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But what is the name of a group of jack-o’-lanterns? I think two names might be needed: On a crisp, cold and clear Halloween, they are perhaps a cackle… or maybe a coven, or a leering or even a haunting of jack-o’-lanterns. But the day after the night before, in rainy grey London, they are just a sorry sight to behold: they are jack-o’-lanterns no more, misshapen and decaying …alas, nothing more than a woefulness of pumpkins.  November 1st, 2002 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
  Greetings from London on this All Hallows Eve. I have always thought this festival was wasted on the very young… it is not a time for ‘friendly ghosts or good witches’, it is a time to get in touch with your inner werewolf  Wishing everyone a suitably ghastly Halloween. Just remember what happens if you have too much fun!  October 31st, 2002 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Hallow’een is bigger in Paris than London. To prove the point, I’m off to Paris for this year’s event. To save money on a hotel and because of my extra late booking, I’m taking the overnight coach. Whilst buying my make-up, (yes I do need some make-up to look like Uncle Fester) I realised why the party is more popular in Frace than the Uk and it illustrates perfectly the law of unintended consequences. France is notionally a Catholic country, so All Saints’ Day (All Hallows) is a public holiday. The night before is Hallow’een, a celebration of the night when all the fiends of hell rise up. The UK is not a Catholic country, so All Saints’ Day is not a day off work, so partying late on Hallow’een doesn’t work as well. So if the Christian supremacists hadn’t got the day off and forced it on everyone else, hedonistic party-goers wouldn’t have the opportunity to dance naked around sacrificial chickens. Oh dear! How tragic. October 30th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 The intrepid Samizdata Team sent a significant expedition to darkest Shoreditch, in London’s East End, to attend the The Illustrated Ape Party at the Electricity Showrooms.   There was much drinking…   And extremely loud music…  And many many people…   Who watched acts of ‘Art Terrorism’…  All of which might, or might not, make today’s Samizdata posts a bit… strange.  October 24th, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
We had 25 people show up to the Second British Blogger Bash and the party has been hailed as a great success. Below can be seen (L to R) Ben Sheriff of Layman’s Logic, Mike Solent (back turned), Steve Chapman of Stephen Chapman (formerly ‘Daddy Warblogs), Tom Burroughes of Samizdata.net (back turned), Andrew Dodge of Dodgeblog, Brian Micklethwait of Samizdata.net, Alex Singleton (barely visible) of St. Andrews Liberty Log, Peter Briffa of Public Interest UK and Natalie Solent of Natalie Solent. 
Steve Chapman and Peter Briffa were disappointed when Below are Nikki Brandt, Luisa Gutierrez and Adriana Cronin of Samizdata.net. 
The ladies discuss the aerodynamics of a Below are Perry de Havilland of Samizdata.net and Patrick Crozier of CrozierVision and UK Transport. 
Perry shamelessly advertises Samizdata.net tee-shirts Below are David Carr of Samizdata.net and Adriana Cronin of Samizdata.net. 
David and Adriana make jokes about why they had Below are Patrick Crozier of UK Transport and Dale Amon of Samizdata.net, uncharacteristically shown wielding a beer. 
Dale demonstrates the correct stance for Below are Natalie Solent, Alice Bachini of A Libertarian Parent in the Countryside and Perry de Havilland. 
