I've heard barristers describing the brain working like a set of pigeon holes. Really clever people have more than others - each holding vast amounts of information and FACTS (remember them?) to be accessed on a need-to basis.
As soon as they take on another case the pigeon holes they used for the previous case are emptied and filled with the new information so they become an expert in the new case.
That's a well-oiled brain.
On a good day, I have probably 2 pigeon holes. Which is why when a task is undertaken and someone asks me something, I can be immediately derailed and the thing I was going to do is long forgotten, or the object I was holding lost, discarded.
I have to replay my previous steps and actions in order to find my iPad, book, keys or whatever it was I was holding, when , for instance, someone asked me a question that wasn't related to what I was doing.
A highly inefficient way to be, constantly looking for your stuff.
This is what my life was like in the last few years of work. It was just hopeless. Having to concentrate on the job in hand and remind myself what I was supposed to be doing. I needed to do everything with blinkers on - tunnel-vision - staring Linford Christie-like at the finish line.
Any distractions and the vision and job in hand are lost.
Start again.
People still ask me if I'm going to return to stonemasonry. It's difficult to explain to them how exhausting it can be just to get a job done as it requires so much more conscious awareness - concentration - to complete relatively simple tasks - and with that comes the mental tiredness.
I'm drooling more and more from the right hand side of my gob. This is a dementia symptom believe it or not.
So no, I'm really not in a position to return to work.
Ever.
Goblins Reunited
Yesterday I went to Dragonmeet, which is the annual RPG and boardgaming expo in Hammersmith. I took the coach up from Wells, which terminates in Hammersmith bus station, and then walked the 5 minutes to the Novatel Hotel which hosts it.
The definition of convenience!
Jono and I moved away from SW London roughly the same time. We were mainstays at Kingston Gaming Club. I was known for being bossy, but you have to be - if people don't make the commitment to coming on time every week, the group loses out, and it just dies a death. You have to be honest.
These days people think nothing of not turning up or texting they can't make it on the morning of the event. Bear in mind some people travel for at least an hour to get there, and would like to organise their social lives too.
I'm one of those people who was brought up to believe lateness was rude. And there really is no excuse for not communicating if there's a problem in this day and age.
Rant over.
So, Jono, Adrian, Larry and myself went around the place. One of the standout observations was the lack of official Dungeons and Dragons accessories on sale. WoTC (the owners) have never even had a stand there.
Mainly it's the smaller independent companies. These are people who write, produce and sell their own products.
Truly labours of love.
Mongoose, who produce Traveller, were there. All 4 of them. This is a global science-fiction RPG and it's a tiny, tiny company with a hugely loyal fanbase too. I saw the book they produce for physicists who play a maths based version, where they work out the velocity of a craft travelling at X which then slingshots round a gas-giant 3 times the size of Jupiter but with only 75% of the gravity...
Something for everyone!
I bought a D&D compatible adventure called 'Against the Faerie Queen' which is a role-play-heavy (rather than combat) epic fantasy adventure based in post-Romano Britain. It won't suit everybody, as it's more about lore, diplomacy, politics and role-playing.
It won't be for everybody, and people struggle when it comes to correctly pronouncing Welsh words.
But I love the fact Celtic in this sense refers to Welsh Celtic rather than Irish Celtic, as it so often does.
I also had a kickstarter arrive the other day which is like D&D set in a gonzo future and televised...so much to read!
At Dragonmeet I met Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop, who with Steve Jackson invented the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook which brought so much joy to my teenage life. I shook him by the hand and thanked him, then he struggled with the PDQ machine (I thought he'd have a minion for that) and signed my book.
I bought presents for my Thursday lot. I hope they like them!
Had a really good chat with Larry about socks, and why they are important.
Met Tyrone, Peter and John Bryant too.
It was such a proper geek and nerd-fest. The sights, sounds and smells were just brilliant. Great to see younger people there too - not just us sad old beardies.
The overheard conversations were a joy to behold - '...of course I was just using the beta part of my brain in that scenario..."
-----------------------------
It's come to my attention recently that I am not playing nearly enough role-playing games.
Seriously.
I have gone slightly doolally or at least higher up the doolally scale without it.
It gives me something to aim and work for in the week. It’s intensely taxing on my grey matter. It’s the most intense of social interactions with high emotions, adrenalin, arithmetic, acting and other things beginning with A.
It also keeps me out of the boozer.
If I don’t get my fix I get rather…grumpy, lazy, listless, depressed all of which is a virtuous circle.
Good news is that Jono/Adrian/Larry will be running a Traveller campaign online on Wednesdays from that London/Plymouth.
Hoorah!
Official Dungeon of Dementia T-shirts!
I've been working on these for minutes.
