Feeling full of the joys of spring, I decided to declare last night the last of the London winter random pub meet-ups. It's time to get serious about the mapping again, so the next meet-up will be the first of the London Summer 2009 Mapping Party Marathon. As punishment for this springtime enthusiasm, I've been struck down by a very wintery snotty cold.

In fact we didn't wait till the end of the random pub meet-ups to begin the mapping goodness. I drew the first London cake diagram of 2009 for last night's meet-up. Nothing too ambitious, but a slightly odd shape, to reflect the estimated concentrations of POIS (particularly shops along High Street Kensington)

It was partly Matt's enthusiasm for a bit of mapping that spurred me to do this. He also helped me chose the location, and the pub, and finally realised that he'd got his dates confused and couldn't make it!

We started to suspect that this might've been a practical joke by Matt. Me and Francine didn't have any trouble mapping slice 1, a tightly packed row of POIs (shops) along High Street Kensington. Gregory however, found that the exciting patch of unnamed streets I'd sketched from yahoo in slice 12, turned out to be a private gated community (very posh). Meanwhile TomH was shooed off a street in the uber-posh slice 11 by a snooty woman. Her response to the OSM explanation was "we dont want it", no doubt spoken whilst looking down her nose at him. But then firefishy arrived in the pub cursing having been stopped by police three times! He'd chosen the super-posh slice 7, which I thought might've been a tricky one. This street full of ambassador's houses has armed security guards at either end. Apparently they saw his big camera, and didn't even allow him to set foot on that street! He then managed to arouse police attention on another two occasions around different streets near the Israeli embassy. He does have a huge camera though. Spy camera needed next time I think.

Matt's pub choice was a good one though. Also very posh, but with a deal: two meals + two drinks for £15. Perfect! We had a table for the seven of us. Lucky nobody else turned up!

We chatted about some plans for the coming weekend API0.6 rollout, but sadly I couldn't stick around for a full evening of map chat because I was feeling just a bit too snotty. Some might say I should've stayed in bed yesterday, but you know those POIs aren't going to map themselves! The real mapping action, the Mapping Party Marathon, kicks off Wednesday April 22nd.