Games Holiday 2024

But what is the meaning of the word ‘Spam’?

I’ve made it, baby!

 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…

…in Shepton.

Batten down the hatches!

Looking out of the window

Essential for one’s piece of mind. The window I’m intermittently looking out of as I type this looks out onto acres of field, ponds, woodland, and giant sequoia trees. There are a few cirrus clouds on the horizon and the sun beats down. It’s thankfully not as hot as yesterday, and I’m shaded and cool in a very pleasant high-ceilinged drawing room.

Butterflies and dragonflies zip around the pond just out beyond the patio in their multicolours and tall dandelions shake in the cool breeze.

Back home I stare out of the window quite a lot too. It’s part nostalgic as it was always my bedroom when when I was a kid, and the window onto an extremely diminishing world for me.  I no longer have any glint of ambition other than for contentment, but I do feel some guilt that after my chores (which are pretty darn easy) I have the rest of the day to self-indulge. 

Just as well as my executive functions are often offline. 

To my neighbours I’m the weirdo who’s moved back to live with his elderly parents and who stares out of his window and occasionally screams out “ANUS” or any random set of words.

Mostly harmless though.

Meeting People

No. I’m not doing this anymore. Too many weirdos out there. Like the Von Ribbentrops I met in the pub a few times who only revealed themselves when they asked me why I didn’t think white people were being systematically replaced in Europe by brown/Muslim people.

Goodbye. Or in your case, Fuck off.

So for fear of meeting more batshit alt-right, far-right, fascists, crypto-fascists, neo-cons, objectivists,  paedos, boot-boys, Nigel Farages, Tommy Robinsons, Trumpers, Bible-thumpers, conspiracy nut-jobs and general wackos, I’m no longer going to the pub on my own. 

I thought I could just meet people at the pub. I did, but it also turns out to have been a terrible idea.

“Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet.” (Smiley face.)

Er, bollocks.

Swimming

However, I did book some swimming sessions, in fact 4, and went to 2 as on the other days I was too flustered and busy. I really like swimming and it was lovely to go up and down the 25m pool. There was no lane but being as unfit as I am that didn't matter - I didn't want to draw  attention to myself by being pompous enough to ask for one then showing how crap I was once I'd got it.

So I went up and down, with a few breaks. I lost track of the lengths I'd swum/swam/swimmed and managed 40 minutes both times.

I'm an unfit male in his 50s so naturally I pushed myself like was 25. It was nice to come out shaking, knowing I'd given myself a proper workout. I felt tired but very Zen.

I managed to keep butterflying through my heart attack.

One day last week

(I wrote this last week.)

Took me 15 minutes just to get out for the house this morning. Keys, glasses, phone wallet. Er wrong trousers...Oh god.

I am so tired. I even slept the other day for 2 1/2 hours in the afternoon. I never sleep during the day. (No longer true.)

I had to pass up swimming as it was just too much. I'm falling asleep as I'm writing this.

I was really snappy last night at D&D when running the game. That's not on. 

Walked Tomos then did a food shop. Didn't go to the pool as I tend to push myself too hard, and my uselessness would be compounded by being even more tired, or 'tireder' as the kids say these days.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

A month ago someone shot at Donald Trump. And missed. 

I mean out of all the Yanks with too many guns the one guy who tries to take him out is lousy shot. What are the chances?

Then the iconic photo of Trump shouting ”Fight” with his arm aloft looking charismatic as Che Guevara in THAT photo...Biden stuttering and losing his train of thought, it all looked like a Trump landslide.

You couldn’t have staged it any better.

Then Trump chooses Weirdo JD Vance who years ago described Trump as Hitler and himself as a 'Never-Trumper.'

Well how times have changed. Then Biden drops out after pressure from Pelosi, Obama and the Clintons, so smiling, warm, Kamala Harris steps into the fray saying "We're not going back " in reaction to MAGA which is a great response to a deliberately opaque golden age which never existed for ALL Americans - what in Welsh is called "Hiraeth".

Tim Walz was a fantastic, genius pick. 24 years of service in the military, looks like someone's dad or favourite uncle, high school football coach, teacher, and has a great sense of humour. Both are natural with people, and he goes hunting and fishing. 

You may not like the last part, but that goes down really well with many Americans - and it makes him an everyman.  

Taylor Swift -whatever you think of her music - is no fan of Trump, and she has considerable leverage for young voters. Similarly Simone Biles has contributed a lot of money to Kamalsa Harris. Fox News and the right wing media which seems to comprise most of the media in the US, are up in arms trying to denigrate them.

Well Trump can have Kid Rock and Kanye (or 'Ye' as he wants to now be referred and his bizarre anti-semitism), and the Democrats can have Taylor Swift and almost everyone else in Hollywood. 

Fair deal I'd say.

New Computer

I've been umming and ahhing about this (as one does) for ages. Baldur’s Gate 3 is my favourite game. But the iMac which is not designed for gaming - has been struggling to run it - even at the game's lowest graphics setting.

So I bit the big one, and asked those awfully nice chaps at Microbitz in Wells, to make me one. It was ready in one week. 

It was as much as the Mac, but it's quite spectacular, and I only use it for gaming. I'm not really planning on doing any online stuff - just working through RPGs on my own.

It's quite a beast. Here is some techy stuff:

• Ryzen 7 7800X3D Processor
• Corsair 280MM CPU Liquid Cooling Loop
• MSI RTX 4070 Ventus 12GB
• MSI B650 Gaming Plus Wifi Motherboard
• 32GB DDR5 6400Mhz CL32 RAM
• Cooler Master TD 300 Mini Tower
• Cooler Master GX
• III Gold Rated Power supply
• 2TB SSD 
• Windows 11 Home

No, me neither.

Anyway, I'm now running BG3 at its highest level with blurring, shadows and all kinds of groovy stuff. The PC lights up multi coloured, I have a keyboard that pulses rainbow colours and a mouse which also has these crazy LED lights.

The new set up with new desklights. Less cluttered. 

That’s Mark Hardyman on the left. He’s a BAD person.

Yeah, well. You get the picture.

Apparently this all seems to be very de rigeur for the gaming community.

TBH it does add to the experience!

I even dress like a teenager now.