Or what actually happened in my experience: There will be a good turnout at, say, a restaurant, though later you may all head off to a tavern. That one time we had a delightful meal at that classy byzantine resto and retired to a nearby Irish pub from a kit, where drinks for two people (mine being a Diet Coke) ran 20 bucks.
On the other occasion, at that classy Irish restaurant in that neighbourhood where CBC employment for life has bought so many semidetached houses, the hostess quite obviously was not equipped with codenames such as “Tea Makers,” “Ouimet,” “Alphonse Ouimet,” or Ouimet’s real name, making it impossible to ask to be seated at the right table. So I inspected every single table in the joint, stopping visibly at each one and looking for familiar faces. Nothing. So I sat at the bar for 45 minutes in plain sight while nobody called me or came to get me. I had schlepped over the CBC design manual I had borrowed, but it ended up going unreturned as the happy, laughing table of Tea Makers habitué(e)s kept completely to itself – and, apparently, hidden, if you will forgive the zeugma.
Alphonse Ouimet is holding this blogging summit (a term previously used) only because he has to renew his work visa. (And to maintain an illusion of control over the child he abandoned.) The last time this happened, I was still writing most of the Tea Makers and he had a nice drinkypoo just with Allan.
Once you’re all a bit liquored up, ask Ouimet some trivia questions about CBC programs he’s never seen.