Wednesday, 3 September 2003
Houlantastic [am]
Posted by
Dave
Well frankly the stakes have been considerably upped and they're so up we may never manage to drag em back down again. To what do I refer? Well this weekend, though the locals may not have wished it to be so, several member of The 'Death were in attendance at an annual lan-party what is held by Houmous at his gaff on the south coast. Now other clans may fuck around with managing to hook up with people who live in a town on the south coast and feel that has given them a sufficient quota of beached southness but EED does not. We demand beach front property and this is exactly what was provided for at your actual Houlan.
Built on stilts (presumably to avoid attacks of pigmy monster floor-eating spiders - very sensible), Hou's Gaff, is excellently appointed for maximum 0wning and compulsory pooning which as regular readers of these blogs will know we manage to do, mostly to ourselves, by the ingestion of far too much alcohol. And so it was again. Lurks, Am, Muz and Brit (turning up late on the train and managing to wait outside for an hour - niiiice) proceeded to test out, once more, the comfy proposition that if you've had too much to drink, you'll be too stupid to give up now.
If ever Homo Sapiens Mortis Electricus was to feel that there really might be a deeper mystery to life - perhaps tribes of one people separated in the depths of time, it would be hard to feel this had been more aptly illustrated by finding Hou's boat in his drive. From this point on, which is to say as soon as we got there, it was clear there was never any danger of the Houlan sucking.
We had two rooms kitted out with tressle tables and a smattering of new mates from Clan Spam already in attendance. Spam have very posh cases whereas we do not but they were very nice people nonetheless in particular in being polite enough not to point out our general grubbiness. For this I can only apologise. While I'm at it, I'd like to apologise for everything else. That should just about cover it.
Our two rooms were governed by Lord Houmous in his red chair of commandingness which gave him a aura not unlike an italian male model crossed with Davros. Next door was a living room with raised up wooden flooring so clearly from the seventies that I spotted Peter Sellars and Brit Ekkland bunked up behind the sofas and which had an array of beplasma-d toyz so frightening in their leetness that you'll probably find them listed in an appendix of the Geneva Convention.
So we got down to a little gaming and played large amounts of RS and some Interstate for '42 which provoked yells of 'I've got spam on my bonnet!' and generally started proceedings in the direction they were s'posed to continue which is to say downward. The whole proceedings were occasionally looked in on by Hou's partner Di who it must be said, was an exceedingly good host within the living room DMZ in that, let's face it, how many non-gamers in a lovely home do *you* know would listen to Lurks and Am explaining the attraction of gaming at 3am after 15 hours on the sauce? *Exactly*. (Memo to self - look up Hougaff on multi-map and check this wasn't just some chimera introduced through aggressive use of military hallucinogens).
On day one we managed to get locked out as we proceeded to have a chinese which was easily resolved by Hou borrowing a girl who didn't look more than about 13 from the restaurant and getting her to stick her arm through the letter box. The London contingent shook their heads sadly and whiled away the time wondering just how many members of SO19 would descend on their local restaurant if a bloke said 'I need to borrow you for a minute and come to my house' to a pre-pubescent waitress. Thereafter we ate more duck than you'd find at a duck convention and talked rubbish. Very pleasant. Returning to gaff, we continued 0wnerage until (well at least personally) the effects of having to get up at 5am and the two and a half gin and tonics I had consumed made me mumble 'Oi Sellars / Ekkland - out my way' and collapse on a sofa. I remember going to bed thinking 'Do try not to get so excited when you haven't had a drink for a couple of weeks' and thinking about the swearin! g ratio, which as any fool knows, goes completely off the scale in clan events almost entirely due to something known as The Lurker Halo Effect and fell asleep counting waitresses (also about two and a half).
