ILE Meet-Up?

track&field betsey trotwood 20th july?

Can we please pick neutral territory, ie, not Track and Field? It would be perfectly possible to "hire" the Betsey (it is free, you know) ourselves and put on our own party.

I can never do Friday evenings. I am not Mr Pub, tho since 1996 — when I first accepted drugs into my life haha — have been prepared actually to enter them, provided enuff nice people are inside.

We could always have a picnic. Or is that indie? An industrial horrible-noise goth- punk free jazz picnic?

I'm quite on for the ILE Free Jazz Picnic.

Another possibility that struck me is an ILE Curry, since I bet we all like Indian food, and this could be preceded or followed by some pub activities which anti-pub individuals could duck out of with dignity intact.

But when? When?? A school night?

Friday evenings though suggest yet ANOTHER possibility, which is karaoke at the King Of Corsica.

I'm up for karaoke, as long as I don't have to sing, heh heh.
I want a picnic! I don't care how 'indie' it is, it can be an ILE adventure, much in the vein of Famous Five / Secret Seven. Remember to bring the ginger beer!

Track and Field is a very bad idea, on both personal and musical grounds. Unless everyone wants to be subjected to Kate and I being beaten over the head with a copy of Tigermilking, that is.

MS: "I can never do Friday evenings."
TE: "Friday evenings though suggest yet ANOTHER possibility"
I'll get my coat.

Oh sensitive one! I should have said "Mention of Friday Evenings...", those evenings being the only ones when the King Of Corsica opens its doors for London's Master Singers.

Where best for a picnic, then?

"Parks" south of river = plaguepits left to grass domain as they dare not build houses for fear of disturbing pathogen...

Hampstead Heath = hard for me to get to and also v. easy to fail to find others

Where's easy for outlanders/westrons (TE) and southrons (Mason Boom) to get to?

Hackney has more better parks than any other borough but I agree this is self- serving cheekiness from this particular eastron?

Why never Friday evenings? Do you work for Weekend Watchdog or something? Is it never ever ever or maybe occasionally? Are you President of the UK Frasier fanclub and would be kicked out if you missed an episode?

It seems to me that a Friday night at the King of Corsica (don't tell me no Eastrons on a Friday...) followed by a Saturday afternoon of regret in a park somewhere is a winning plan, and one which allows participation or non-participation at will. After a Friday night in London any park should be accessible even to zone seven-ites.

Has Tim cut the Gordian Knot of meet-ups? This sounds good to me.

Top: if you don't mind me being EVEN PERKIER THAN USUAL while you all nurse the toxic wounds of govt-sanctioned substance abuse...

Fine by me. Friday night for the Panic, Saturday morning for the Vomit.

Alrught then, when? This w/end possible but not ideal for me.

any weekend should be fine. EXCEPT 13/14 july

13/14 July out for me too - hanging out with the 3000 mountain goats.

I was supposed to be holding a retaliatory dinner party Sat nite but I think doing poncey dinner parties 2 Saturdays running is too parentish for words. Or maybe we should host an ILE buffet supper in our North London council slum........

How about the 20/21 July, which is also my next payday by a joyful coincidence?

I like all ideas, pubs, picnics and pot luck suppers. I seem to spend more time in Norf London anyway, so pick any park, I happen to be partial to Primrose Hill, well, cause the view's so nice. If there is a potluck supper, I will make my SOUTHERN DEATH CURRY which will gratify Tom E's love of Indian food.

As to dates, well, any evening activities must be coordinated around Strange Fruits and Lollies gigs. (Lollies are On Tour, 12th to 24th August) through I don't mind Fridays, but Sunday afternoons are out. Oh, wait, sorry, Friday 27th July is also out.

How about Pub Night is 20th July, then Pot Luck Picnic is 21st July? Have it in East London, and those who are Strange Fruiting can go to the Spitz easily afterwards. Sound good? Or is the fact that that weekend is the Truck Festival in Oxford going to be a problem?

Friday if Buffy, is that why Mark cannot make it? ;-)

Weex, Tom and I, great minds thinking alike.

"Have it in East London" - I'll just get the King of Corsica to move then.

Actually it's not too hard getting from the KoC (v. Central London) to East London.

No, no, you misunderstand. Pub can be wherever pub is (where is King of Corsica, anyway?), but Saturday picnic would be good to have in East London (my gran lived in East London, the one in South Africa, so that looks silly to me) so that we would be close to the Spittalfields (medieval cemetary in the process of BEING DUG UP next to Market, so Mark will have his plague pits) so those of us who are Fruiting at Spearmint Saturday night can be there forthwith with no probs. Clearer am I? Clear as an unmuddied lake, sir?