Available in XXXM.
Payment options: postal order only
103 Guineas per item.
3 for the price of 4.
Disclaimer: Dungeon of Dementia accepts no responsibility for fights, hospital bills, loss of limb or any other negative outcomes incurred when wearing its apparel.
The last post had the fewest clicks in years. Lol.
But really. Come on...
Okay, okay, I'll stop.
I'll talk about FTD then, and all my problems associated with it.
But I'll try and keep it light.
Baby-bio for brains
We set the bar too low these days. My experience at the Beeb was that the programme-makers thought the audience were completely stupid. I was told to rewrite certain parts of the fact-sheet that accompanied the programme as it contained words longer than one syllable.
I'm not making this up.
Yet the people making the programme were rather dull themselves.
Educated, yes. Clever, no.
I guess it could be perceived as projection. I think they thought they were really intelligent. They were certainly deluded if they did think that.
Now the bar is so low in the Kensington museums that a bright 12 year old would probably feel he or she were being talked down to.
More relatable, innit?
When your brain is atrophying, you have to try harder than ever to keep those plates spinning - voice, language - stimulating it by using those senses, completing sudokus and crosswords. Keep pumping oxygen and blood through the grey matter and fight against the inevitable to maintain functionality for as long as possible.
I play RPG games as you know, which require multiple skills.
I still need social-interaction which can - with people I don't know so well - be awkward.
I understand this is very much how certain people with autism experience the world.
I want to be really smart, but...
I watch discussion programmes and lectures on politics and philosophy which are beyond my pay-grade, but how else are you supposed to learn or achieve anything if you don't set the bar high?
So I've been watching anything with Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Vlad Vexler, and archival episodes of Firing Line - a highbrow interview programme which was the vehicle (I cannot spell vehical, vehichal, veichal!) of William F Buckley Jr, a conservative political philosopher who hugely influenced the Reagan administration.
Now before you all say I'm drifting off to the right hear me out.
Being in an echo-chamber is something I try to avoid. I inevitably take the role of devil's advocate when everyone is earnestly nodding heads and wringing hands. There is a prevailing belief these days that our political opponents are not only wrong but inherently bad.
No doubt some of them are - and I don't even count alt- or far-right wingers whose bigotry I have no time for. I want to understand conservatives and have my beliefs challenged.
I want to be able to think. And the freest societies allow both sides.
Buckley and Gore Vidal famously debated on The ABC network on the advent of the 1968 US election.
They hated each other and Buckley got close to punching Vidal live on the programme when Vidal goaded him by calling him a Nazi.
Vidal was extremely clever, a master of rhetoric, charismatic, smug, arrogant and a member of the US aristocracy (for they have one).
A drunk Norman Mailer famously head-butted Vidal backstage from a Dick Cavett show in the early 70s. So Vidal had quite the track record.
But while I disagree fundamentally with almost all of Buckley's politics, he challenges, makes some very interesting and persuasive arguments and his interviews on the whole are good-natured and are an exchange or arm-wrestle of ideas.
He had mannerisms and affectations along with a mid-Atlantic drawl (he spent some of his childhood in public school in Windsor) which made him very easy to impersonate.
I cannot - CANNOT - listen to Noam Chomsky. He's so unutterably dull and intransigent. His views to me seem rather stuck in the 1970s.
Ditto Mailer, who spent his life trying to out-Hemingway Hemingway. He was an anachronism by the late 60s.
So anyway, that's what I'm doing.
Dad's downstairs watching 'Cash in the Attic'.
I would like to sit downstairs and read or something, but I can't concentrate with that on.
It occurred to me that Dad may have ADHD - he needs background noise.
Regrets
Everyday. By the skipful. I dream them. I wake up with them.
If you have none I think you're in total denial of reality or your self.
All the fuck-ups from childhood to present day, although the vast majority are from age 25-40.
Not standing up for myself, being drunk and stupid, losing all hope and drive in my late 20s, which I realise was depression.
Usually just episodes of patheticness.
Yesterday I went into Wells, I had 3 pints in the afternoon and sat in the pub with my headphones on and read. It got really busy .
In the evening I drank 3 bottles of beer. So, a 6-pint day.
Last Saturday was a 9-pint day. 4 in the afternoon, 5 in the evening. On my own, in the pub.
Not good is it? I didn't even feel particularly drunk, though I screamed at some balaclava'd youth cycling on the pavement with no lights on his bike.
Arthritis is taking hold of my fingers and shoulders too.
Yet, whilst just listing these things I don't feel self-pity, rather frustration at past failures to make constructive decisions coupled with a total incapability of planning for the future.
I don't know how you'd plan for the past...
I am, however, very bored.
Have I kept it light?
Oh.
