First A-Soc social of 2009
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
Tuesday night saw the first A-Soc social of 2009 and quite a well attended one at that. Given a lot of people are not back in Leeds yet, many have exams next week and it been freezing cold outside (literally, it’s well below 0), we still managed to get probably 15 people to come down.
Our plans to meet in The Terrace had been somewhat thwarted by the union not opening The Terrace we switched things to The Old Bar (which weren’t serving food either), people kindly being directed down by union staff who asked Norm “are you looking for the long haired guy and his dad” referring to Paul 
.
The Old Bar was being rubbish as well though and closed the bar at 9. Interestingly Izzy turned up soon after to find us all getting our stuff together to leave. She immediately then made an exit stating that “well, Norm’s not here” - charming. The night ended with Kate trading in some shifts at Rationalist Week for a lift home which is fair enough really.
Learning in The Library
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
Yesterday was the usual Tuesday night A-Soc social once again at The Library as the union is closed until next week. They finally had food back on this week so I took the chance to order one of Scream’s rather tasty mixed grills to which they didn’t have any steak for :o. I mean, what is a mixed grill without the steak? They ended up doing me double chicken and double gammon though so I’m not complaining.
Attendance was good, Nicola is back in civilization if only for a few days and The Gijs put in a guest appearance too. As ever, a successful night in the end.
Twas the A-Soc before Christmas
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
Last night saw the first A-Soc social of the holidays, regular meetings having been suspended until everyone gets back to Leeds in January. Given it was holidays, and indeed the 23rd of December, we did alright for attendance, I think we had a total of eight of us in the end.
I was a good night as I got to chat to Paul about some of my suggestions regarding the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire and we also battled with Facebook to try and sort it out as his new phone is geared towards Facebook but won’t actually let you register or anything.
In a highly amusing situation also, Norm got ID’d. Clearly the big beard is taking years of his look .
AHS festive party
Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
Friday saw myself, Norm and Liz head down to sunny Tamworth just outside of Birmingham for Jenna’s AHS festive party. It turned out (as if we were expecting anything less!) to be a really good night talking to plenty of old faces and some new faces too.
The food was good though I think I got through more than my far share of pigs in blankets (you snooze you loose I guess) and there was much fun to be had with games of Extreme Jenga, which is like regular Jenga but the blocks have sloping slides (rhombi). It was also made more difficult by the fact myself and Norm insisted on taking two of the bottom three pieces out each time .
It also turns out that Jenna’s dad, Bob Catley is a massive rockstar. Not only does he have a Wikipedia page (as if that isn’t enough), his band Magnum have had 14 studio albums, a top 10 charting album, a Gold Certified album and have supported the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Whitesnake - what a legend!
Having had a good night we headed down to Weatherspoon’s for a recovery breakfast, after all, it’s never too early for a good steak! Big thanks to Jenna for hosting said party, it might have to find it’s way into the AHS annual calendar 
.
Winter Solstice Meal
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
Massively disappointing is all I can really say about Casa Mia.
When we initially approached them to host our Winter Solstice meal they were very enthusiastic and said they loved to get student groups down there. However things turned sour a few days before the event when they started getting arsey with us and started demanding Norm’s credit cards so they could bill if we didn’t turn up with the exact number of people.
When we got down there they were alright though not overly friendly and they can’t add up apparently. They gave us 15 menus for the 16 of us, a mistake which they refused to correct, which is odd that they would get it wrong given they were so insistent we bring that number of people.
The food was alright, I rather enjoyed by rib eye steak but the portions were small and all I got was a steak with chips, nothing else which is cheap given you get a bit of salad with your £5 pub steak. I will admit the ribs were nice though.
Finally as we settled up the bill they tried overcharging us which we quickly shot down. All in all, I don’t think we’ll be ever going back there.
Afterwards we headed on to Courtyard (though the freshers went home because they just can’t keep up :p ) for a few drinks which was really good. It’s not the cheapest place but not out of line for the city centre and they have a quiet atmosphere and very comfortable seating so I stand by it as an excellent choice.
Sports night II
Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
We ran a second sports night at A-Soc on Friday for those who didn’t want to engage in the traditional end of term celebrations. It was quite well attended given how many people have gone home for the holidays.
I didn’t stay long as I was still feeling awful but I did see some of the marathon Trivial Pursuit game - never underestimate how long that game takes!
Sports night
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
Last Friday we ran our inaugural sports night at A-Soc. IT was very much targetted at the needs of our society members - sports included Scrabble, Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly (what, those are real sports!). We tried out best to keep physical sports out but a few crept in, in the form of pool and badminton.
To round off the evening Carl also turned up and after narrowly beating him in a game of pool (the man is a shark, we rarely get such a challenge from fellow A-Soc members though I am yet to play Moz) we sat down to talk about the Gospel and do some faith healing on Nicola. She informs me the bruising hasn’t gone away though, which it normally should have done naturally by now, so I’m not sure what is going on there.
In any case it was a good night on the most part and one we’re hoping to repeat soon.
The Dawkins debate
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
Atheist Society last night composed of a meeting regarding whether Richard Dawkins had been a positive or negative influence. There were some excellent speeches and obviously we concluded that he was but it was a very worthwhile debate to have none the less.
The real debate point though is why so few committee members made it to the social. Norm, Nicola, Charlie (which makes up all of the exec) along with Sophie and Liz were all missing, it’s a damn fine job we have dedicated members like Rosie to come and get things going even if she was only there for a few drinks.
Kate spent her usual evening flirting with the DJ and I spent most of the evening bragging about London to those who didn’t come. We also had a few new faces at the meeting which was great, indeed, Johnny joined up there and then. He’s clearly a man who knows where the party’s at.