Whilst it may be good to be in Eastern London if you are planning to sally forth to another location in Eastern London, if you are planning to return to Northern London it is less handy due to the dubious public transport out East. How far East are we talking here anyway? I mean Shoreditch-type region is still within the realms of possibility but Stratford is officially The Ends of the Earth.

We managed to get back from the Spitz by bus after Micro-Music (oh wait hold on, no, we didn't, a taxi was involved).

Are there parks near the Spitz?

emma, don't let DG hear you say that...

Obviously not East of the Eastway, Emma. Even I am not that crazed. Stratford = not london by ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION but insteaqd Essex = PLAGUEPIT ALREADY W/O NEED OF PLAGUE'S ARRIVAL.

Hackney parks near Spitz = Haggerston Park, London Fields, Victoria Park.
(all short bus-ride away/12 stops max)
Not so near = Hackney Downs, Hackney Marshes (where the bears come from)

The Spitz is hardly East London at all (I'd wager it has an EC postcode) and is only a stone's throw from Liverpool Street station which is easily accessible via London's omnibus or underground railway network from almost any part of London.

Spearmint aren't very good.

The King of Corsica is situated on Berwick Street in London's West End.

East London starts at Bishopsgate/Kingsland Road. Spitz = EC2, but this is neither here nor there. Jack the Ripper's westernmost murder = still in East End.

We could play glof from the top of Greenwich Park, or is that just plain silly? (Yes, that was a desperate 'can I come?' even though I don't say that much here...)

Bill

EC is still bloody far east to me!!! I mean, if I wanted to be mean, I'd say we should have the picnic on Tooting Common, or better yet, in Paul's garden, with the speakers run on wires out the windows, and the rest of you be damned!!! Hah!

But no. I am looking on my map, and Victoria Park is near to the Spitz, and has A LAKE so that is the one I think we should pick.

And I didn't say I liked Spearmint, I said I was working at Spearmint. So poo to you!

Berwick street is good, we can record shopping while pissed, I like that idea.

Vic Park = pretty = grate = where I interviewed ARKane back when the Old Queen was alive (=Morrissey haha)

Mark, I have no interest in claiming the Spitz for any part of London other than the East. I was trying to suggest that scheduling a picnic for East London on the grounds of easy access to the Spitz was and is folly. Approx. 200 yards from "not East London" qualifies as "hardly East London" I think.

Picnic in East London for its own sake, by all means.

Personally I'm a bit Greenwiched out at present but Bill's suggestion is probably a good one (although questionable from the getting-to-the- Spearmint-show angle).

In a sense the Spitz is both here and there, as it happens.

The gardens in the Barbican are fairly spacious, nice and quiet, plus I have the key. I could slip it to, say, however many people...plus there is a lake and it is near Liverpool Street and all of West End and...pretty much everywhere, really.

Bill

Kate, you didn't say you were working, you said you were "Strange Fruiting". I'm not privy to the club's work roster, I'm afraid.

Listening to Spearmint is hard work, I'll grant, so you have my sympathy.

i believe that the spitz is, in fact, E1

Oop. "Hardly" = handy English word with two contradictory meanings viz ONLY JUST and ABSOLUTELY NOT

Oi! I don't live in Essex, I live in East London. Chadwell Heath is in the London Borough of Redbridge, so poo to you. Emma's right about North/East travel nonsense.

"London Borough of" a complete scam. Nobody actually thinks that Sutton, for instance, is in London, least of all the people who live there.

Exactly. Leytonstone = den Leydenstaan (actual dutch name)... Redbridge!! Next you'll be telling me Penge isn't a province Normandy...

Vic park = short walk (5 mins max) from Bethnal Green tube. Is that a way to get back to Hornsey? Buses would be more of a prob (106 and 253 both do Finsbury Park, 253 then on to Camden).

ahh, the delights of the 106. still, have you ever been on the 253. fuck me, i'm glad i don't have to get that very often. i have never ever been on that bus when its not full of frighteningly crazed people

I've been on the 253, from Whitechapel north. Everyone on there seemed normal to me.

Ulp.

Does Hornsey represent North London as a whole now? I am now officially in Upper Holloway but we used to be in Hornsey about the same time the fab Mousse T feat. Hot and Juicy (or Hot and Wet, or whatever) was out and used to think it great fun to sit in pubs drunkenly singing along, 'We're in Hornsey, Hornsey, Hornsey, Hornsey'.