Try this then:
"Do you do dice swaps?"
Asked the 10 year old girl.
"Sorry?"
"Do you do dice swaps?"
"What?? Certainly not!" I replied, incredulously. While inwardly raging "GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN!!!"
She looked puzzled. Everyone does dice swaps, surely?
Why would I want her glittery dice, all covered in sticky, sugary child-goo?
'Gusting. 'GUSTING!
What was she thinking?
There was an uncomfortable silence as we realised we inhabited 2 separate worlds.
These are MY dice. Those are YOUR dice. And never...the...twain. Do you understand?
GOOD.
Then we'll speak no more about it.
No, no, NO!
She hung around awkwardly for a bit, then walked off.
I think she learned a valuable lesson from that, and she'll thank me one day, mark my words.
And as for the teenagers who neglect to bring a dice and pencil to a role-playing game - A ROLE-PLAYING GAME!!!!! - then wish to borrow MY dice and stationery to duly SOIL with their greasy and detritus-laden fingers?
I called J as I was passing the house. That happy/sad feeling of nostalgia.
Like listening to an Abba song.
Wilbur ran out to see me, falling base over apex, but he recognised me instantly. I think we were both in shock at seeing each other again.
I was once contemplating setting up a website called Wilbur’s Shits, which rather like those swatches of marbles and granites would show the subtleties and differences from say yellow ochre to jet black with carrots in.
I never did it of course but now I’ve given you the idea, haven’t I?
Anyway, Wilbur was a year old when I met him. I didn't like him at first. He used to sleep on the bed, and I would shoo him off. He would try and eat everything. He would have these frond like hairs over his face that used to drive me nuts.
He rarely moved, choosing to teleport instead with pizza in his gob, out to the garden to munch it.
He would growl if you came near him - only when he got older.
I used to say he was the only one who was pleased to see me when I got home from work.
He came on games holiday with me. It all went wrong when he discovered the compost patch on the farm we were staying and after gorging himself on rotten apples barfed it all up at 2am in my room.
He was a puker and a shitter; that much is true.
In fact he was obsessed with food. Like a lot of show-cockers, he possessed an under-active thyroid and by the end was blind with cataracts, deaf, senile and had had some strokes.
I ended up loving Wilbur, and it was great to see him just before he shook off this mortal bone.
Dogs are just great.
We see in them the kindness, honesty and unconditional love we wish we possessed as humans.
US Election and what now?
Some people don’t understand how you can get so embroiled in US politics when you don’t live there.
I’d say the repercussions on the geo-politics of the world are going to be felt by everyone.
Trump's policy of isolationism is going to affect the war in Ukraine, the world’s economies, Europe, the balance of power with India, China and Russia, not to mention Taiwan…
The tariffs alone will affect our GDP and growth. and Europe's even more.
(As an aside there has been a spike in search terms on Google for "What is a tariff?" and "Are tariffs good?" in swing states, after the election...)
Just watching the election post-mortems on YouTube, TV and in the paper. I know I know - these are ancient monoliths people have no time for anymore.
Frank Zappa said American culture can be summed up in ‘what’s the bottom line?’ I recognise people hadn’t felt Biden’s policies had improved their cost of living, and the Democrats were talking or accused of being obsessed with identity politics.
However, the economy is booming, more jobs have been created than in decades, people are - despite the prevailing zeitgeist - improving their standard of living. And yet and yet...
"They're poisoning the blood of our country."
"They're eating the dogs and cats; people's pets."
Blaming poor people and immigrants, the traditional methods of the far right.
Zappa also warned of America turning into a fascist theocracy in time, which most people of course ignored.
Check out a guy called Doug Coe and an institution called “The Fellowship”. A covert organisation whose intention was to make Christianity at the heart of US politics, despite the Founding Fathers writing a deliberately secular constitution.
You can see it all starting in the 80s with the Reagans.
By the way, it’s intentionally non-publicity seeking.
So back to 2024, the Democrats went knocking door-to-door, but the data they were using wasn’t effective in targeting the people Trump’s team had already got through to using digital media.
What the electorate heard were (justifiable) attacks on Trump’s character rather than what would benefit them.
Democrats laughing at people who are clearly dumb and ignorant (MAGA) who don’t agree with you, didn’t help.
It’s easy to see 5 minutes after the event some of what went wrong..
As Vlad Vexler pointed out, we live in a world of Post-Truth, authoritarian populists who disguise themselves in traditionally Conservative clothing.
They communicate disinformation repeatedly in 5-10 second bites on TikTok. No time for reasoned discussion. No time for journalism.
Fox News, Rumble; 18 of the top 20 political podcasts are MAGA-supporting. The left or centre are losing the information war.
