Summer Ranting (and worrying)

Enforced Enjoyment

People in cafés and pubs dictating how I react to their product.

They serve the food then qualify it with ‘Enjoy’.

An affectation which has crept insidiously into the service industry.

Is it an instruction? 

You MUST enjoy this mediocre sweetmeat! Or else!

Perhaps I should cheerfully wish you ‘death’ upon serving your knickerbocker glory?

Don’t you tell me what to ‘enjoy’. Who do you think you are? If it’s good I shall be in receipt of an enjoyment. 

That is an inevitability.

If not, I shan't be in receipt of any form of enjoyment.

‘Enjoy your boxers!’

Sure! Enjoy my deep loathing of you!

Jargon. Like ‘Going forward…’ 

Repeat any sentence ever spoken with that phrase but elide those 2 words, and see that it adds nothing.

Mindless.

Scum.

Hiding from the Hairdressers at The Dorchester

Many years ago...at possibly my lowest ebb - and if you read this blog you'll know I've had a few ebbs like that - I was working in the office of a hairdressing/day spa.

It hurts just to admit this, to type those words - 'day spa'.

It was fucking awful.

The grifter who ran it (and it is an industry of grifters) had bought rights to a big hairdressing expo, and he got a former employee who'd fled to America to run it. 

It was insane. 

Said person got a friend she'd met at the pub to assist her. Pub-person was unbelievably irritating, and had no clue how to use a computer. 

Me and the other person in the office were kept out of the loop.

On the day of the event at The Dorchester, grifter decided to destroy her seating plan, and scores of attendees went ballistic at her. She had a nervous breakdown. 

I later found out this was a pattern of behaviour for her - take a high-octane job from grifter, don't share it, then get hospitalised. 

Nuts.

So I then dealt with the hairdressers, who were so visually ludicrous and deluded of grandeur that I had to bite my cheek as I couldn't take any of them seriously. That made life very easy.

Ludicrous yet terrifying

The 8th floor of The Dorchester compared to the lower floors is like a dorm. It's like most hotels in London were in the 1970s - so in need of an update as to be a national embarrassment.

I hid under the bed for about 3-4 hours. People came in looking for me, I saw their feet and heard their conversations. 

I'm never one to shirk a party or a free drink, but I just couldn't bear these people.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made, hiding under that bed. It was so nice and peaceful, as I didn't have to suffer the dumb conversations of coke-fueled twats. 

Organiser and her mate from the pub awarded themselves a suite each - £1,500/night? Pub irritant and her beige-suited, slip-on shoed boyfriend left with almost the entire contents of the room - bathrobes, towels, mini-bar etc.

They do actually bill you for these things.

I only mention this as I'd almost forgotten it until I mentioned it casually to my friend Mark.

I've always been a bit strange, I guess.

Empty days 

One day looks very much like the other. So much so I'm seldom writing in my diary anymore. 

Walked Tomos, ate porridge, caught up with YouTubers and Times, went to town, played D&D/went to pub as a daily routine gets a bit monotonous.

Then a couple of days ago I woke up (which is almost always a plus) and the world span, and I flopped down on the bed. 

I hadn't had a drop the previous night. Honest.

I wondered what the hell was going on. My first thought was, is it dementia-related?

Apparently poor balance is a late-stage of dementia. I'm not at a late stage.

So is it a stroke? Or something else neurological?

Later in the day hives would appear on my hands and feet - my post Sertraline guide to my stress-level.

A couple of days later I confided my dizziness to my sister - it's vertigo, most probably caused by calcium deposits which have come loose in the ear. 

I've made a doctor's appointment but due to the increased size of Wells's population, I'm having to wait a month!

So I lay down on the bed and rolled on both sides to find out which side I instigated the dizziness, did some exercises and it's helping. 

Phew.

At least I know it's not dementia-related. That made me sleep easier.

(And some of the hives go away.)

New D&D Campaign

I'm running a brand new Dungeons and Dragons campaign called Quests from the Infinite Staircase. It's essentially a bunch of 40+ year old modular adventures, all updated to the current 5th edition rules.

Under 18s, as I've found out from running said games at Pilton 6 times a year, don't like the old games so much. They're used to narrative and role-playing, and there is certainly less of that in the old adventures.

I'll explain. Old adventures had little plot. Most of the time you would chance upon them like an old tomb for instance, enter and open a series of rooms each of which would have a random monster in, kill the monster, nick its treasure, and repeat. There was almost zero logic to the randomness of the creatures, as to why they were there, what they did in downtime, where they prepared their food, where they went to the toilet, and a lack of communal areas or canteen where the gelatinous cubes, goblins and shadow demons (or whoever else might be in the dungeon) could get together to discuss their days or watch Countdown.

