose computer programming language that is becoming increasingly popular. It’s also a language that I have never used and didn't know very much about. ‘Quants’, which is short for ‘quantitative’, is a label used for city and banking whizz-kids who use computers to process data and crunch numbers. Taking a more cynical view, quants are super-clever maths and physics geeks who create systems that could inadvertently destabilise the global economy.

‘Okay, thanks for coming everyone!’ announced Stefan, the group founder and hack-fest leader. ‘You would have probably seen a list of projects on the group website. I’ve suggested data analytics, risk management, visualisations, data streaming and automated trading, but there might be others that you want to look at. Perhaps we could just go around everyone to ask what you’re interested in?’

There were twelve of us. Data analytics (whatever that meant) was popular, but there was a smaller group that was interested in automated trading. It was soon my turn. Honesty, I thought, was the best policy.

‘Hello everyone, I’ve never used Python before, and I’m not a quant, and I don’t know much about how Python is used by Quants… and that’s why I’m here.’ I looked around the room. There was silence. Stefan’s expression was one of faint bemusement. ‘I am, however, a former Java developer…’ I immediately wondered how that would go down. I paused for a moment, assessing the room. I wondered what Python developers thought of Java developers. ‘I can leave now, if you want...!’ I said. Everyone laughed; the ice had been broken.

After the ‘introductions by way of projects’, Stefan gave us a quick demo of a baffling bunch of software tools that I had never seen before. He talked about on-line plotting libraries and how to code web apps. I was assaulted by new terms: data as a service, analytics as a service and Python running in a ‘flask’. Some of it I followed, most of it I missed. Plus, I started to feel like an idiot: I sorely regretted not bringing my laptop since it was clear that I needed to try stuff out.

Towards the end of Stefan’s demo, we were introduced to some freely available data sources. Thousands of stock price numbers flashed across an overhead projector. Functions were written to put numbers into data stores that were then magically converted into graphs. Neat lines were added to show trends. I felt as if I was being exposed to an entirely new subject; a new dimension of computing that I knew existed but I had never properly engaged with.

It was time to work on our projects, but the hackers didn’t really know one another. Silence hung steadily in the room, each visitor pushing buttons on their own laptop, everyone collectively and silently trying to figure out how all these new tools worked.

I chatted to Krishna, who sat on my right. Krishna used to work in a bank, but was currently self-employed, and enjoyed messing around with Python. He was interested in algorithmic trading. I asked him about the ‘kind of strategies’ he wanted to implement, and he rattled off a whole set of names, one of which I remembered from the ‘Women who Code’ Meetup; something about software looking that the rate at which share prices change.

Saban, who sat on my left, was interested in ‘BitCoin arbitrage’. A BitCoin is a set of numbers which you can ‘own’ which have been discovered (or ‘mined’) by a magic algorithm. As far as I understand it, these numbers can then be bought and sold on exchanges for ‘real’ money. Saban realised that different BitCoin exchanges advertise different rates. His project was to figure out how to visualise the differences between various exchanges with a view to finding discrepancies.

I remembered something else I picked up from the ‘Women who Code’ group: since different exchanges advertise different rates, if you do trades fast enough to exploit these differences, you can make money. This made me think about a couple of related questions: ‘who do these actions or trades ultimately impact?’ and ‘what is money?’ I never studied economics, but the longer that I sat in that room, the more ignorant I felt.

‘Okay, who wants some lunch?’ announced Stefan into silence that was punctuated only by the tapping of keys.

Lunch was great; several platters of fancy sandwiches, rocket and parmesan salad, beetroot and quinoa seasoned with herbs, moistened with Italian extra virgin olive oil. It was a lunch that was good enough for banking executives. I felt lucky. Although there weren’t any chocolate brownies to finish (which was a disappointment), there was a fruit platter followed by a round of coffees.

After lunch, I felt I needed to learn more. I sat next to a chap called Martin who was pulling together different software components so he could do some data visualisation and to help with the ‘pricing of options’. Martin explained that an option is a right to buy an ‘instrument’. I was then told that an ‘instrument’ could be equities (or, company shares, as I know them). I was soon very lost. Martin was talking about volatility, intrinsic values and strike prices. He wanted to use Python to create a three dimensional graph which had three axes: time, volatility and moneyness. The idea was that graphs show up anomalies and help traders to understand what is going on in a market. I was thoroughly baffled. There was a huge amount of detail that I didn’t know about and wasn’t able to grasp.

After my eyes had glazed over, and had supped my way through another cup of free coffee, I had a chat with Stefan who ran the group. Stefan was originally from Germany and had flown in especially for the event. He worked as a consultant, offering training and advice to financial institutions. His event (and group) was all about sharing expertise, networking and making contacts.  He had started the group around eight months earlier and over four hundred Python and Quant people who had registered. He had hosted over ten events. Some events had been training sessions that you would pay for, other events were ‘hack days’ like this one. He even ran an event that was centred around Python and beer.

As we talked, Stefan showed me some of the mathematical features of Python; clever bits of the language that let programmers to ask the computer to solve and simplify equations. I had never seen a freely available programming language do this kind of thing before. This connected with something that I had picked up on: that Python was colonising a space in the software landscape that was once occupied by commercial companies. It was a computing tool that had a fan base, and this group was a reflection of the enthusiasm that some people had about the language.

For a couple of hours, everyone worked on their different projects. Stefan moved between different people, offering advice and commenting on their evolving projects. In some ways, the event wasn’t too dissimilar from one of the programming laboratories that I used to go to when I was an undergrad.

The main thing that I got from this event (other than the great sandwiches) was the knowledge that I didn’t want to work as a quant. Python looked kind of cool, and was pretty interesting, but I ended up being more confused about how financial markets worked than I started.

Fifty five – London for less than a tenner

‘I’m not going to go to anything that’s energetic’ said Mary.

‘If it’s something sporty then we’ll have to ‘bank’ it, and then go visit the group when we've got whatever stuff we need’.

My friend Mary, who was tagging along to one of my ‘randoms’, wasn’t impressed. The situation was ‘getting real’ and I was starting to worry about how the dynamics of having a guest along for the randomness ride might change things: I was used to rushing about and throwing myself into situations. I didn’t want Mary to feel uncomfortable but I then reminded myself feeling uncomfortable was the whole point.

‘Okay, are you ready?’

‘Yes! I’m ready!’

I touched the ‘calendar’ button and the ‘all groups’ calendar started to load. It was half past seven in the evening. We would go to the first event at eight o’clock. The early afternoon events came up. I scrolled down; there were loads of events that started at seven o’clock. Then it was half past. The phone paused to reload more data. I looked up.

‘What is it?’ asked Mary, impatiently.

‘It’s still loading…’ I went back to staring intently at the screen, willing it to yield its secrets. ‘Yes! That’s it! Let me… Okay, we’re going to New Cross; a comedy night in the Amersham Arms!’ I had never been to a comedy night in New Cross before, and neither had Mary.

