... involved beer, and pie, and more beer, and astounding everyone with my ability to get the easiest radom pages in the Weakest Link Quiz Book, and calling Charlotte Gore a Tory just to see her face (again), and brandy... and now I am leaving drunken and inapproriate comments on people's LJs, and my house is still a tip and cordite arrives in the morning to dogssit, and then we go to CONFERENCE and I broke the satnav by trying to update it and I don;t care about ANY of the stressul stuff thanks to a very lovely Unnamed Benefactor who sent me the most welcome direct message I have ever had on twitter:

I seem to have accidentally wandered into a shop and bought you a bottle of VSOP Armagnac. Apols it's not Cognac.

... and I'm not even DOING the netcast at conference!

:D

... Sense isf or the weak, rigght?

Lib Dem Quiz night last night (which was nearly attended by the party President and the First Lady) went pretty well. Finally met the elusive pimpernell Diane, got (jokingly) threatened by Charlotte Gore, had a good giggle, and was unsurprised when Hilary and Jim won the quiz.

Food was excellent, and Liz's home-made salsa went in about ten seconds. Most importantly, we made a little bit of money, and might now be able to afford to pay Brendan to print us leaflets for about a third of the area our local party covers... So only two more events and we might be able to afford a whole Focus! LOL.

If you have any exciting money-making ideas, or just want to give us some money, do come to the next Liberal Drinks *plugplug* you don't have to be a party member or anything.

I now have to get ready for work - 8 hours today AND tomorrow WOE - and maybe take a few pictures of things to sell on ebay. Although that might have to wait until after work tomorrow, looking at the clock. Life is very very busy at the moment, so apple-ogies to those of you who aren't getting as much attention as usual. It's not that I don't love you all, it's just that I am clinging on by my fingernails to a roller-coaster at the mo. Hopefully things should be a bit less frantic after conference. Only a couple of weeks to go...

Spending an evening with people you love. Having a couple of drinks, and being rubbish at pool. Free brandy. Snuggles with birthday girls. All these things are good things.

So yay for Sarah's birthday, and YAY for not being in a boo like I was earlier. Sorry 'bout tha'.

Things to not forget when sober:

- Mat is going to Sarah's to fix her computer woes on Wednesday after dropping me at work.
- take some food to Marsden tomorrow.
- there was something else, but I forgot. I think I know the cure for this. MOAR BRANDY!!!

A select group of Lib Dems (and one normal person) met tonight at the Old Ship in Brighouse. There was me and Mat, burkesworks, Charlotte Gore, Brendan the area co-ordinatey guy, Sarah my ex-lodger she was the normal person), Jim from Bailiff Bridge, and Martin the old time Liberal.

There was beer, and there were pies (£2.50 for pie and peas! Woo-hoo!), and Mark and Katie (pub landlordy types) had put so e nuts and biscuity things for nibbles on the tables, and later there was brandy, and there was some talk of politics and half-hearted attempts to recruit Sarah for leaflet delivery, but mostly there was beer, and good conversation and happiness and it was ace.

I might be slightly inebriated. I blame Sarah for buying me more brandy.

I had a really good time. And other people seemed quite up for making it a monthly thing. And Mark and Katie seemed quite pleased with us, and were happy for it to be a monthly thing. And the only disappointment, really, was that Darwin didn't show up. Although there was some dude in a zombie mask. Maybe that was Darwin?

Anyway, in summary: YAY!

They've found the deleted scenes from Metropolis! Sci-fi geeks rejoice! And pray Cthulhu we get a showing of it at the FFW next year...

matgb has a highly amusing post about the hypocrisy of the guy who sued the BBC for showing Jerry Springer: The Opera and upsetting his delicate religious sensibilities (related Facebook group).

Don't watch anything on YouTube which isn't allowed to be there, else you'll get got.

Creationism hits science classrooms in the UK. and we are funding it via the state school mechanism. *I* am paying for some poor kids to be taught complete bollocks as though it is fact. Amused Cynicism makes comment more eloquently than I ever could.

The Torygraph have picked their top ten ever Doctor Who episodes. No surprises that it's Ten-heavy, but perhaps surprising that it contains no Trout. And, obvs, Caves of Androzani should be #1.

James May is amazed that the BBC are upset with him for drinking a G&T, when really, they should be upset with him for putting slices of lemon in it. LIME, James, LIME!

Jeremy Thorpe says Robert Mugabe must die. I guess there's a limit to everyone's Liberalism, eh?

David Davies shows just how pro-liberty he really is. Hey ho. Is anyone actually surprised by this?

Chicky Yog imagines Gordon as a barman and finds him wanting.

The turkeys HAVE voted for Christmas: Mike at PB is right. Any PPC opposing any of the lot who voted for this is going to have a field day.

Hot on the heels of Boris' banning of alkyhol on the tube (with, as Chicken Yoghurt says, entirely predictable results), the government has resurrected its idea of prosecuting parents who let their children touch alcohol in public.

Oh, just NO. Responsible attitudes do not grow from wrapping people in cotton wool. You do not learn how to handle alcohol by not even being allowed a sniff of it before your 18th birthday. Responsible attitudes to alcohol grow, like any other skill, from slow controlled exposure under the supervision of someone more competent than oneself. To my mind it's far better for parents to let their kids have a bit of alcohol under controlled conditions than it is for them to bar them from touching it, so that on their eighteenth birthday they go out and get lathered and cause problems for other people because they have no idea what their limits are.

But then, the government doesn't just want to dictate to adults what their kids should be drinking, it wants to dictate to the adults themselves, against all the medical evidence about what is a healthy level of alcohol consumption... Does anyone else think this is not so much about wanting people to be healthy, but about wanting to tell them what to do and how to behave? Perhaps it's because I have On Liberty engraved on my heart, but if I want to drink myself into a stupor, is that anyone's business but my own? I'm having similar responses to this campaign to the ones I had to the anti-smoking adverts I occasionally saw when I watched ITV. Nothing made me want a fag more than seeing the preachy, puritanical spewings of Saachi and Saachi and their little friends, and nothing makes me want a drink more than knowing that Gordon Brown doesn't want me to have one. I know that this is somewhat childish, but I'm afraid it's the way I work, reactionary old bag that I am.

Of course, I'd be less depressed about the direction of the government if members of my own damn party hadn't bought into this new puritanical bollocks. I'm with Mortimer on this: the right to get rat-arsed is an inalienable liberal principle, and I shall fight to keep it.

---

I emailed my first Casting the Net to the 'Ead 'Itter of Liberal Conspiracy at about 1 o'clock. Admittedly it was a little late, but given that I didn't wake up until after the deadline of 11 am had passed...

* nervous wibbling *