It was really like opening the door of an advent calendar, with a different result each time.

These are generally referred to now as 'funhouse' dungeons. There's no particular logic to them - they just exist.

Modern adventures tend to have an overarching narrative and structure, with the randomness excluded.

I'm trying to make the experience more visceral for the players by expanding on the written content with embellishments - personal quests such as looking for long-lost family members, heirlooms, or being on the run, which I've developed with the players - and trying to expand the personalities of the non-player characters or NPCs who the players will meet on their adventures, to make them real or at least 3 dimensional.

We had a terrific session zero where we worked on the characters, which will of course add to the fun when they are role-played by the players, because their motivations, flaws, traits and idiosyncrasies will  be more real, as opposed to say, playing a fighter who hits stuff and simply works for 'coin'.

I'm looking forward to Thursday.

And so is Nafas the genie, who runs the Infinite Staircase.

Daydreamers of the world Unite!

'Rambling, ill-thought out and vague' #2

David Lynch and the ability to daydream, as a human necessity. He was adamant that creativity came when the mind was relaxed and he hated not being allowed to daydream.

I love that.

Study a single leaf on a branch blowing around in the wind.

Look at the corners in the room you're in.

I like my flip flops.

Yassss.

I like my Buffs.

Bufftasmic.

Looking at my favourite things.

Opening up an old book or box with a familiar object inside and thinking about what it means to you, when you used it and how.

The situation: who was there and where. Was it a happy occasion?

Watching my favourite YouTube channels.

Reading my favourite columnists.

Sitting and looking out of the window.

Seeing friends.

It's so quiet right now!

Increasingly thinking my life is like Billy Pilgrim’s in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. Here I am in the geodesic dome on the barren planet with everything I could need then my mind catapults back to previous points in my life which I live out in that instant, feeling the same euphoria, amazement, embarrassment or whatever.

Check it out. It's a 100 times the book The Time Traveller's Wife was.

It's like I've done everything I was ever going to do. That was it.

It's not depressing. Just some existential clarity. 

It's quite liberating, actually.

When are you going to get back on the tools?

They ask. As though this is some temporary or minor ailment.

'All in your mind.'

'Nothing really wrong with you.'

'Just the same as he ever was.'

If only we could walk a mile in each others' shoes. You'd see how foggy and frustrating my brain has become. 

I'm the weirdo talking to himself or out loud and he doesn't even know it. 

I wear crazy colours on my head and feet. 

Yes, I go outside like this.

I'm reading a children's book. (Probably D&D related)

I have my headphones on 90% of the time.

I can't stand bright light or noise.

On some days it takes me 10 minutes just to get out of the front door. 

Keys. Damn. Go upstairs. What did I come up here for?

Ah keys. Yes.

Go downstairs. Where are my shoes? Is it going to rain? Large red boots require different socks. Why's it so dark? Take off sunglasses. Where are my regular glasses? Go back upstairs.

Repeat any combination.

Concentrate on Tomos on our walk. It helps keep me in the present, rather than let my mind wander off into the past.

Picked up a 4" breeze block the other day. Much heavier than I remember.

I'm small and weak. That's just the way it is.

And logistics...jeez.

As I always say, these days there is no automatic mode. Everything has to be thought about from one moment to the next.

That's where all the energy goes, so after 2-3 days of painting or doing something I need at least that to recover.

Gaming or lack thereof

My week revolves around running my D&D game on Thursday evenings. For various reasons it seems to have fallen apart. I don't think it's my DMing - rather just life getting in the way of leisure.

I know I keep banging on about this, but it takes me a long time to prep. Some days when I run a game it could be I'm having a bad day - a trough - with the old FTD, and trying to process the written material is even worse - the viscosity of the treacle I'm wading through is stiffer than ever.

I précis the adventure which is often 10-20 pages long, and read it over and over. It takes me hours and can be quite difficult as I gloss over and over the text not taking 80% of it in.

Running the game - while tiring - is a thrill-fest. It's exhilarating, a mental workout and when it's flowing it is so much fun.

I need a come-down afterwards, which is 2 bottles of beer and some YouTube..

So the last few months have been very frustrating, not just for me, but the players too.

I'll need to pick myself up and immerse myself in the new campaign in order to run it to best of my ability. That means all the player characters have a reason to be in this particular campaign - their own story hook in other words, and it will need to be fully developed.

So I'm going to have to be on top of my game. 

Always a challenge.

Better start then...