40 ex-high profile employees of Trump's previous administration have been vocal in their condemnation of Trump saying he is a fascist and utterly unsuited for the position of POTUS.
Can you name any other president whose previous employees have done that?
What’s so good about democracy anyway?
I thought the whole point of modern democracy was we could get these guys out after 4/5 years get our guys in, and the whole system balances itself out over time.
That will not be the case anymore in many countries. Hungary and Turkey spring to mind immediately.
In the 90s, after Apartheid and the Soviet Union had fallen, the world felt genuinely good. There was a visceral optimism about where the world was and where it was heading.
How naive we were!
Of course, it proved to be just a blip.
Move forward to 2024
"Don't bring politics into this!"
Well, I will if you mention Christian nationalists in an anodyne context when they are in fact rather unpleasant people.
Maybe you could learn something by what I'm telling you rather than shoot it down in flames? After all in the 80s during Apartheid, people said the same thing.
"Politics shouldn't come into sport!"
Say that to black athletes not allowed to take part in the Olympics, rugby or cricket because of their skin colour.
Have we all forgotten this or are we simply unaware or uninterested in our most recent past?
When one is tired of Gurn', one is tired of life...
Jesus it’s small. I haven’t really established the social life I wanted here. Evenings spent inside, drinking, playing on the computer. Not ideal.
Wandering up and down the barren streets, with the exception of market days when it's joyously bustling,
An astonishingly acute case of gonorrhoea...
The people I know have busy lives and why should I expect them to make an effort when I haven’t with them prior to living here?
Cue trips away visiting friends. More reading and watching of substantial things. I no longer watch TV other than the news, partly because if something doesn’t grab me entirely - and I’m prepared to watch a couple of episodes - I’m going to drop it.
I feel the content of most dramas is so lazy or algorhythmical that they just don’t merit watching.
"Oo, let's see how many willies we can get into this programme!" seems to be the remit for most programming.
And Michael Macintyre and Simon Cowell and their ilk must die.
Trumpian I know...
Of course, I should be more gregarious but what with the executive functions almost always offline, it’s difficult.
Bath beckons. So even does Glastonbury, if only - like Camden Market - to remind myself why I haven’t been there for years, and therefore prevent any more silly deluded thoughts for another few years.
Marvellous breakfast. Coffee was terrific - perfect strength and oatmilk-to-coffee ratio. Left the extra-large blueberries in the honeyed porridge just long enough to slightly stew them and take the sharpness away.
Gurt lush.
Kemi Badenoch has just been declared Conservative party leader. The party of Disraeli, Churchill, Macmillan, Thatcher and Truss have elected the first black leader of any main political party.
I don't think Labour will even elect a woman leader for decades. There are reasons for this, and the main of which is the dyed-in-the-wool sexism of Trade Unions who still select the candidates.
Matthew Syed of The Times wrote an article where he applied to become a Labour Party candidate. Articulate, intelligent, reasonable - yet to apply in Labour you have to be approved by each table representing different sections of the party.
I guess he was a bit too posh for some.
By contrast Matthew Parris, also of The Times and a former Conservative MP, wrote that when it comes to defining The Conservative Party, it isn't ruled by political ideology but rather it defines itself by what it isn't. So they do it by saying 'we don't like what Labour is doing' so they push back against it.
I guess that's a bit like defining what Britishness is: we say what it isn't, which is why Trump disgusts us so much.
He is the antithesis of Britishness at its best.
Halloween, Shmalloween...
Being a misery guts I don't do the American 6-week festival of Halloween.
Rather like being oblivious of that tennis tournament in SW London every June/July when I was organising my 50th birthday party, when hotel prices go up to £900/night.
I didn't even think to do a Halloween-themed adventure for Dungeons and Dragons at Pilton this year,.
It just passes me by. Rather like Harry Potter.
So this half-term thanks to Edspired Tutoring, I ran an oldie but a goody.
Nice team of kids too. Smart, enthusiastic, friendly and funny.
I tried to prepare by reading and making notes but it just was not happening. I found it impossible to knuckle down and get stuck in to the text.
So I winged it. Again, having picked an adventure which I'd run 3-4 times before it was much easier to just run straight out of the book.
It went really well.
I think.
Indulgence
Look at this. While the 6 week festival of Halloween drags on some bright sparks had the idea of making themed drinks. This is Northern Monk's Witches Fingers - that's their spelling not mine.
Yes, it is actually that colour.
It's just food colouring, rather than eye of newt and lark's vomit.
I realised that throughout my pretensions of trying to be cool, Sarah and I were actually quite similar. We were both bored by 80% of schoolwork and did pretty much the minimum. Well, if you've got Ernie going up and down the playing field mowing the grass, it's far more interesting and soothing (hypnotic even) than learning German grammar or balancing some equation or other.