London
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
So, Liz is now officially a lesbian.
So, Zoltan is now dating a 15 year old.
They’re both great openings so I’ll let you pick which one you prefer.
This weekend was of course Atheist Society’s Weekend Away 2008 and with a total of 22 people we headed down to London on Friday afternoon. We arrived shortly before 4pm and checked into the hostel without much problems. I managed to get some work done on the train down there which was useful.
We first headed out to Smithy’s, a local pub which used to be a blacksmiths and retains many of the original features and character. We ended up on two seperate tables, the other table ended up getting kicked out. They claimed it was because people weren’t buying any drinks though I suspect it was because Tom was far too drunk and his renditions of Oasis songs were distracting other customers .
I left with that table to guide them to another pub only to find that the table I had just left got kicked out soon after because Nicola started causing trouble by throwing candle wax around. So after a quick stop at the Euston Flyer we made it down to Pizza Express for dinner. My meal was quite nice though I have to say Nicola’s meat feast looked even more appetising.
Afterwards we headed out to Sin City at the Electric Ballroom which was absolutely amazing! It took us a while to find it, I ended up having to phone Leeds Nightline to give us directions lol but we made it there in the end. Unfortunately Jenny took a blow to the head near the end of the night and had to go home but I had a brilliant time, they played such a fantastic playlist, every song was good.
Myself, Mike, Gaz, Sophie and Jon made it to almost the end of the night and had an interesting walk home running into a crazy Irish man who insisted on telling us lots of jokes while he was “raising the price of a hamburger.” We also found a phonebox full of prostitute adverts so picked up a few as you never know which way these weekends will go .
Meanwhile Rich and crew headed to the gay club Heaven. Yep Tom, John and Heini were at a gay club until 5am. And not particularly quite when they got back in either, Rich burst into our room with “I don’t know what the fuck you were doing, he was a gay man.” Apparently Nicola had pulled when a guy mistook her for a man in drag.
Downstairs Liz was apparently even more loud on her entry waking most of the room up which wasn’t exactly helping matters as Norm and Michelle had already made Zoltan cry by not letting him go to sleep. As I mentioned in the intro, while Liz hasn’t explicitly come out, staying at a gay club till 5am has to be the final proof really.
Saturday
We kicked Saturday off with a visit to Conway Hall where we meet Tessa from the NSS as they prepared for their AGM. We then headed over to the Natural History Museum with a quick stop for lunch in which Heini managed to work his way through a large big cheese and bacon meal (the new Big Tasty sized promotional burger) as well as another big cheese and bacon burger on top of that!
The Natural History Museum wasn’t quite as good as I was expecting but never the less still good - the Darwin exhibit we were booked onto was well worth a visit and we got plenty of good pictures so I’ll count that as a victory.
Just as it was closing I finally ran into Kieran so we got a quick chance to catch up then. We got seperated on the underground however and by the time I made it to the pub we were meeting at there were only ten minutes before we had to go for dinner so in the end I only got about 20 minutes to chat to Kieran. Still, I’m sure we’ll get chance to catch up at new year.
Dinner was courtesy of Nando’s and despite half the group bailing on it, the staff were friendly enough towards us and it was a damn fine meal. Unfortunately we didn’t find a brain this time but there is always next time.
After dinner we headed down to The Big Chill which Norm had managed to wangle us free entry to. It was rather disappointing when we got in there, it was rather packed and music was blasting out - not exactly chilled out, at all. Never the less it was a good place to grab a few drinks in, heading home about 1ish, once again with myself and Mike being the last people there along with John and Liz in tow.
Sunday
We had to check out Sunday morning so a bit of an earlier start which we then headed over to Speakers’ Corner to see what was going on. There were quite a few good speakers there, neither Mary or Jay Smith showed up but a number of other good speakers were there and I got a good crowd when I got up on my ladder and started talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
So much so in fact that everyone left the Muslim speaker to come listen to me at which point I added a rather cheeky “where is your god now?” in his direction which I’m not sure he appreciated too much . He also turned down the opportunity to have a debate with me but there you go.
Afterwards we headed over to Blackfriars where the Church of Scientology was and found a nice pub to grab a few drinks before our appointment. I decided to walk it and found myself going down Fleet Street and past the Royal Courts of Justice which are some amazing buildings and then down onto the waterfront which was fantastic.
After a quick drink or two in the pub we headed down to the Church of Scientology where we were shown round the building and exhibition centre which explained about Scientology and what they do. I picked up a copy of Dianetics which I am looking forward to reading .
Afterwards we decided to split up to find somewhere to eat as we weren’t booked in anywhere. We found a nice pub that I believe was just off Farrington if that sounds like a real street in London, myself and Gaz tooked into some very nice rib eye steaks meanwhile Nicola decided to have meat balls in flat bread.
Continuing our history of running into random people I know down in London, while we were in the pub Hind Hassan, formally equality and diversity officer at Leeds University Union spotted us.
As we were leaving Norm was elsewhere checking train tickets and realising that the train in fact left at 22:10 not 22:30 . So after a bit of a mad rush back we safely made it onto the train and back to Leeds. It was scheduled to arrive at 1:30 and Liz was so confident of this she proclaimed she would perform a sexual act on the platform if it got in an hour early. It got in at 12:30…
The Dawkster is coming!
Monday, December 1st, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments
So, straw poll time.
In the last, year let’s say, longer if you wish, I’m just wondering how many national organisations everyone else has co-founded that have Richard Dawkins coming to speak at their press launch?
Oh, just the AHS then?