Living in the blogsphere: a secret meeting of minds

Last Friday night in Paris a petite woman left her work in the hands of her mother and boarded a train for England.

Around lunchtime on Saturday a man in Norfolk left his builders, his newly acquired students, LTLP and Baby Servalan and boarded a train for London as his thoughts turned to sushi and culture. Twenty minutes later in Brighton a woman moored her Little Red Boat, put out her binvelope and boarded a train heading North. At around the same time: I was chasing sheep; there was trouble on Coffee Corner as Skippy McWonderfuck failed, and Christine quietly knitted; a finely featured, pale skinned woman looked for reasons to be happy, while wondering if she would belong; a Beautiful Revolutionary pondered garbage night; and a diva tuned her pixels.

Around mid-afternoon on Saturday the petite woman, Anna of the boat, Johnny B, the coffee man, Christine, the Cheerful Woman, the Diva and the Beautiful Revolutionary converged on a small pub, well hidden in a row of terraced houses and named after a royal appendage. I was rushing through a chat with my neighbour at our local bookshop, horribly conscious of my lateness, before riding like an overheated madman towards Westminster bridge.

Twenty minutes later, secret identities were shedding in the back of the hidden pub, and I was riding the back streets looking for it. Twenty minutes after that, Coffee Man grabbed a chair for me as Anna of the boat, the queen bee of bloggers, did the introductions.

Yes, dear readers, 'twas an informal blogmeet, such as I have heard of in the past, but never before witnessed. And alas, my time there was short, limited as I was by other commitments. But here I will divulge what I learned:

• Anna - I am starting to think that if you don't know Anna then you're not a blogger, but maybe that's because I have found most of the best blogs I read through her comments page; she is gracious and unreasonably modest and the least shy of the bloggers - as anyone who has seen her impersonating a meerkat would agree
  

• Petite Anglaise - is either less petite than she makes out, or was sitting on a high stool, for she was taller than everyone else; and I forgot to ask her about the gourmet fish-and-chips

• Johnny B - is not as feckless as he appears, fortunately; and I forgot to ask if he salvaged the dining table

• The Beautiful Revolutionary - is a delightful gentleman of quick wit and generous phrase, who appears to be nowhere near as suicidal as his work implies, also fortunately

• Christine - is a warm voiced American with a penchant for Starbucks cookies and The Coffee Man

• Coffee Corner - is not a corner where you drink coffee, but a hairy and well mannered American man with a thing for Christine

• Pixel Diva - is an assertive Scottish woman named Ann, who knits, photographs and makes sites work for people who don't work as well as they might

• The Cheerful Woman - doesn't seem to need to find a reason to be cheerful, for she is clever, witty and laughs easily - or perhaps blogging has done that to her
  

• Universal Critic - well I'm not telling - I'm not that self-aware - you'll have to see if they say anything about me, though I'm sure they're much too polite
  

Unfortunately I could only stay for half-an-hour but in that time we discussed blog names - me asking everyone else theirs; the guilt you feel when you don't post often enough; and I dominated the conversation with my recent sheep experience, Johnny expressed surprise that we were in London discussing sheep when he expected conversation to be about Sushi recippes and the latest Loofa technology. Then I left, wanting more. Hopefully I will be invited to the next one with more than 24 hours notice.