Both of us found revision for exams almost impossible, and duly did badly in our A-Levels.
I wonder if we're similarly neurologically diverse?
Haven't changed in 30 years. Well, Sarah hasn't...
To think, it's 30 odd years ago. We reminded each other of things we found excruciatingly embarrassing we'd said or done when we were...kids, essentially. But having been in contact over the last few years again, this was the first time we'd seen each in the flesh.
We did the Cathedral, Vicars' Close and Bishop's Palace. Proper tourists we were.
Sarah has a business in which she provides teaching resources to a global client base.
Check out the website. It really is something else.
Shelley who is so tiny that if it wasn't for her glorious hair and smile she would not be visible to the human eye.
She has the health of about 3 normal humans. She glows with wellness.
We laugh a lot. I like making her laugh.
I always did.
Then she said she'd seen something really profound while on a school trip in Sierra Leone, and she communicated it in a way that I suddenly felt the profundity too.
What was it?
A little boy, malnourished, stopped and stared for about 10 minutes at children in a private school playing football. It was as though he realised with his little 7 year old mind that he would never be part of that world.
Suddenly the mood had changed, and hearing the immortal words of Alan Partridge ('I want to keep it lite...') I said something dumb, and we were back to normal again.
Phew.
Clare is the adult who accompanies me from time-to-time.
We went to a cafe and I saw it had Basque Cheesecake on the menu. OMG - last had that at Brat years ago. Best cheesecake ever, and I AM AN EXPERT.
It was nearly £5 a slice and while it was delicious it was about half the portion we were expecting.
Mmn.
I felt that was a bit mean. We wandered around through the autumn leaves and got another coffee then walked home.
Clare's dog passed away recently, which is very sad. She is very laid back (she always was) and I can't imagine the stress she's been under recently what with her dog, moving house and stuff.
We talked about the awful things women do to their bodies - Brazilian butt-lifts, botox, filler and other implants and injectifications.
Big old ugly duck lips.
One of the things that women often have conversations about is 'What would you change about your body?'
Talk about fuelling self-loathing.
I thought about it. As a bloke, you're paranoid about the size of your John Thomas, my head's too large, and I'm rather puny. But those are things I can't do anything about.
Perhaps I should change my sense of anxiety to that of contentment - be accepting of who I am and how I look.
Yes - contentment. That's the part I want to change.
It's a brain-thing, not a body-thing.
This week made me realise that I spend too much time on my own.
I need the company of people more than I realise.
Mods
A lot of computer-based - and lately console games - have become open-sourced (is that the right phrase?). That is, opening up the innards of their games allowing clever people to add code to enhance the gaming experience.
For example, they will update the graphics and make them higher in resolution, or add bonus content to the site in the form of extra adventures or crazy daft things - one of which is turning dragons into Thomas the Tank Engines.
The modding community, on their way to work.
Skyrim is the most modded game of all time. It was released in 2011 and I thought it was amazing, but time has taken its toll and it looks very dated indeed with its blurry, dull graphics and limited voices (very few actors playing all the rolls) and dialogues.
There's not much that can be done about the latter, but it is astonishing what modders have achieved (if you ignore some of the more teenaged attempts...) with additional plots and stories, the use of additional voice actors and all the graphics enhancements.
(Vanilla = original)
I know I should be doing the cleaning and stuff...
I'm actually looking forward to playing D&D with other adults soon as we haven't done a proper session in over a MONTH!
Shocking.
But I want to end on this enigmatic photograph which I imagine was taken in either Regent's or St James's Park.
Going to London to partake of nooclear medicines and MFI scans, the machines of which are operated by Doozers.
I was trying to get a decent clip of Doozers, who are these tiny green people who are construction workers on Fraggle Rock who make buildings that the Fraggles eat, but all I could get was the musical numbers. Then I found this!
Suffice to say, the experience is akin to being rolled into a sarcophagus - with your head clamped still - often with gently appalling music playing (usually from Heart FM) and a lot of whirring, clanking, beeping and screeching noises.
I think they put those in on purpose to make it sound more sci-fi.
It’s not that unpleasant; rather, slightly surreal.
As I type this, the cacophony of zero-boundary children in this beer garden is almost overwhelming.
I blame their parents, who are - technically - cxxts.
Games stuff
I’ve been playing a 13 year old computer game called Skyrim, which was when it came out - a game-changer. Unfortunately the company who produced it then went into MMORPGs (online games with lots of other players) and the experience of those games was crap.
Yes! Let’s exploit the brand!
They’ve since destroyed the Fallout franchise, and they are yet to follow up with a sequel to Skyrim.