‘Okay, how do we get there?’

‘Let me ask Google... Google says we catch the Northern from Camden Town, and then a train from London Bridge. Let’s go!’ I was aware that we were pushing it in terms of time.

‘Awesome!’ exclaimed Mary. Mary loved comedy. In fact Mary was a part time open mic comic. The irony that I was taking comic Mary to see a night of joke telling wasn’t one that had escaped me.

When were at London Bridge train station, I joined the Meetup group and looked for more information. I had vaguely heard of The Amersham Arms before, and I had a hunch that it was close to New Cross train station.

Fifteen minutes later, we were at the station and could see the sign of the pub. After a mad dash to find a cash point, we dived into the pub, and entered a huge performance area. It was packed. The MC was warming up the crowd. She was a comic that I recognised from TV panel shows. I walked to the table where tickets were sold.

‘Good to see you, Chris! Thanks for coming down!’ said the man at the table. It took me a few moments to realise that I had met him before, but I had no idea what his name was. ‘Ah, don’t worry’ he said, when he saw me getting out my wallet. He stamped my hand, and then Mary’s. We were in. For free.

I looked around. There were around two hundred people. Every single seat was taken. There was a high stage, lights, huge speakers and a booth for the lighting and sound engineers. All walls were painted black. It was part way between a ‘room in a pub with a mic’ and a proper theatre. When the MC had finished chatting to the audience she introduced the opener: an affable and friendly Irish comedian who clearly took the ridiculous seriously.

‘This is ace!’ said Mary, smiling, handing me a pint. ‘Randomness! Love it!’

In the first of two intervals I spoke with the man on the desk about the Meetup group. I needed to meet the organiser. I asked a few people at the bar whether they knew anything about him and his group but no one knew what I was talking about. Mary had made a couple of ‘smoking friends’. I asked them too: they hadn’t heard of the group either.

There were two comics on in the second act, both doing twenty minute sets. The first one was a tall chap who said that his face suggested that he worked with computers (he didn’t). The second one had routines about why people who drink ‘ale’ were pretentious idiots and why eating a pear, on the street, at three o’clock in the morning was a little bit weird (he had a point).

In the second interval, I decided to have a pint of ale, and continued to wander around to try to meet the Meetup host, despite not knowing what he looked like.

‘Hello! I recognise you!’ I had found someone standing close to the front of the stage who I had met before, in the South East London meetup group.

‘I recognise you too! But I can’t remember your name!’ It soon turned out that it was Sally; the same Sally who had been to Tommi’s Kitchen in Deptford. Sally introduced me to Terry (or Tez), the group organiser.

The headliner was a TV comic who had also appeared on panel shows. He talked about satnav systems on planes, going to school in Cornwall, and people who have posh names.

After the gig a group of Meetup people coalesced at the front of the pub. I chatted to Simon from Blackburn, who worked in IT. There was Ashaf who was a drummer and percussionist, and James, who worked as a mental health carer. Everyone lived in roughly the same part of London.

Tez's group has been going for three years and it had over four and a half thousand members. After a split from his girlfriend, he has recently been starting to run more events. These included visits to theatres, tours of galleries, and music events. The group, it turned out, was a regular visitor to the Amersham Arms. Tez was a great host: friendly, approachable and clearly an extrovert.

I looked at my watch: it was way past eleven. We needed to go. Mary had to get back to North London, and we didn’t know whether she had missed the last train to Highbury and Islington. Mary power walked to New Cross station, and I jumped on a bus to Lewisham.

Fifty four – Fill my weekend

The room was packed; there were about thirty or forty people standing: all the stools were taken. I looked around; it was hard to take everything in. Every wall and every empty space was adorned with paintings of white people. To the left of me was a chap who I had been chatting to: Eddie, who was ridiculously tall, worked in finance doing something called Risk Management.

‘You been to the National Portrait Gallery before?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, but it’s been ages’.

‘I’m a bit nervous about this. I can’t really draw. I got twelve percent in my last art exam’.

I remember when I had to do a painting for a high school exam. Twenty seven years later, I’m still upset. My painting was resoundingly terrible. One question that remains unanswered is: what was so good about it that I managed to get that twelve percent? After all, I got some marks for it. Was it the black and white zebra stockings that I studiously painted and then spectacularly smudged? Was it the cartoon eyes and bulbous nose, and a ridiculous ‘pink’ skin tone of our subject? I remain puzzled.

We were attending a ‘free instructed drawing session’. Before the event I had rushed into a stationery shop to buy some paper, an inappropriate pencil and an eraser. I wasn’t looking forward to event in the slightest. I would have rather gone to a talk about Jesus.

‘Thanks for coming everyone; it’s great to see so many people here tonight. Before we begin it’s important that we’re mindful of where we are standing or sitting, and to be aware of all the frames and statues. We’re all packed in here, so it’s important not to knock anything.’

Everyone looked around. I was inches away from a painting that was obviously a national treasure.

‘Tonight we’re going to focus on light and shade.’

Our instructor was in his late forties, wore a scruffy blue T-shirt and sported a salt and pepper beard that was on the cusp of being overgrown.

‘One really important thing that you need to be aware of is contrast. Let me show you what I mean.’ Our tutor held up three pieces of card: one was white, another was black, and a third was grey. ‘Here we have the contrasts between different tones. If we only have two, things look very different. If we have three, you can see that the contrast between the tones is emphasised, so in some ways, you don’t just see three tones, you see four’. He was losing me. I counted the tones, I could count only three.

‘What we’re going to be looking at is the contrast between the foreground and the background. If we all have a look at that Reynolds just over there, you can see what I mean; the background is as important as the foreground.  Can you see how the background is very very dark, perhaps darker than it would be in real life, and this emphasises that the light is falling on the figure. Also think about the direction where the light is coming from.’ Other than the speaker, the room was silent.

‘Now, if we have a look at the painting over there…’ he gestured towards where I was standing. I was blocking the view of a painting. I tried to move out of the way, but it was futile. I decided to crouch down.

‘Here you have a really good example. Can you see how the dark shaded background really emphasises the foreground? In some respects, the hair is darker than the background too, which also adds emphasis; it’s the difference between the tones that creates contrast between the different aspects, just like the card. There’s also the cat. Do you see the cat? That cat is like a shape. When you’re looking at things, don’t see things as what they are, just view them as abstract shapes – and that’s what each of these paintings are’. I looked at the cat. I could see that the cat was, indeed, a shape, and it wasn’t actually very detailed; that the shape of the cat had somehow communicated ‘essence of cat-ness’ to my brain’. He turned around.

‘And over here, you’ve got another really good example. Can you see, again, where there is contrast, light and shade? And the darkness over there, which is really dark, but that bit which isn’t as dark which then emphasises the lightness of the shade’.

