Samizdata

Stephanie DuPont has suggested that the female guests at the British Blogger Bash were ‘paid escorts’. Two were computer programers at the top end of their professions, one was a manager with the English National Opera, one was a TV producer and one runs a hotel and a small data services operation.

Stephanie is obviously just jealous she was not invited to the bash, or maybe she is looking for a spanking to relieve the tedium of being Brian Linse’s gopher. Yes, she strikes me as the kinky type, that must be it.

At the Brit Blogger Bash: elegant, articulate and easy on the eyes

Proper after-action reports will have to wait until tomorrow but here is the hard core who are still partying at 3:55 in the morning…

L to R: Walter Uhlman  Pat Crozier  Dave Shaw  David Carr (seated)  Brian Linse  Andrew Dodge  Dale Amon  Perry de Havilland

One of the reasons for the low volume of bloggage here has been the distracting influence of our pet pinko, Brian Linse, who has somehow managed to weasel his way into Samizdata HQ. He has barricaded himself into the downstairs guest room and we cannot get him out. The horror. The horror.

Seeing as Will Vehrs of Blog Watch II is moaning about the lack of Valentine party reports, here I go.

It all started off rather badly as I had a huge argument with my ‘significant other’. But that was probably just as well so this way I did not have him moping around later at the party like death’s head at the feast.

I was joint hostess of this party with two excellent lady friends of mine at a pleasingly nefarious and very out-of-the-way venue that for certain reasons will remain nameless. We expected 30-35 people but eventually got more than 80 I would guess, which proved interesting. I have no idea where they all came from and how they found our semi-private party. The guys running the bar (huge kiss to Marko, DJ Klaus and Dobroslav) had to go out twice and restock, the last time the underside of Marko’s old Trabi was scrapping the ground and making sparks because there was so much in the back and on the seats.

The title of the party was ‘Love and Massacres on Valentine’s Day’ and due to the preferences of one of my co-hostesses, the theme was ‘Goths in Love’: so I did radical things with my hair and had a rather fetching ‘tattoo’ painted on for the night.

The party took place in a large concrete basement that was quite recently used as a bomb shelter, with two dance rooms, a chill room and a very unusual and, um, ‘sociable’ toilet room. Music in one room was things like Prodigy, Alice DJ, Jaxx, Chemical Brothers, Stromkern, Apollo 440 and Orbital and the other room stuck to the goth theme with things like local boys Gone, Laibach, Weeping Willow, Phantasmagoria and Drinking Skull, plus the inevitable Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees.

The place had a ventilation system which seemed to be running backwards and so it got hotter and hotter as more and more people arrived to engage in crazed dancing and innovative drinking games. After a while there was an interesting layer of cigarette and who-knows-what smoke sort of hanging just below the ceiling which did look rather cool. A bit later I had a very surreal conversation when four of us got trapped in the toilet room for about half an hour. I got talking with a very beautiful Hungarian boy wearing a bullet earring, who told me he “knew the people whose party this was and they were all smugglers from Russia”. I would have liked to hear more of this fascinating story but then Marko managed to take the big steel door off its hinges with a huge screwdriver and freed us all. All the waiting people who wanted to go pee pee rushed in and threw us out and I never saw the strange Hungarian boy again.

Many interesting things happened later but my memory gets hazy now…at least that is my story and I am sticking to it. It was a terrific party but I am really glad I didn’t have to clean up afterwards. Are you satisfied now Will? I demand *** for this revelation on Blog Watch II!