13 years and waiting…
So I’m playing the game and enjoying it, but the same glitches in the program still exist. Chests swallowing your loot, NPCs floating in mid-air, and other nonsense.
It’s evident the company doesn’t care one iota about its undeservingly loyal fanbase.
I think I may just go back to books. It’s healthier anyway.
Autumn
It’s mid Autumn. I love the colours of the leaves, the cool weather; appreciate the shorter days and golden light, the anticipation of Christmas and the cosiness of dark evenings and log fires, with the smell of burning and the streaming of eyes.
The leaves are yellow ochre and burnt umber, with a few reluctant deciduous examples holding out for the inevitable.
Talking today about Glüwein and mulled cider - those steaming hot drinks with cloves and cinnamon we drink while cupping the glass or mug with our fingerless mittens. Yum!
But we have had Xmas fare in the supermarkets since late summer. Come the New Year and Easter Eggs will be in the shops.
He’s only just been birthed and they’re rolling the boulder away for his resurrection!
Similarly, no Guy Fawkes anymore, and that American festival of Halloween lasts for 6 weeks.
What's the world coming to when you can't even burn a Catholic once a year now for all the bloody trick or treaters?
If Thomas Carlyle had been alive today he would be burning down the supermarket aisles.
That London
Took the coach up to that London on Sunday morning. Walked past the old house in Kingston getting that happy/sad vibe. I called J to say I was outside and she said come on in.
Wilbur ran out to see me. He’s blind and deaf but gloriously fluffy and he knew me instantly as I haven't washed - as a protest - since I last saw him. He jumped up at me. It was lovely.
We went through a lot, he and I. Gaming holidays, hundreds of hours sharing the same bed, walks, treats - especially cheese - like Wallace and Gromit, we were.
J and I had a lovely chat. Stanley was cool with me - he always has been, but I love him.
I...love...dogs!!!
It was lovely seeing J too. We hadn't seen each other in person for a year. Time is....healing.
The process continues.
I met Larry and Adrian and Chris at the Willoughby and we played some D&D using the 2024 rules which have just come out.
I stayed at my friend's in Wimbledon and had a second sleepless night. Why was I so stressed? It made no logical sense. I guess I was terrified of missing my appointments.
I could feel it in my body but my brain was oblivious of the reason(s) thanks to good old Sertraline.
7.45: MRI at Queen Square was easy - nice lady called Mary looked after me, then I wandered around Bloomsbury and Soho in the grey London light.
Wandering for ages in fact, conscious that I couldn't go to Ole and Stein for a cinnamon bun.
Bought 2 pairs of jeans out of necessity, served by a stoned, and initially belligerent young man in Soho who warmed up through the transaction process.
Just as well as another 2 pairs have exploded overnight.
I had to fast for 6 hours for the PET scan so I last ate at 7.30 am: half bottle of Huel which tasted disgusting and a flat white that was an offence against the Trades Description Act, and a snip at £4. My stress had made eating very difficult.
Fashion: baggy this, baggy that. Joe Bloggs-style jeans, sweaters, cardigans. It’s almost anti-fashion. Dressing for comfort?? What has become of london. I leave it for just a year and it’s already gone to the dogs. This is what they wear in Coxley.
And soooo many quilted jackets! I tried one on but I looked like a child had coloured in a Michelin Man.
PET scan: lie down, put on eye mask to block out lights, needle in arm, cute nurse comes back and then puts the nuclear medicine in me. Wait another 25 minutes, then go to the PET scanner itself which only covers the head. I was only in it for 15 minutes.
Done!
I wandered for an hour - having gone past the phase of hunger - knowing I needed a feast. Found one of those French bistros that cater for the theatre crowds. They’re normally very passable. Wolfed a burger and frites down, along with a very nice Meteor IPA.
Then I went back to Hammersmith, went in 3 dodgy pubs. Last one had lots of ugly old people in heavy metal t-shirts. Must have been some concert or other on, or a heavy metallurgy expo nearby.
Coach journey was easy - none of the charging ports worked of course.
I’m so popular now that i got my first piece of Spam in the comments. It’s marked a turning point in my career.
Um, Actually, it hasn’t. It hasn’t done anything of the kind.
I thought I would be deluged, but no.
Disappointment.
Spam ain’t what it was.
Adrian still eats this.
At least there’s still lots of young women with no clothes on who like my Instagram photos.
Life in a Cotswolds Farmhouse
It’s Wednesday evening. With the exception of being driven to Tescos, I haven’t actually left the farmhouse since arriving here on Friday. I don’t really do anything like the strategic wargaming or bored-games that everyone else seems to like. I ran a Mutant Crawl Classics game for 4 1/2 hours the other day. That was bonkers and hard-work. I was absolutely drained at the end.