Minutes later, we joined a queue to collect some sheets of paper, a piece of stiff card (for a drawing board), some sensible pencils and a piece of graphite. I was still amazed that I hadn’t paid anything to do this. When we had gathered our supplies, we wandered about the gallery to choose a painting to copy. Every painting I saw appeared to be profoundly difficult. There were men wearing wigs and women with huge dresses. After two circuits of the gallery and an increasing level of bewilderment, I sat down at a place that didn’t have too many people.

I found myself opposite a portrait of William Dampier, painted by Thomas Murray.  Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times. He had striking features: a long nose, sad tired eyes, and shoulder length hair that rested on his lapels.

I remembered a piece of advice an art teacher had once told me (in the days before I was awarded twelve percent). When I was called up to have my work assessed he said, ‘your drawings are really small and perhaps this is because you’re quiet? Use all the paper; when it comes to drawing don’t be afraid to make some noise’.

Before me was the tyranny of the empty page. I started with a book (since that had some easy straight lines), added a sleeve, then moved to the other sleeve, lightly sketched out a shape of a head, and could see where his shoulders were emerging.

I remembered the words of our instructor: look for the darkness and the shadow. I picked up the graphite and started to copy the blackness that I saw: I could see glimpses about how Murray was creating light. I teased the graphite over the area of my page that was to be Dampier’s jacket, and looked at his waist coat, which was a red colour.  I had no idea about how to practically translate the world of colour to a world of monochrome. What depth of grey would that red have to be? I was starting to get frustrated.

‘How you getting along?’ I looked up. It was Eddie.

‘Hey! That’s good, man! I thought you said that you couldn’t draw! You ought to see mine… Mine is terrible. Look.’ Eddie unrolled his sketch; all I saw was a couple of incomprehensible lines that he quickly flashed before me. He was right; it was terrible.

‘I’m really embarrassed. It’s amazing what other people are doing. You seen them? Absolutely amazing!’

Eddie encouraged me to continue. I hit the point where I had to draw Dampier’s face, as otherwise I would spend the evening drawing a faceless ghost. The shape was wrong; I used the graphite on his hair a bit more. I used my pencil and put his eyes in the wrong place, but then I changed my approach. I asked myself the questions ‘where are the shadows’ and ‘where is the darkness’. I suddenly ‘got’ how to draw his nose to get roughly the right shape. I figured out that I shouldn’t think of his lips as lips, but a dark line, from which emanates other shadows and shading. Within a painting which is made up of contrasts, I could see other contrasts.

‘How are we doing?’ I looked up. It was our teacher. I had mixed feelings: I wanted him to look, but I just wanted to hide it away; I didn’t want him to say ‘I wouldn’t give that more than twelve percent’.

‘Ah, you’re doing him, okay, good. I can see your shade, and there’s the contrast. That’s beautiful. Really well observed. Good!’ I uttered a bashful ‘thanks’ and then went back to messing around with my pencil.

Did I hear this correctly? Did an art teacher from the National Portrait Gallery actually say that he thought my drawing was ‘really well observed?’ Was I dreaming? Had I really improved by doing absolutely bugger all for over twenty years? Did he really not think that the eyes were in the wrong place and my rendition of Dampier’s huge nose was patently ridiculous? I acquired a feeling that can only be described as ‘astonished proudness’.

Half an hour later, I got bored with Dampier. I couldn’t see how I could improve my sketch any further. I looked at another nearby painting. It was of a bearded old man who appeared to be wrapped in a set of red velvet curtains. I got my pad out and started again, but it was difficult going; I was on the floor, and the painting was really high on the wall. I needed a chair. With fifteen minutes to go, I decided to give up and have a walk around the gallery. Eddie was right: some of the drawings made by other people were awesome.

I handed in my pencil, graphite stick and drawing board, and then went to wash my hands; they were a shiny grey colour. I found Eddie sitting by the entrance. We watched the other students packing up their stuff.

‘You coming to the pub?’ Eddie asked.

Ten minutes later, I was at The Chandos, a pub across the road from The National Portrait Gallery, with a couple of other ‘artists’.

‘Are, you, erm, a part of the group?’ I asked a young looking chap who was standing close to the bar.

‘Yes, I’m the organiser.’

Our organiser was called Simon. I asked Simon about his group.

‘I started it ten months ago. I wanted to go along to some events myself, but I didn’t have anyone to go with, so I created a group, and other people came along. There are now ten thousand people in the group’.

‘You have ten thousand people in your group?’ I was more accustomed to going to groups that had a couple of hundred people. The Laughter Yoga group had no more than two hundred. This might explain why there were so many people had come along to the event, and why Simon had looked so worried at the start.

‘Yes, it’s been the fastest growing group in London for a couple of months now’.

It turned out that Simon had quit his job in IT to focus only on running events. He organised a New Year’s Eve party for over two hundred people. I later looked at his group and he had announced over thirty events: rock climbing, boat trips, theatre trips, more drawing events, and the occasional comedy night. He ran something every couple of days. This was now Simon’s full time job and he went to every single event. I was equally surprised and impressed. I liked Simon. He came across as professional, friendly and confident. He also seemed to be surrounded by an enthusiastic entourage.

I was also surprised at my drawing of Dampier and the fat man who was dressed in curtains. The words ‘well observed’ resonated in my mind all the way home.

When I got home, I took another look at my sketch. It was a pretty poor sketch, but had my art teacher seen it today I’m sure she would have given me more than twelve percent. What’s more, I had gained a slight insight into why some people might enjoy sketching.

Fifty three – Teddington Laughter and Relaxation

I roughly knew the route: a scooter ride on the South Circular to Clapham, picking up a road that eventually leads to the south coast, coming off at a junction that heads towards Kingston.

Kingston is a part of London that I used to know pretty well; I grew up there as a teenager. I had been expecting the early morning traffic to be dire, but I made steady and consistent progress. A part of the journey gave way to a short stretch of dual carriageway; a geographic reflection that I was starting to explore the boundaries of the city.

My destination was the Langdon Down centre, which was apparently known for its Victorian theatre and the Langdon Down Museum of Learning Disability. Despite living in the area for six years and cycling past the centre every day, I had no idea it existed. John Langdon Down was a physician who was born in 1828. Down set up a home where the well to do upper classes could send their relatives who had learning disabilities. Today the centre that bears his name is also Headquarters of the Down’s Syndrome Association.

I parked my scooter and walked to a large entrance. I knocked on the door. A woman was stood on a chair, fiddling with a fire alarm system.

‘Do you know if Nina is here?’

The woman appeared confused.

‘I’m here for the yoga’.

‘Ah, you want to go into that room; down there, on the left’.

I asked a few more questions. Since I was early I thought it would be interesting to have a quick look around the museum. It was closed. It opened again in February and could only be visited on a Saturday. I made a mental note.