What youthful japes.

Hello, didn't Bill just solve this problem with his fantastic Barbican gardens suggestion. When are we talking about again - this week or the 21st?

Because I'll be at the KoC this Friday whatever and it is probably a good way of scoping my general demeanout out. And then we can do the picnic (!) at leisure on the 21st.

As I understand it:

This Friday - some of us will be at the KoC anyway because it's that kind of Friday.

20th/21st - official ILE meet at the KoC (assuming we're not barred which given Friday's star-studded line-up is not impossible) and then on the Saturday the official ILE Free Jazz Picnic, wherever it is.

AOK datewise: Barbican Gdns also fine by me.

Who is catering the picnic then Tom?

I assume it's a case of bring your own sarnies in which case it is a great opportunity to judge other people solely on the basis of which sarnies they bring. So good people bring a 6 pack of Stella and family pack of Walkers crisps and bad people bring a can of Vimto and sardine sandwiches.

Free Jazz Picnic - catering is improvised.

That said a communal KFC Bargain Bucket for Team Groke might not go amiss.

I've just remembered I have a trad English stylee hamper which was a Christmas gift from very old job (it was once full of Harrods goods). However it is currently doing service as a laundry basket. I'm sure it would not mind being filled with mouldy jelly and curry and egg and cress sandwiches though.

Tom. You do NOT want me to sing at karaoke. Trust me on this one.

I have a trad-style hamper too, my gran's: complete with china attached to lid with leather straps, three vacuum flasks and metal cutlery. This is why the BMC need SUVs!! I won't be bringing it — as my army of Nubian slaves is having a well-deserved break.

My hamper is sadly without crockery and cutlery, though maybe if I'm bored one night I could fix it up myself with the aid of some leather straps (must have some somewhere.......) and Argos plates. The trouble with that sort of hamper is it's so full of champagne flutes, butter knifes, salad plates and other picnicking essentials that there's no room for the pies.

When I was a girl we had a top quality plastic cool box. Very classy.

KARAOKE?!?!?!? I did not know that I was getting into Karaoke... KEWL BEANS!!! COOLER THAN BEANS!!! BROCCOLI!!!!!

Do they have Nancy Sinatra karaoke and stuff, or will it only be lame britpop I don't know the words to?

Paul apparently once won a prize for karaoke. Three guesses who he was singing... I still think he should have gone on Stars In Their Eyes, but someone beat him to it, and he wanted to leave his TV successes at Blockbusters.

Thort I'd made karaoke proper clear, oh well.

Yes, the reason to go to the KoC on a Friday is not because it's a great boozer (though it's growing on me, actually) but because it has karaoke. And this is PROPER KARAOKE, not some indie karaoke shite with Soundgarden and the Violent Femmes. It has a worrying range, everything from "Mack The Knife" to "Stan". If it got in the charts, there's a good chance you'll find it.

SOundgarden karaoke? I'm there, sorry.

You up for Wuthering Heights again boys? I shall try and get the nice lady to let me do some Carpenters again too. Remember last time when she tried to ban me for using my paedophile voice.

Very much up for Wuthering Heights BUT we have to agree strategy first. High or Low?

This is getting to be like watching Brucie's Play Your Cards Right.

High first two choruses - low for final riffing on not being let in the the window - its so bleedin' cold, let me in at your window oh oh oh...

I hope they have Digital Love now too.

Digital Love is unkaraokable surely due to it having 3 mins of instrumental.

One More Time should be tried again though.

Karaoke instrumentals = fine by me. Do they have metal machine music?

You are supposed to dance during the instrumental in karaoke. Proper dancing, not self-conscious dancing please.

Emma, if you're refusing to sing then perhaps you could provide the unselfconscious dancing for those of us brave or foolhardy enough to be singing.

The instrumental break in karaoke is, in point of fact, reserved for the first pangs of horrified regret that you ever agreed to take part.

Classic Karaoke instrumental breaks:

Radiohead - Paranoid Android: icing on the cake in terms of Nice Lady horror. 1 minute of Pete and Sarah writhing, or rather Pete writhing and Sarah staying still and looking frightened.

Pulp - This Is Hardcore: "Instrumental 1m15" is the first thing that appears on screen, causing audible "whaaat?" from N.L.. For the singer, the equivalent of a really long, slow upwards crawl at the start of a rollercoaster.

Tim, I am not Bez, y'know.