In the game, the characters are living a stone-age existence in a world similar to Earth, the climate is tropical, the sun large and red, the sky a teal/turquoise and the moon is replaced by a large crescent over the horizon. The object of the game is a rites-of-passage where you must go to ancient fantastic places and retrieve artifacts, which can be as mundane as thermos flasks or as fantastical as plasma rifles.
What could possibly go wrong?
The trouble with RPGs - you have to rehearse and revise and be on top of the entire story you’re running for that session or it can be crap.
Luckily no one wanted to play it again.
Sometimes you can wing it and it will be great, but I have less confidence I’ll be able to pull that one off. I have less capacity to absorb information these days (it was never great) and to recall said information on cue.
Went for a pub lunch on Thursday. I couldn’t work out the taste of the burger - it was either excessively salty or excessively burnt.
I did some role-playing for an hour as Hubert H Humphrey as the precursor to a wargame that I wasn’t a part of. I enjoyed the role-playing though.
In another D&D game I play an incredibly camp Bard who I’m trying to keep different from Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s fun.
Traveller has a science-fiction setting in which I play an Australian doctor and wellness consultant obsessed with people’s nutrition, forcing Brussel sprout and mung bean smoothies on them at inappropriate moments.
Spending a lot more time on my own. That’s just my nature nowadays though.
Read the Saturday Times. That was a pleasure. Giles Coren, Janice Turner, James Marriott, and also the awful Gerard Butler, just because I can’t believe how truly awful he is.
Even The Times seems to be embarrassed about him, omitting the link to his column in the paper’s Comments section.
The literary critic hails The Shipping News by Annie Proux, a truly great novel bursting with flavour on every page. Nice to have my good taste confirmed.
We stay up late to recall past players and friends, some of whom are no longer with us in life, and others who were too obnoxious to be invited back.
We try and decipher someone’s curmudgeonliness, then laugh at our own.
Good times.
We are a 14 yard skipful of neuroses.
I’m loving staying in bed. It’s much better than walking around looking for things to do. Just staying here so comfortable and warm with my thoughts.
Oh well, I suppose I’d better be social…
Brix and Me
So I’ve been looking at videos of The Fall who I didn’t like very much. I first came across them at Maidstone College of Art sharing a house with some fine artists.
I saw an interview with Mark E Smith and at that moment the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen (I was 19) and that was Brix, his wife.
80s beauty
When she was in the band they were at their best.
Oh, the life we could have had.
So that was in a way, quite depressing.
Really pretty small blonde women with beautiful big smiles. Most of whom turned out were Jewish.
Do I have a type? I certainly did back then.
It’s weird to think ‘that’s it‘ on the relationship front.
I don’t think I could have one anymore as it’s not fair on the other to burden them with the illness and also what do they get out of it?
And I just want to be left alone for hours at a time.
But I don’t think that last bit is anything to do with the illness. 😜
Mark E Smith and me
So I then watched lots of Fall songs and clips of interviews. I watched him eviscerate the ever fawning Lauren Laverne. I enjoyed that.
Rediscovering through streaming sites or Youtube all that music we turned our noses up at or didn’t understand back in the day.
But he was needlessly rude and cruel to so many people, with fights on stage and a revolving door of band members.
What a diet of booze, fags and speed does to you.
He was a fascinating character. He didn’t sing but he could, he wasn’t a poet, but more of a performance artist. He was loyal to Salford, bitter about Northern industrial decline but also wallowing in the grime and depression of it, a tyrant to his band, a narcissist who cared nothing for people’s approval, a refreshingly original thinker who called things out not to toe the trend but because it was true as he saw it.
Self-destructive, charismatic, a one-off.
Charisma beats looks - which is what attracted Brix to him.
The world needs people like Mark E Smith.
Glad I never met him.
Smalltown Attitude
Maybe I should rename this blog. Sounds like a punk fanzine from the 80s.
Maybe it was.
Gossipy little places where people talk a thousand miles an hour about people you don’t know and don’t care about.
People’s lives often begin at home and end at the town or village’s boundaries.
And everyone’s mad at my age. Half given-up, half fed-up. Shaking your head in either despair or laughter.
God…
That’s what dreams are for, I guess. Me and Brix living the life…
I'm completely mad and should never be allowed near the general public. So say I.
Haunted by my past - scattergun memories make me wince with every one that lands. Like a flicked finger to the unmentionables.
Shouting out ‘Fuck off!’ which my parents are either too deaf to hear or miraculously - especially my mother who’s strictly adverse to swearing of any kind - ignoring.
I wasn’t even allowed to say bum as a kid, nor chuck stones into ponds where no one was lurking “just in case”.
Sounds mad now.
Because it is.
