Walking the dog
Turn up to meet my dog-friend Tomos. Oscar the human is there too. Lovely chap. The three of us walk up the High Street.
Just Tomos and I now. It makes me happy watching him making his own amusement as he races around the field without any other dogs. Just running makes him happy. I can identify with that.
I love how simple the pleasures in life can be.
I can see PsychoBeth, Jimmy's ex-girlfriend, in the distance. She doesn't recognise me: a blessing.
Last time I saw her was 14 years ago at a party in London, shielding Jimmy from anyone and everyone.
“Hello.” I say, as I do to every other dog-walker.
She smiles suspiciously, guardedly, at me. I can see in her eyes she doesn’t recognise me - this is just how she is with people in general.
It's nice to be anonymous to certain people. That's what I liked so much about living in London: just leave me alone unless I want you to know me.
"I rarely forget a face. But in your case I'll make an exception." (Marx G.).
The older woman in the tight jeans is with the dog walker who can’t stop talking in case she dies. She speaks at that pitch which makes the bones in my ears rattle and my brain wobble, like a jelly when the Klingons have hit the starboard bow.
At least Enzo is there with Stuart’s boss. Tomos and Enzo take turns running after each other nipping each others’ bums until we decide it may be getting out of hand.
Like toddlers they are: play until they go too far and it all ends in tears.
Moistness
And not in a good way.
Quiet Wells is (Yoda syntax).
Perpetual gloom and rain.
That is the extremely dull story of 2024.
I'm just going to have to murder someone. Maybe a sacrifice will improve the weather.
‘You never know!’ (My Mum - every year, ever.)
John Barleycorn…anyone seen him?
Dungeons and Dragons Update
Lots of magic markers to make maps and play. Spent a small fortune on the things. They’re not actually THE Magic Markers, but alcohol-based markers by Winsor and Newton.
One set has beautiful brush tips. They are great for drawing the cracks in paving slabs.
I feel I have to make an effort for the best experience or I’m just cheating myself through my own laziness. It makes me feel ‘armed’ for want of a better word, for the next session.
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| Cog rooms which change configuration |
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| The gaming table last Sunday |
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| Ready for the Boss Fight! |
Amazing Sunday session. BUT, I did notice my attitude was getting rather bad. Increasingly impatient because I knew the answers and they didn't - bordering on rude/aggressive.
I want my condition to stabilise and upping my dose of Sertraline from 100mgs is not what I want - just psychologically. Sertraline maxes at 200mgs, so what's after that? I guess tranquillisers. But I don't know. And what effect will they have on me?
Thursday evening’s big boss fight - things were so complicated with high-level action, controlling multiple non-playing characters (NPCs) and multiple spell effects, area effects, reactions, bonus actions, extra-planar shit… I/we managed to get through it.
Boy it was stressful at times and I had to take some deep breaths to keep my calm and focus. It was hard to run abut then again would have been for most DMs.
I came back and had a couple of beers while I decompressed.
I do wish at times like this the players would KNOW THEIR SPELLS!
After this one I have a new campaign to get my head round. I also have to prep the 2 day session in Pilton for the same kids I DM’d for at half-term.
Oh well, it keeps me on my toes.
It’s just getting more difficult to organise my thoughts and ideas into something coherent. My brain has a decreasing amount of clarity.
Pint of sertraline, love.
I phoned the Health Centre and can't even get a phone call with the doctor to up my prescription of my anti-psychotic drugs until 10th April.
I guess I could just take an extra one to up it from 100mgs to 150.
Too many people and too few doctors.
So I'm back drinking again. It's not good. It’s not terrible either. All or nothing me. 2 bottles of beer every evening.
I have an issue with alcohol.
Actually I did have a herbal tea night on Wednesday.
So that’s cured it!
This:
Literature innit?
Have you seen the word ‘Betterer” being used in print recently? I have.
“If I was betterer at everything I'd be a Brilliant.” (Me, just now.)
Despite spell-checkers, grammar-checkers and presumably punctuation-checkers, people are increasingly illiterate.
And innumerate.
Btw, the title of this blogpost comes from an English essay (think I got a D- back in an age when A*s weren’t mandatory) in Mr Owen’s class. Nice guy. But thanks to him we all ended up writing essays in the style of a schmaltzy Dylan Thomas.
Bad habit to get into.
And as it happened very difficult to get out of.
I just wanted to write stories but we were told we had to do descriptive essays about smells and tastes in cathedrals.
Well how fucking boring to an imaginative 12 year old!
That put paid to my interest in English as a subject, until maybe my 20s.
A friend of mine introduced me to Martin Amis, Bukowski, Henry Miller, Philip Roth and The Beats. I’d read Fear and Loathing and The Dice Man before but this was a renaissance in what literature could be; for me, at least.
I’ve tried dipping back into more modern stuff. E Annie Proux’s ‘Shipping News’ is an astonishing piece of literature, but the Time Traveller’s Wife, The Beach and Cloud Atlas are all SHIT. AI in its current state would produce similar word dysentery.
Nick Hornby? NICK HORNBY???
And I’ll fight anyone who thinks those books were good, with flying headbutts.
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| I warned you!! |
Modern novels: 70 pages each on 5 characters, seemingly unconnected, who you don’t care about and the last 50 pages ties them all up.
I
DON’T
CARE.
My favourite short story is a 3 page cartoon strip by Alan Moore called ‘The Disturbed Digestions of Doctor Dibworthy.’ Check it out - it’s a piece of genius. It is perfection. A definition of brevity.
Right. I’m off to buy a $60 Trump-endorsed bible.
"Shipping News" is the best book. Unbelievably tragic and kind and bleak.
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