‘Are you Chris?’ It was Nina, our laughter yoga teacher. ‘Thanks for coming! It’s great to have you here! I did ask one of the other men in the group whether he could come down, but I think you might be the only one – is that okay?’ I smiled and said it was fine. I was in two minds about going to another yoga class, mostly because the previous one I went to was insufferably weird: new age talk of energy and supernatural healing powers isn’t my thing.  I was slightly worried about anything that was called yoga, but a quest is a quest.

Ten minutes later, we were all assembled. There were eight of us. I estimated that the average age of the group was around fifty five. One member stood out; Cath, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties.

Nina can only be described as a force of nature. We began with some stretches. ‘Pretend that you’re grabbing all the negativity from the previous year, and you’re throwing it away, so you’re making a whole new start’. As we stood, we made extravagant swimming motions, pretending to do a front crawl. I didn’t mind the stretches: I had been to the gym the previous day, so was feeling a bit stiff. The Kundalini yoga didn’t have any stretches. This was going well.

We moved onto some chants which combined with an ice breaker: ‘ho ho ho, ha ha ha, my name is Chris, and I had porridge for breakfast’. Nina had come armed with a black bin bag filled with balloons. ‘Grab a balloon and walk around the room, hitting yourself with it! Like this!’ demonstrating clearly what was expected of us. ‘Make eye contact with the other people who you pass!’ For some, the chanting had given way to spontaneous laughter.

‘Now what I want you to do, is to pretend you’re talking on a phone, in gibberish, and at the end of the conversation throw down the phone as if in disgust with a big ‘HA!’’. Everyone walked around the room talking on an imaginary phone, the ‘ha’s’ of disgust echoing from the ceiling.

It was time for us all to assemble in a circle. ‘Now, each of us can either have a cheer, or you can have a balloon massage; it’s up to you. With the cheer, cheer like you’re celebrating that the person in the centre has made it to the new year.  Who wants to go first?’

I asked the inevitable question: ‘what’s a balloon massage?’

‘Ah, you’ll see.’

Fran stepped forward into the centre. Everyone moved around the circle. Everyone flicked their balloons at Fran, who started to giggle. When we had returned roughly to our original location, we all cheered in unison.

‘I’ll have a cheer!’ said Sophie.

Sophie jumped into the middle of the circle and we all clapped and cheered. Sophie punched the air as if she had won a spectacularly challenging sporting event.

‘I’ll have a balloon massage’ I said. I gingerly stepped into the centre of the circle, and seven women hit me with balloons whilst cheering. It was strangely gratifying, and certainly worth the five pound entrance fee.

Each activity was punctuated by an infectious chant: ‘very good, very good, ahhhhhh!’, whilst at the same time stretching our arms above our head. There were never more than two ‘very goods’, which seemed to be strangely appropriate. Two were just right; three would have been overkill.

We were then told to lie on our backs. We could either row, or cycle; the choice was ours. In the end, we did both. Our legs made cycling motions in the air, and then we changed posture to make forward and back rowing motions. It was tiring but fun. We then were asked to lie back, and relax, where Nina started to speak in a slow calm voice.

‘Feel where your feet are touching the ground. Move this attention higher to your legs. Stop for a moment, and sense it’s connection with the ground; the solid ground. Move your attention higher, to you lower back, to your shoulders. Feel the connection with your neck and head, sensing its position. Relax any tension you feel…’

After a few moments of silence, Nina rang a bell; a pure sound resonated throughout the whole of the room.  When the ringing had stopped Nina told us that we were all amazing, that we were beings of love, and that we were awesome.

The truth is, I loved it! The balloon massage was the clear highlight, but I enjoyed the exercises, the stretching and the general messing about. I appreciated the opportunity to ‘be a little bit stupid’. In a world where we’re always trying to behave in a socially acceptable and sensible way, laughter yoga struck me as an appealing antidote. Although Nina did, for a few moments talk about ‘energies’, she did it in a way that didn’t raise a cynical eyebrow. It had a joyful innocence that was different from the mystical nonsense of the Kundalini group and had none of the coy weirdness that emanated from the Orgasmic Meditation group. This Meetup was fun.

Fifty two – Social Historic Walks

It was New Year’s Day. Despite over indulging a little more than I ought to have done on new year's eve, I felt surprisingly and unexpectedly ‘together’. My misjudged sense of wellbeing helped me to make a decision: I was going out.

My phone told me to take the DLR to Shadwell and then catch an Overground train to Shoreditch High Street.

One of my favourite ways of getting about London is the Docklands Light Railway. I sat near the front of the train and watched the urban landscape glide below me. I looked out of the window and saw warehouses and wharfs, rusted girders and mysterious water management locks. For an instant, I wondered what used to happen in these places, remembering that Deptford was a place where ships were built that were used to discover the 'new world'. I wanted to know more. I wanted to become an ‘urban explorer’; it was a feeling that continued to rise as the robotic DLR train glided through Canary Wharf station.

When I arrived at my destination, I saw a waving hand. Was this figure waving at me? I looked around and behind me; there was nobody else. The ‘waver’ turned out to be Helen, the gregarious guide from the Carpe Diem River Fleet walk. For a moment, I was confused: had I accidentally broken my rules and gone to the same group twice? No, I hadn’t: this was a different group, but one that was a lot more focussed. Helen’s Social Historic Walks group was just about walks.

‘Good to see you! How are you doing? Did you have a good Christmas?’ asked Helen. I told her that I had, and I had really enjoyed her Fleet walk, and that it had changed my scooter-commute to my office.

The focus of her walk was ‘street art in Shoreditch’. In the event description, Shoreditch was described as ‘achingly cool’, and it’s an area of the city that is gradually revealing its secrets to me, mostly through Meetup events.

‘The area where we are in right now isn’t technically Shoreditch. It’s actually Bethnal Green. I’ll let everyone know when we’ve moved between one boundary and the other. Before we begin, does anyone know where the name Shoreditch comes from?’ Helen looked around at all eighteen people who had turned up to her event. ‘Well, there was this time when holes were dug in the area so that people could make bricks, but because of the water table being what it was, these holes gradually filled with water. At the time, the area isn’t like what it is now. If you’ve got stagnant water around, it’s not going to be a very nice area, so it got the name ‘Sewer Ditch’. So, if you know anyone who has bought a posh flat around here and tell you it’s in Shoreditch, say to them: ‘oh, you mean it’s in Sewer Ditch!’’ Helen then regaled us with joyfully miserable quotes that described congealed fat, purification and dead cats.

We were led down some nearby streets where we caught sight of paintings on walls and hoardings. A psychopathic looking Santa Claus glowered down at us and a slogan suggested that Christmas was an evil capitalist conspiracy.