I am not point blank refusing to sing (beer often makes me think things that are a bad idea are a great idea) but I did want to spare you. And I still have a sore throat from my cold (coughs pathetically).

Oi Tom, I do not writhe. I throw shapes. And look sheepish.

I was in the audience and could see you, and what I saw was writhing. This was during the instrumental just before "the panic the vomit" I should remind you.

I was invoking the spirit of THE PALE FRIGHTENED FAILED ROCK MUSICAL "THOMMY". And, I think my operatic vocal contributions provided the ideal counterpoints to Petes more basslike howls. Who needs Peters & Lee, eh?

Just to be clear: picnic = not this weekend
Brixton open house = this weekend
Karaoke = Fri eve = always possible inc this week (tho never poss for mark s), but scheduled big-time for picnic weekend???

I think you've got it right Mark.

5th: Club Sussed.

6th: Karaoke at the KoC but not official ILE meet-up karaoke so attendance of people not guaranteed.

7th: Brixton madness with DJ Crow Atak and DJ Constant Spray.

13th: SPOOKY BAD LUCK KARAOKE no doubt but I'll be off with the goats so I care not.

20th: REAL ILE MEET-UP KARAOKE - 8pm Onwards At The King Of Corsica, Berwick Street. It will be ossum.

21st: FULL ON ILE FREE JAZZ PICNIC to be held....uh...where? when? (Assuming Barbican Gardens is out). When we sort these two questions out someone can post all the details again in a new thread and everyone's scrolling arm will be the better for it.

...and don't forget early August. ;-)

Please tell me that Ned is going to be our authentic, American-voiced Roy Rogers. Please do.

Well, gol-dang, Tim, ah cayn't be ev'ry-WHERE, yew young COW-poke.

I can't wait for August.

Tim, will you be Trigger then, ready to be riden by the long haired ginger Roy?

It's a Triggerfest, you fool.

We'll *all* be Trigger.

Since my American accent is, apparently, risible, can I be Trigger out of Only Fools and Horses?

I imagine your French chum might refer to that as a fait accompli, Stevie.

del boy wd call it a fata morgana

Ah, ya crazy UK people, you crazy! Though taking Stevie's note to heart, perhaps I can be the official judge of Worst American Accent. To be decided when all are drunk, of course.

Stevie's Laura Cantrell sounds like Uncle Albert. Trust you people to have a picnic THE DAY BEFORE I ARRIVE in London. Arse.

Uncle Albert?? Explain.

Poor joke. Explanation over.

...and Ally C's jokes are the clapped-out Robin Reliant of humour.

Oh *this* picnic...

I think the only sensible thing to do on the Saturday is go to Finsbury Park cos then we can have a picnic and WATCH RUN DMC!!!! as the 21st sees the return of the Respect festival, which is FREE and also where i'm doing some promotional work for m'job, so i'll be there anyways...

walk this waaaaay, talk this way, SHE TOLD ME TO

Surely we will NEVER find one another at a Free Festival!! I am not very fond of this idea... Esp. as Finsbury Park = fairly rubbish site for festivals. (I will bow to the majority — as have no option. But am not keen. Sorry Carsmilesteve... )

*IDEA*

Anyone fancy Picnic In The Sky? Not literally, but my building in EC1 has a GIANT roof terrace with impressive views of St Paul's, is easy to find, easy to reach and is SURROUNDED by Italian delis. Good news for veggies, too: the caff downstairs does London's finest felafel.

It's great, and although fairly devoid of greenery, those who bring their own will be very happy.

And is moments from the Betsey Trotwood.

That sounds nice. I can throw coins on to passers-by. Hee hee hee.

Suzy's idea sounds grate!!

I LOVE roof parties!!! Yay for Suzy!

anyone love me enough to pay for a trip to london ?
If not then cest la vie, have fun !

Curious to note that Tom E thought, or implied, that an ILE meet-up MIGHT NOT BE A GOOD IDEA.

And that it didn't have to be in a pub!

This is beautiful. Almost two years old now, but look - Gareth is talking about bus routes, Mark S is talking about free jazz, Suzy is talking about pubs and delis near her house, Tom is talking about what does and doesn't constitute London... it's all so true to life (except the bit about StevieT's American accent, which is of course marvellous).

So what actually happened then?

what is with all these thread revivals from two years ago? rub it in that i was missing all the fun then why dontcha?

Are the pics from this still up somewhere?

Best ILE meet up to date was not in a pub. (come late may or july we should try a rerun)

wow, the old days, when I didn't even post to say that I was gonna turn up, and then post again a while later wussing out.