Increased Input
Re-subscribed to The Times (£1 a month for 3 months - they must be desperate, which in a way is good) but I've failed to read more than half of the editions.
I like the Saturday edition but The Sunday Times is a piece of shit. Completely different - like a bombastic, snobbish older uncle, there to embarrass you with its antediluvian outlook and Faragist waistcoat.
Ignorant, ludicrous, pompous.
So I can still read a newspaper. The downside is it's bloody depressing. News is almost always of the 'bad' variety. A new forest being planted doesn't quite have the gravity of bombs falling on families in Ukraine or the middle-east.
Already though, with the input of information - 'news' as it's often referred to - it's stimulating my brain enough to start writing.
What a fug I get myself into. Hitting the same thing on YouTube time and again. I need variety but it's difficult to know how to get it when there are only 3 choices available...
I just have the greatest taste in music…
Saying that I listen to a lot of great music (as do we all) although my taste is the best. No really, you must check out what I listen to. It really is better than yours.
Truthfully.
Lots of great jazz/fusion/Brazilian funk from the 70s - Banda Black Rio, Gilberto Gil, George Duke, and also rediscovering Gil Scott Heron and Roy Ayers, who I saw at Ronnie Scott’s many years ago.
Also a big fan of Lizzo, which inspired the title of this post. Big fan of Missy Elliott who I always found strangely beautiful and one of the best rappers of all time. She doesn’t get as much recognition IMO due to her sex.
And here are both of them in a conveniently packaged video promo!
Also like Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi, Domi and JD Beck, Esperanza Spalding and countless other geniuses.
I like music where musicians have conversations with other musicians - I guess that’s why I like jazz.
I want to hear bands - musicians. Original ideas.
I want there to be imperfect concerts in an age of computerised perfection.
Do you know they’re even auto-tuning Freddy Mercury’s voice on Queen re-releases??
It’s possible to like current music when you’re old but in the main you have to work harder for the good stuff as… Simon Cowell.
Yes, why have the chef’s special when you can have the Big Mac followed by the Mars Bar?
He probably doesn’t even listen to the stuff.
Saying that, Mars Bar were never good live.
Me and my non-sequiturs, Mrs!!
What’s…out the window?
That woman in her cardigans is walking past all the time. Bag over shoulder, hair tied up, wellingtons or boots. All weathers. Like a farmer, but not. She stares at the ground, always on a mission. She’s a strong walker - I’ll give her that.
I spoke to her while walking Tomos. She could speak for England.
She's pleasantly bonkers but I find it hard to get past the cardigans.
Ow!
That lump under my right patella is rather too big now. It's been growing there for years. I occasionally acknowledge it. I don't want to bother anyone (doctors) with something as non-emergent as an uncomfortable growth, but that's what they said about Mount Vesuvius isn't it? All those Pompeiians.
Having a black desk shows up the dust somewhat. I need to dust it at least every hour.
It’s gotten really cold. Dark clouds. So windy too. My Mum swears it was never this windy in the past!
I call it Led Zepplin weather. Me with my Sanyo version of a Sony Walkman in the back of a Ford Cortina driving to Ystradgynlais in the early 80s - cold, grim, cloudy, and all the while listening to either Led Zep 4 or Houses of the Holy.
Like Rylan, bless him - all teeth and no brain. Hence him replacing the old fuddy-duddies who do.
How dare they know shit!
Elite, arrogant, entitled!
But it’s also an annoying word as it doesn’t seem to have any synonyms. A bit like the word ‘impactful; which I first heard being used by a PR person.
Damn - it hasn’t replaced any word. It’s just new. And while I hate these words, I hate it more that I don’t know their equivalents, if they even exist at all!!!
Lord Alli and me
Before I aged horribly, in my 30s I was an attractive well-dressed office worker in central London.
I had hair and everything.
So much so that when I worked at a certain company people used to think I was gay. I mean, you have to be to dress like that!
Don't you?
Lord Alli was the chairman of that company. Always used to make a special effort to say hello. He used to say things like: “Are you taking the stairs or are you coming out with me?” In reference to the lift.
Er, the stairs.
He asked me once what I did in the company. I told him (it was relatively lowly) and he said “Well, I think we’ll have to do something about that Geraint.”
He’s now embroiled in the freebies scandal with the Prime Minister.
I remember he had his chauffeur running round London picking up and delivering presents to his 100 closest friends and the chauffeur who'd been employed by him for a number of years absolutely mortified that Alli had neglected to buy him one.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a man so hurt.
Alli was one of “Tony’s Cronies”. I always felt there was some kind of transactional nature to the guy.
Wow: if I could earn that kind of money!
He then elbowed out the CEO and went on a spending spree buying up millions of quidsworth of intellectual properties.
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