We walked past a building site that was cordoned off using wire mesh. People had attached locks to the mesh; simple symbols of relationships, initials adorning each lock. One lock stood out. It was painted pink and had a simple slogan. It said, ‘fuck love’. There were no initials. It was, to me, a simple symbol of heat break and rebellion.

We walked onto Bethnal Green Road, crossed the road to Club Row and then down Whitby Street where we passed some beautiful etherealpa intings; figures of heads with distant aching eyes, bubbles of colour and splashes of paint sang from the streets, creating canvas from bricks. We walked past a small piece of urban wasteland that was protected by wood and transitory graphics.

Minutes later we were on Redchurch Street; a street of fantasy figures and African animals. A mystical and brooding jungle scene was painted with blues and greens. We took a right down Boundary Street. On the corner was a restaurant. My eye briefly stole a glance through its window. It was busy. There was a large long table, every chair occupied. There were plates and drinks. Inside, New Year’s Eve seemed to be continuing. Everyone looked happy and joyful. Whilst I wasn’t unhappy, for an instant I wanted to be a part of their group, to be younger, to be having a New Year’s Day lunch in achingly cool Shoreditch.

We found ourselves in an area called Arnold Circus, and climbed a small flight of stairs where we found a bandstand. Around us we saw a circular road, some old red brick housing, and different streets leading away from the bandstand. I recognised where I was: I had seen this area on a television documentary about London. I remember an interview with a young couple who had moved into one of the apartments.

Helen told us something about the area: Arnold Circus was one of London’s oldest social housing schemes. It was constructed in 1890, and the rubble from the former slum formed the central ‘circle’. Local landmarks were pointed out: a church, a school and a huge community centre. This area was yet another surprise of London.

Within minutes we were on our way. We walked down one of the streets, past the brick tenements, and stopped for a moment. Helen had more to tell us.

‘Has anyone here heard of the social reformer, Booth?’

A couple of people put up their hands.

‘Booth is famous for his survey of London. Booth and his researchers visited different parts of London and drew these maps’. Helen showed up a copy of a map which was attached to her clipboard. It was a map of the area surrounding Arnold Circus. ‘Different colours signify how well off people were. This whole area is coloured in black; that tells us that this was an area of extreme poverty.’

As we walked onwards, I began to feel a little different. My surprising sense of wellbeing had started to dissipate to give way to what could only be a New Year’s Day hangover; I had walked the last vestiges of alcohol from my system, and I was now starting to acquire a headache that was complemented by an uneasy sense of lethargy.

We arrived at a main road. I saw what I thought was a photograph of a London street scene. I saw an image of cars, headlights, streetlights and reflections from rain soaked pavements. I recognised the shape of which might have been a Nissan, and a silhouette of a mini-van. As we crossed the road, I realised that it wasn’t a photograph, but an astonishing painting: a painting of a traffic jam for motorists who were stuck in traffic jams.  We were directed around the corner, to another space of urban waste land. The space was decorated by paintings: a collage of faces, images of skyscrapers and ominous abstract forms; hoardings were hiding the old with images that were symbols of the new.

We crossed another road; a road I instantly recognised. I had been here to see the James Brown tribute band. As we wandered along another deserted street where we saw painted posters, cheeky slogans and cartoon images with exaggerated tears, another Meetup memory was revealed to me. I recognised Tabernacle and Paul Street. I remembered my visit to the Tax accountant and the early morning coffee with entrepreneurs.

Our walk ended at Old Street station. Helen energetically thanked us all for coming along, and we all gave her a big round of applause. Ten minutes later, the remainder of the group went over to a nearby coffee shop. The Café was opposite the building that had hosted the Sports Analytics Meetup I had been to.

During our walk I had tried to chat to different people, but it proved to be difficult: everyone was so busy taking in the sights, whilst at the same time battling with New Year’s lethargy and tiredness. In the café, things were different: everyone chatted freely. I chatted with Daniella, an Italian banker and Sue who was very proud of her free bus pass.

‘It’s one of the few advantages of getting old!’ she enthused, telling me about her plan to travel across the country using different bus companies.

I also found out a bit more about Helen. Helen, it seemed, worked ‘in digital’, for a disability charity.  I also learnt that the Social Walks group was her group, but she sometimes moonlighted for other groups, which explained how come we had previously met at the Cape Diem group. We talked about Meetups, photography, frozen peacock feathers, hot chocolate, Christmas, life hacks and London.

‘So, what’s your next one?’ asked Helen. It was still relatively early in the day. Although I was tired and a touch hung over, the next couple of hours could be considered to be ‘free time’. I got out my phone from my jacket pocket. Sue, Helen and Daniella all looked at me intently.

‘Does anyone know how to play chess?’

Fifty one – Farringdon Legal

I sat down on the stone wall that formed the perimeter of Leicester Square. I was ridiculously early. I was so early that I had around an hour and a half to kill before I met up with my date, Isabella. Isabella was Italian. It was date date night. From what I remembered, Isabella was a language teacher; she taught both English and Italian, and I had an idea for a brilliant and interesting date; I would take her to a half-English, half-Italian comedy night.

My phone flashed, telling me that I had a new message: ‘I apologise I am afraid I won’t be able to make it this evening as I am feeling unwell. Sore throat and cold.’ Isabella’s terse message was punctuated with a number of sad face emoticons. I sent a reply back, saying it was okay; but I was grumpy. I didn’t appreciate being stood up.

After a minute of feeling sorry for myself, I pulled myself together: I now had some unexpected free time. I opened up the app and applied the ‘half hour rule’: the first event I saw at half past six was a Christmas party for lawyers.

The event was described in a mere two sentences: ‘an end of year blow out with plenty of booze and the odd Santa hat. We will also briefly look forward to the New Year and the legal opportunities and challenges for start-ups.’ The address was weird.  All I had was the name ‘Club Workspace’, a postcode and the instructions that it was ‘off Chancery Lane’. That didn’t matter. I was going.

After battling through a couple of Tube lines, I emerged from Chancery Lane underground station and started to walk towards Holborn. When I got to the first junction, I looked up to try to find a street sign. I was in the right place. Glancing down at my phone, I figured out that I had to walk half way down Chancery Lane ‘and turn left’.

‘Excuse me… Do you happen to know where Club Workspace is?’ I was standing in a cavernous reception area in a building that I had visited fifteen years earlier to meet an IT recruitment consultant. The security guard frowned. He looked over to his co-worker  ‘Club Workspace?’ he asked. His colleague slowly shook his head. I thanked them both and returned to the street.

I walked down a side street and saw light coming from an open door of what appeared to look like a shared office complex. I popped inside, asked the same question, but the guard on this second office hadn’t heard of it either. ‘Perhaps try that place at the end of the street.  You know, down there?’ gesturing roughly to where I had just come from.