The next day, Saturday, commenced with a spot of breakfast outdoors in some cross between a cafe and a cider farm which I presumed to mean that the eggs are started by throwing a dead cat in the pan. But it all tasted scrummy despite the presence of a couple of clearly deeply dodgy sorts. Thereafter we pottered around the local village and bought up the entire supply of local tesco champagne at £15 a pop which won a blind champagne tasting beating all the famous stuff out of the water and was pretty sweet. By which I mean London sweet not sweet as in Hemasetas. Oh shut up. Thereafter (or was it before - linearity was not our friend this weekend), we shot some semi-automatic weapons, watched in amazement as Clan Spam went for a swim (pretty nice but for someone else's stunt-toes thank you) and played a few more games.! [EED]Jay, [EED]Pod and finally, when he could be arsed to get off his lazy butt, [EED]Spiro turned up as did a number of other Spams. We were quorate, the venue was rocking and the champagne was cold.
Sometimes there are weekends where you think to yourself 'that was great' and blogging it out in detail almost seems to miss the overall-ness of it. And so maybe with this one. For me, memories from that point, in the rather pleasant garden, the house or on the beach, are maybe done best by dipping in and out of what-happened-next;
-- Walking down the beach to the pub before our Indian on Saturday night
-- Houmous treating The Lurker Halo Effect
-- Houmous saying 'You're alright aren't you - I wasn't too sure last night' which only goes to show, on careful reflection, you can still be wrong....
-- The Indian restaurant kitted out for fifteen hungry gaming maniacs {{Oh can I just interlude at this point that members of Electric Death should note that Spooning is now officially banned by order of his Phatness and is no longer allowed due to three of us now carrying scars. I'd like to point out that just because I started it in Amsterdam, like all non-proliferation treaties, this kind of thing would have been much better sorted out if I could have just handed it out and not had to receive any thank you Spiro you bastard}}
-- Back at Hou's drinking, playing games (if you could be arsed which I just couldn't after getting back due to extreme relaxnessed) and staying up til a ridiculously early hour.
-- Lurks deciding he wasn't toasted enough at god knows what hour of the morning and proceeding to toast himself some more thereafter...
A great weekend and massive thanks to Hou for the planning and effort. There's two pictures that sum it up for me, and in a way, like Shroedinger's cat (if it's not indeed using it at the local caff), they're both simultaneously true states of being at a Houlan;
It's a bit like this and then it's also a bit like this....
In summary, if you weren't there, you missed out. Are we going back for 2004? Only if he lets us!
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I'm looking for some software to put up my batch of piccies as there's some true gems there. Meanwhile, however, I present to you an audio recording of Am snoring and um, some other drunken shennanigans.The social page has been updated with the three picture galleries.
ReplyDeleteWhy the bloody hell does this sort of thing happen when I'm out of the country! I'll get paranoid soon. Be there for 04 hopefully :)
ReplyDeleteClan Spam raised the possibility of doing an i-series LAN again. There's enough really good games to play that I think this is a bit of a goer. Especially if we have a mega turnout combined with the Spam folks so we can be sat together. When's the next one?
ReplyDeleteA rather belated post to confirm that with EED's involvement it was definitely the best Houmous Beach LAN ever - thanks very much for coming haha - I'm already thinking of ways of beating the depths we sank to for next year - human sacrifice anyone?
ReplyDeletep.s. well up for I-series - want to pick one Lurks? (bear in mind that SPAM are heading to Liquid 11 on 1st November so dont make it too close :-))
Count me in for an iSeries, yes it's expensive & yes, you get shit sleep but I think it could be good. We just need a bit of effort to be a bit more subversive next time. Get involved in some of the comps & stuff just to take the rip. There's allways a good meal to be had to & we actually play games & stuff.
ReplyDeleteOk so you get to laugh at a clan member either way here; but has not El Spin0r fallen foul of the rebot-posting-random-blog-into-channel ploy and ended up replying to something which was posted over a year ago? I know our synapses are getting addled with age but clan reaction times are surely still generally faster than this?
ReplyDelete