Alice, having eaten the collar of Perry’s shirt (with some Brendan O’Neill was unable to attend due to prior obligations… you missed a good one, O’Neill. September 10th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Is it just me? Apparently yes. And of course it must be very clear to all our readers what is causing this. All the others Samizdatistas are still recovering from the blogger bash. Lots of photos of people doing embarrassing things. Two bits from Perry and David before they succumbed to unconsciousness. Then silence for 48 hours from almost all of them apart from me. It’s obvious. No doubt in the hours and days that follow, the others will slowly emerge in ones and twos from their sickbeds and from behind the sofas and out of the various closets and small rooms in Chateau Perry behind which and within which they still now groan and toss and roll about in a purgatorial state between sleep and wakefulness, pain and nightmare, and others besides me will eventually again be telling you things. But for now, mine are the only hands at the blogpump, and if you don’t like me, well, I don’t really know, being too polite, what to suggest about that. But I know what you’re thinking. Why am I the only conscious and functioning Samizdatista? Did I not drink any alcohol? Did I drink lots of alcohol but am I unaffected by alcohol, immune from dizziness, vomiting, violent headaches, and so forth? Strangely, it’s the opposite. I am no better at resisting pleasure than anyone else, or even postponing it, and my constitution is made not of iron but of balsa wood. And that, ladies and gentlemen of the sober world, is what gives me my competitive advantage when it comes to blogging only a few hours after participating in a blogger bash. Alcohol affects me immediately. I get my hangovers straight away, within minutes. Thus I immediately switch to girlie drinks like Pepsi and Orange Juice. I am not teetotal. But I genuinely drink only in moderation, even at parties where everyone else is chucking it down like there’s no tomorrow. With the result that when tomorrow does come, they all wish there really was no tomorrow, but I’m still operating at my usual steady if indolent rate. My late father was just the same. He too would refrain from excessive drinking, not because of any great strength of character – although unlike me he was quite a strong character – but because of the same genetically inborn instant aversion therapy that curbs any inclination I ever have towards alcoholic excess. I’ve only ever been properly drunk once in my entire life. I just thought you might like to know. September 9th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m appalled. Yesterday morning (and my excuse is that it must have been very early in the morning) I read a posting on Freedom and Whisky and then later that morning I here accused David Farrer of responding to the whole griefometer thing very tastefully and seriously, to make some portentous point about, you know, how terrible communism was. But in the paragraph just before the ones I re-posted here, he did do all the cuteness, Dando, Diana calculations that I accused him of neglecting, just as if he were a Samizdata writer. Nobody told me this. There were comments on what I put, but none that noted this elementary blunder. I found it out when I looked at F&W again just now. That’s when huge cock-ups are really humiliating. When no-one notices them. As soon as you have read the above either burn or eat it and speak of it to no one. Perry: kill the comments. One thing I have learned from this horror: that when those big bad mainstream media get things totally rectum over mammary, as they do, a lot, I am now even readier than I was to believe that it’s incompetence rather than malevolence. (This paragraph reflects the American influence on us Samizdatista. What we in the UK call a cock-up is called in America a “learning experience”.) The party last night was excellent. I did lots of pleasure and also some major blog-related business, which I’ll tell you about when it’s ready to tell about which it isn’t yet. September 9th, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
When glamourous, leggy women in figure-hugging clothes are being wooed with statistics about the European Central Bank and it works; when people are toasting the imminent demise of the House of Saud; when the urgent intensity of gin-soaked geo-politics is interrupted only by the furious munching of habanero-flavoured nachos; when the sound of polite laughter at a really good joke about Tony Blair fills the air; when a man lurches up to you and says something that sounds like:
…and expects you to answer him, you know you’ve probably been invited to a British Blogger Bash. One could scarcely believe that these bold, shining, fearless Warriors of the Great Western Way could be transformed into a semi-amorphous mass of gibbering, leering primates merely by the application of sufficient quantities of alcohol but that is the stark truth of the matter. But the truth, as well as setting you free, can also be a lot of fun. 
September 8th, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
04:30am The Second British Blogger Bash has finally run out of steam as its participants have started dropping like flies…  …I suspect there may be somewhat less blogging on Sunday from the London Samizdata HQ. September 8th, 2002 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
02:15 am The Second British Blogger Bash continues and the tone of discourse has become more ‘interactive’ with the arrival of Andrew Dodge… 
September 8th, 2002 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
10:45 pm: The Second British Blogger Bash in London is in full swing and as the picture below indicates, things are sober and sedate. 
Claire Berlinski and Alex Singleton September 7th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
…was that a large proportion of the Samizdata Team were distracted by Antoine Clarke’s birthday party in London! 
Antoine blows his cork!
Adriana and Brian look on as David Carr August 17th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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