I decided to give it one last try. I found a narrow path between two buildings. In the distance I saw another entrance. I stopped a man who was power-walking towards the Tube and asked him whether he had heard of the place. ‘Club Workspace? You here for the drinks?’ I nodded. ‘Head through that entrance, there’s a turning to the right, and then head down the stairs’.

‘Is this Club Workspace?’ I asked a young woman, who was standing by the entrance with a tray filled with Champagne flutes.

‘Yes, you here for the party? Would you like a glass?’ I took a glass. ‘It’s downstairs’ she smiled.

I stepped inside and walked down a spiral staircase and found myself in an area that can be best described as ‘an exclusive bar’. Fifty or sixty incandescent light bulbs dangled from a high ceiling at different heights, illuminating the area in a rich warm glow. I could see finger food.  I estimated around thirty or forty people, all smartly dressed, all chatting and laughing.

‘Hello, my name is Stephan.’ I shook an outstretched hand. Stephan was a ‘client’. I was then introduced to Nicky, who worked as a lawyer in the firm that was hosting the event. Both were keen to network. I chatted for a bit, but then went to put my bag down. By the time I had done this, the configuration of the groups had changed.

‘Hello, my name is Chris. Are you a lawyer?’ I said, clumsily introducing myself.

‘Do I look like a lawyer?’ came an abrupt challenge.

‘Well, you look very smart, so I guessed it might be a possibility.’

Shruti, it turned out, wasn’t a lawyer.  Instead, she was training to be an accountant. She didn’t have a connection with the law firm and had also found out about the event through the Meetup app. When she finished her studies, she hoped to work for a small to medium sized firm. Shruti told me that she used to teach IT in schools and had been to a number of different tech Meetup groups.

We were joined by Steve, a lawyer who worked for the firm. I asked Steve what kind of work he did, very conscious that I didn’t know anything about the Meetup I was gatecrashing, and flavour of law the company specialised in.

‘We mostly do work with start-ups. We work with web companies, financial tech companies and some crowd funding companies. You know about crowd funding? About how it works?’

After a couple of minutes chatting, I suddenly ‘got’ what Steve's job was all about.

‘So, what happens, is say there’s a couple of guys who have a good idea for a business, right?  The next thing they might do is pitch for some funding with an investor?’ Steve nodded ‘If they get that funding, what they then need to do is to have a contract drawn up between them and the people who have got the money, right?  And that’s where you come in. You help to write those contracts.’

‘You’ve got it!’ Steve smiled. I realised I had accidentally discovered another facet to the London ‘start-up landscape’ that I was accidentally uncovering.

A few minutes later, Stuart was gone, chatting to either some of his clients or some of his colleagues.

‘So, what other kind of events do you go to?’ I asked Shruti, steering our conversation in a slightly different direction: I had a question that I needed to ask.

‘Can I ask… Are you a member of The Malaysian ex-pat group?’ Shruti’s eyes widened.  ‘Have we met before?’

‘Yes! I think we did… I was there with my gym friend.’

‘Would you like any more Prosecco?’ asked a voice to my left.  Two people were doing circuits of the room, ensuring that everyone’s glass was thoroughly refreshed.

My recognition of Shruti had crept up on me.  I started to remember her when she began to talk about a ‘Fin Tech Meetup’ and the Python programming language, which was something we chatted about when we last met. A key factor that affected both our memories was that neither of us are Malaysian.

‘Thanks for coming everyone!’ I looked to where the voice was coming from.  A man was standing on a balcony.  It was Jake, the company owner ‘I hope everyone is having a good time, and by the end of the night I hope everyone is pretty trolleyed!’ Raucous laughter echoed across the walls. ‘I wanted to run this event for everyone to, well, celebrate what has been a pretty amazing year for the business. As of today, we have around five hundred clients, some of whom are celebrating with us tonight…’ Jake’s speech was short and friendly. He spoke about a magazine the business had recently published, and how things were beginning to work out. He wished us a happy Christmas. Everyone clapped. There was more drink.

I got chatting to Brian, Cythia and Moyra. Moyra had just started a new tech business which was an on-line brokerage to sell ‘events’ and ‘experiences’. I found out that she had off-shored some of her development, but was also continuing to work part time. Cynthia, it turned out, was her data manager.

Jake wandered over for a chat. I asked him about his firm. It turned out that Jake had started it three years ago, having worked at a city firm for a good few years. He looked as if he was in his mid-thirties.

‘After you’ve been doing lawyering for a while, it can go one of two ways. You either get totally sick of it and you want to do something else, or you can work on accepting that this is what you are.  I got to the point of accepting it, and realising that I’m not too bad at what I do, so I decided to try to go it alone.  If I look back to the last year, I just pinch myself; I can’t believe how far we’ve come.  We’re taking some clients off some of the really big firms, and all this is through word of mouth, by just doing things a little bit differently, partly because we can, because we’re not so big and you don’t have to justify everything in terms of revenue streams, like that magazine we produced’.

More Prosecco arrived. My glass was refreshed for the fourth time. I liked Jake, but I felt a bit uneasy in his presence, but this might have been because I was cheekily drinking quite a lot of his booze whilst knowing that I probably wouldn’t ever see him again. I think what really unnerved me was how easily he managed to charm Cythia and Moyra.

‘And then what happened was that they made me an offer, asking me whether I would like to be a partner in their firm!’

‘So, they were trying to close down the competition?’ I interjected, aware that everyone was starting to talk about a whole other world that I knew nothing about. I was beginning to feel out of my depth. I needed to show that I had some tentative idea of what was being talked about.

‘That’s it!  Exactly!’

I excused myself and made my way to the bathroom. It was then I realised that I was very drunk. I stared at myself in the mirror. I was sporting a couple of days’ growth of beard in some vain attempt to look ‘cool’, but I came to the conclusion that it wasn't working. In the cold harsh florescent light of the bathroom I saw my growing crow’s feet.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I asked myself. ‘I'm over forty and I'm stealing booze from a lawyer and talking nonsense to people who I have never met before’ The figure in the mirror didn’t have an answer. He just stared back at me. If truth be told, I was jealous of Jake. I was jealous that he owned his own firm, jealous of his ability to charm, jealous that he had a big party that was there to celebrate his successes. Jake, it seemed, was winning at life. Plus, in my drunken state, I was also really annoyed that he was a whole lot taller than me.

When I returned from the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of the whole room and I saw that the party was on the wane.  Shruti had left some time ago, along with about ten or fifteen other people. All that remained were the hard core drinkers. It was time for me to go.

I found Cythia and Moyra, and thanked Jake for his hospitality. I said goodbye to the enthusiastic wine waiters, and shook Stuart’s hand, whilst wishing everyone a very happy Christmas. I said goodbye to Brian, and a group of other people I hadn’t talked to, and then staggered up a spiral staircase to the street.

Fifty – The London Muslim Meetup

I needed to go to the School of Oriental and African Studies again. There was another lecture: ‘Palestine: the invisible damage of life under occupation’. Since I had been to SOAS before, I quickly asked myself a question: should this count? I immediately decided that the Meetup groups matter, not the event or the venue.

This time, I knew what I was doing: I would catch the Northern Line to Goodge Street and walk through the streets of Bloomsbury to the SOAS main building, sign in, and head to the lower ground floor, where there was the lecture theatre.

I made it to the lecture theatre with seconds to spare. I found an empty seat close to the front. I took off my jacket, pulled out my notepad, and sat down. Looking around, I saw that the lecture theatre was packed.

The lecture, given by a practicing psychiatrist, was jointly hosted by the UK-Palestine Mental Health network. According to the event description, it was a talk about the impact of war, the effect of ‘persistent psychological damage’, the role of international civil society and the responsibilities of mental health professionals. Our speaker was introduced as someone who was involved in the training of Palestinian mental health professionals in Jerusalem.

The talk began with a presentation of statistics that summarised Palestinian casualties during the recent war between Israel and Gaza: a summary of deaths, injuries and disabilities. The presenter said, ‘I’m a citizen of nowhere in the world; I’m only a resident’, before showing us a copy of her early travel documents using a PowerPoint slide. The field that presented her nationality contained a word that made me feel uncomfortable. It contained the word ‘undefined’.

We were then shown some photographs of the aftermath of Israel’s bombing. It was a scene of unfathomable devastation. I could make out some figures in the foreground, posing for the camera. The rest of the photograph comprised of grey concrete, shattered and broken. Steel reinforcement wire poked from the rubble like desperate tentacles.

‘You can say there was an earthquake’, our speaker said, mentioning that people who have to live through earthquakes have to deal with profound psychological trauma, ‘but war is intended’.

Our speaker moved onto the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder and the distinction between constant exposure to stress and when PTSD becomes ‘pathological’. She had an interesting argument: PTSD only becomes apparent after a traumatic event has ended; those who experience it are taken back to the time in which the events occur. Her point was that trauma is happening all the time to Palestinians: ‘even though the bombs are not falling, the helicopters are always there’.

Another perspective was that of ‘resilience’; that the thought of the Palestinian state is not going to go away. There were more photos, and these led onto a brief exposition about the importance of demonstrations. Demonstrations in cities across the world may not be able to immediately change very much, but their impact on those who see protesters in the international community offering expressions of solidarity, are significant. Protest, it was implicitly argued, is welcome.

Just like the previous lecture I had been to, there was a question and answer session. There were questions about whether PTSD is a valid subject to study, ethical dilemmas about engaging with Israeli charitable non-governmental organisations, and the extent to which the Palestinian authorities are divided. I wasn’t able to follow all the questions and all the responses, but I could tell that the speaker clearly engaged well with anyone who had something to say. Everyone clapped. The lecture was over.

I made my way to the lobby area and hung around for a while. On the event, over forty people had signed up, and I wanted to chat with some of the group members. I walked over to a small group of women who were chatting. This time I was determined to reach out, to meet new people.

‘Excuse me, are you, erm, part of the, er, Meetup group?’

‘No, there are some people still inside, perhaps they might be?’ came the response. I realised the group was actually a mother with her two teenage daughters.

I returned to the lecture theatre and said hello to a group of people who were chatting.

‘Oh, you’re the guy who made a post who said that he looks like comedian Harry Hill! Yes, I can see that! Hello!’ I introduced myself to Sabena, Aisha, Kamal, Ahmed and Louise. Two of the women, Sabena and Aisha returned to a conversation about different groups they belonged to and I chatted to Ahmed and Louise.

‘I saw this event today, and just came down’, I explained. ‘Mental health is a really interesting topic, and it’s interesting to learn more about implications in a different context. Plus, all learning is good, right?’ They smiled, and agreed.

We all walked to the SOAS reception area. It turned out that this was the second Meetup that Aisha had been to, ‘I much prefer events that you can learn things from, don’t you think? There’s all these other events, like events about food – now, don’t get me wrong, I really like food, right, but it’s interesting to go to things like this…’  Soon, everyone was talking about heading home. The event had come to a definitive end, but I was glad that I had chatted to some fellow group members, who had made me feel welcome.

On the bus to Waterloo Station, there was a lot to think about. I thought about the talk, about the images, the statistics and the stories. The speaker hadn’t really said too much about mental health. Instead, she had talked more about statehood, protest and resilience. Given the description of the event, I found this slightly surprising, but perhaps this was a reflection of my own naivety.  I also struggled to understand the different perspectives that were offered in the talk. For a brief hour, I had been thrown into an unfamiliar, difficult and terrifying world; it was a world that I found impossible to grasp; I was shown echoes of a deeper and darker side of the human condition, where survival, angst and frustration may well be common feelings and preoccupations. I was introduced to a perspective that had gently nudged me from my comfortable quasi middle-class, middle-England existence, towards one of greater curiosity and awareness. I was being shown more about what happens in the world, and shown more about the perspectives of others, and this was very welcome.

The event was also, undeniably, a milestone; I was half way through my quest.

When I started, I thought: ‘I’ll just try to do ten, and see what happens’. After doing the first ten, I couldn’t help but become addicted. This addiction came from the excitement of visiting new places, and visiting new groups, and the feeling hadn’t dimmed at fifty. If anything, what started as a folly had mutated into an obsession. This hasn’t become some hobby that passes the time, it has become a quest for a new ‘London experience’; it had become a catalyst for learning, a vehicle to feel more at home in the city that is becoming increasingly mine as its streets were gradually moving from the page of a map and into my head.

One thing that has happened is that my work has been affected. There was a time when I used to put every spare hour I had into doing my job, but that has changed. Instead, the quest has started to become my job: it had become ‘research’. I started to question the role that technology has in getting people together, how it facilitates real interaction and real connection between people. It had become accidental research about cities and communities. In some respect, the distinction between my day job and my quest were starting to blur; I could see how they were both exploring similar themes: technology, people and community.

Another question that crossed my mind as I crossed London on the bus was: ‘if I wasn’t doing this, what would I want to be doing?’ This is a question that I didn't have an answer to. This ‘I don’t know’ answer, more than anything, pushed me onwards to the next event, whatever it would be.

Forty nine – London Indie Music

I couldn’t go. The description of the drinking event hosted by the London Expat American group said that everyone would be sent an email about its location. Since the event started in half an hour, there would be little chance I would get the email; I needed to ‘bank’ the American group for later.

I scrolled to the next event, which turned out to be hosted by a Korean Language group.  I read the description. It seemed to be for people who spoke Korean. There was a further problem: I couldn’t join without my membership being ‘approved’ by the group organiser.

I scrolled down to the third Meetup that started at seven o’clock in the evening. I was going to the London Indie Music group. I shut down my computer, gathered up my belongings and went to Camden Town tube station. Although it was a music group, the event had an interesting title: ‘talking to strangers: music, poetry, comedy night’ and it was taking place in a ‘poetry café’ a couple of streets away from Covent Garden.

The walk to the café was surprising; the streets were crammed with people. Long Acre had been decorated with Christmas lights, and there was a distinct autumnal chill in the air. Although the London air can sometimes feel cold and damp, you’re always a couple of minutes away from a warming pub or a cosy café. The café I was going to was easy to find; the streets were now familiar. I pushed the door and my cold skin was touched by welcome warmth. I walked to a table.

‘Hello! How are you!’ I recognised someone.

‘What…? What are… Hello!’ replied my ex-girlfriend, Fiona.

We hadn’t properly spoken for around eighteen years. Our relationship hadn’t ended well; I went to study a postgrad course and distance had killed our relationship. It was all very upsetting: I was very sad, and then ended up meeting ‘the wrong one’ who I inadvertently married.

I was face to face with someone who had been a very important part of my life, someone who had inadvertently influenced the direction it would take.

‘I looked on-line and saw that this was a nice place. What are you doing here?’ Fiona asked, pouring a cup of tea. I remembered she liked tea.

‘I’m here for an event… I think it’s downstairs’.

‘What kind of event?’

‘I don’t know. I saw it advertised. It was either this or a Korean Language event. I couldn’t go to that one, so I came here instead’. Although there was a lot more that I could have said, about time, the nature of relationships, and about whether she is happy and content, the only words I spoke sounded like the words of a lunatic.

‘You don’t know what the event is all about…?’ Fiona replied, clearly confused. I decided to confess; I decided to tell Fiona about my crazy mid-life crisis quest. I told her that this was event forty nine out of one hundred, and that I had practiced Kundilini yoga, that I had done a hike and I had recently met a tax accountant. Silence surrounded us. She took another sip of tea.

‘Are you guys a part of the Meetup?’ A figure had arrived at our table. It was the Meetup host, Sam. I said I was there for the event. ‘It starts in five minutes’, Sam said. I replied that I would be down in a moment.

‘You had better go’, said Fiona.

‘You’re right. I think I had.’ I gave Fiona a quick hug, feeling that our impromptu meeting hadn’t gone at all well, and went downstairs.

The performance area held, at a push, around forty people. The room was split into a third performance ‘space’, two thirds floor cushions and chairs. I saw a huge black and white poster of Dylan Thomas. At the back of the room was what appeared to be a bed sheet that had the words ‘Talking to Strangers’ written in florid colourful writing. I paid six pounds and sat next to a sullen bearded poet called Harry. Beside me was a noticeboard that gave information about poetry nights and independent publishers.

After a frustrating wait of around three quarters of an hour, it was time for the first act: an acoustic guitarist, called Lucy, who was in her early twenties. Lucy was an awesome guitarist. She had a surprisingly deep, almost gravelly voice, and got everyone stamping their feet in time to her music. Despite her obvious energy and enthusiastic performance, Lucy seemed to give the impression of being entirely miserable. Rather than presenting us all with an engaging smile, she gave us a discernible frown. Her songs were good, though; a mixture of folk and pop, with more than a hint of classical guitar. I liked Lucy.

The next act was a middle aged balding performance poet called Oli. The first thing Oli did was tell everyone that he had a new book out, which could be bought from Amazon.

I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to performance poetry: I mostly hate it. For me, there’s an impossibly fine line between performance poetry being astonishingly beautiful, and it being insufferable nonsense. Oli’s first poem, which I have thoroughly expunged from my memory, fell in that latter category. Oli’s third poem of the night was ‘an erotic poem’. Here was a bald middle aged man reading an erotic poem to an audience that comprised of another bald middle aged man. I looked at the floor. I then looked at the ceiling. I was tempted to look at my mobile phone, but instead I studied my shoes. I tried to prevent myself from sighing audibly as the phrase ‘kill me now’ entered my consciousness. There was a part of me that just wanted to leave, to find the nearest pub and have a drink; I can deal with performance poetry after a few drinks, but I struggle when I’m sober.

After three more poems from Oli, it was time for the co-organiser of the night, Dom, to do some readings. Dom wasn’t bad. His words were engaging; plus he was charismatic. He had rhythm. He touched the words of his poem gently, delivering phrases with changing textures and expressions. He moved through his notebook with a self-deprecating smile, trying new things out.

After Dom, it was the interval. Worried that there were more poets like Oli on the bill, I decided I needed a drink. When I made my way to the bar, I had noticed that Fiona had left. Her cup and teapot had been cleared away; there was no evidence of her ever being there.

The second half of the night was kicked off by Sam picking on somebody.

‘Come to the front! Come to the front! ’ Sam gently took the elbow of a man in his mid-fifties with dyed red hair and tentatively led him to the performance area, towards a chair. The bewildered gentleman sat down. ‘We’re here at “Talking to Strangers”, yay! Give him a clap, everyone!’ Sam started to clap. Everyone followed. ‘Sir, what’s your name?’

‘Leo’

‘Does anyone want to ask Leo any questions?’ Sam asked the audience. An impromptu question and answer session began.

Leo turned out to be an American from New Jersey, who didn’t have any children, liked old-school super heroes, and was able to define ‘time’. We loved Leo; Leo gave long rambling and ultimately enigmatic answers to the most stupid of questions. He preferred the Rolling Stones over the Beatles, but we didn’t hold that against him, since Leo was ‘the dude’. He could have said anything and we would have loved it. For a few minutes, Leo was the star of the show.

Next up was a comedian called Andrew. Within a minute, I realised that Andrew wasn’t an open-mic chancer who had taken a comedy course; Andrew was a pro. In some respects, he was also a poet: he recited complex anecdotes, lampooned lazy conceptions of sexuality and race, and challenged our assumptions about relationships. He also did his best to relate to everyone in the room. He was the best kind of comedian: he walked across a knife edge of respect and disdain for those who he picked on, whilst keeping everyone on his side.

Andrew’s performance led on to a poetry slot for Sam. My beer had all gone, but Sam’s poetry wasn’t bad. It was simple, and elegant, and rough. She threw sheets of her paper on the floor with abandon. The audience encouraged her to read out ‘the sad poem’, which she did. When the poem was over, the sheet of paper it was written on was released to float its way to the floor, like the relationship it described.

The final part of the night was where members of the audience had a minute to read out a poem of their own choosing. There were three volunteers. It was a creative shambles: the first poet’s poem was too long. The second poet wanted to go back to his seat, and the third just made something up on the spot from a phrase given to him by the audience. This third poet was the final performance of the evening. Everyone clapped and cheered. People started to leave. I shook people’s hands, and said goodbye. As I was leaving, I gave Sam a hug and a kiss on her cheek, and then climbed up a staircase to the ground floor, where I would then leave the shop to be greeted by London’s cold winter air.