So what exactly is matter with your brain, then?

Brain Shit

Mild reduced metabolic activity in parietal lobes bilaterally and prominent reduction in corpus callosum and anterior cingulate gyrus region bilaterally.

That's what the CT scan results said in October 2024. So as I never had a follow-up consultation, I went online for Google's AI to interpret it into some basic English I might understand.

I like colouring in cauliflowers. Do you?

The Corpus callosum is right at the base of the brain and it connects the two hemispheres. In my case it's atrophied, which means reduced comms between the 2 halves.

So what are the implications of that? 

Reduced cognitive and motor skills. Coordination and so forth between right and left hands for instance. 

Bad luck if you're a musician.

Well the coordination and balance was always shit, but I can type, and yes sir, I can boogie. So not much change there.

But the other symptoms include reduced executive functions (such as wanting to get up and do shit) and language processing and attention, the latter of which was always a D-.

The parietal lobes are processing sensory information, particularly related to touch, temperature, pain, and spatial awareness. They also play a role in language, attention, and certain aspects of memory.

This is why reading and assimilating received information is ever more difficult.

It's a double-whammy to the grey matter!

Cuppa-tea, cuppa-tea, cuppa-tea please

I go to Niche every day except Tuesdays when they’re closed.

It's very nice there. I can watch the madness unfold all around me, but I often have my headphones on and read or type or watch YouTube on my iPad.

They look after me in there.

Watching the cardigans go by.  

That's the second wheelchair-user in a row with a yellow cardigan - a particularly egregious one with silver Buitoni. 

Ghastly.

One day I'll be in a wheelchair but I won't be wearing a cardigan.

I'm very sensitive like that.

Give me worms

Smiling at every dog I see. 

I love animals more and more every day. 

I like the bitey insects and the hideous worms that live in the ocean. 

As an (honorary) member of the human race I feel a level of personal responsibility for the extinction of all these wonderful mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, not to mention all the invertebrates we killed with DTT and the other pesticides and our obsession with fossil fuels.

Where ever humans turned up large fauna disappeared. The Moa of New Zealand, the various large marsupials in Australasia; wolves and bears in Europe. 

God we're awful.

At the moment I am particularly fond of arachnids and cephalopods. 

The interdependency of it all. 

A single tree has thousands of species depending on it for survival. A single oak can support 2300 species with 300 being entirely dependant on it.

And new discoveries are revealing even the tiniest animals have sentience in some form.

Many people still don’t get it as they worship the accrual of money at the expense of everything that is good, believing the fallacy that it will bring them the happiness they crave.

Puppet Master

I remember a very pretty blonde woman called Shari Lewis in the early 70s, wearing an Alice band with a sock-puppet. 

The daughter of academics who taught at the Yeshiva University, she was extraordinarily talented, could sing and dance, wrote several children’s books and even one episode of the original Star Trek series.

However, she is most remembered for her puppet Lamp Chop, and being probably the best ventriloquist ever. 

Lamb Chop had a very distinct personality based on a 7 year old girl, and Shari put a ton of personality into her movements and facial expression.

We’re talking about a sock puppet here. 

I didn’t appreciate how clever and well observed Lamb Chop was at the time. But I’ve since re-watched her - or rather them - and they were a class act.

Mandy Patenkin 

This is one of the most powerful speeches on Gaza I’ve heard. It’s 2 1/2 minutes long and his speech is in the last half.

Quote of the week

'Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talked nice then bombs everyone in the evening.'

DJ Trump (historical figure).

Who's demented now??

London comes to me...

Me old cor-blimey geezers came up from that London: Gerry and Allen. 7 hour round trip. They met the old folks who thought they were wonderful (they don’t know them like I do).

Dad brought his fishing flies in as Gerry is a keen fly-fisherman too. He also cornered Allen to talk about cars - Allen was driving some huge Mercedes SUV.

My Dad - 'The Chatty Welshman'!

When they first arrived I was slightly discombobulated seeing familiar faces in my home environment - does anyone else get that or is it just me? People in their contexts or out of their contexts? A bit like a wedding where all the people compartmentalised in different parts of your life come together. Like a rabbit in headlights - felt slightly unreal, dream-like.

We did the Lambeth Walk through Wells - saw the cathedral, Vicar’s Close and Bishop’s Palace. I think they liked Vicar’s Close best. 

'Mad' Allen Osborn and Gerry 'Chopper' Boyle

A couple of Chelsea Smilers later we had lunch at the S&P. It was great. Lots of good-natured swearing and laughter. And also comparing notes about living in the sticks and the wacko racist nutjobs who do little or certainly less, to disguise their bigotry.

Really nice to see them. Much appreciated. 

...and I go to London

Despite the lovely day, I slept very badly that night. I just couldn’t get to sleep with underlying stress about travelling to London and so forth, and then I woke up way too early. 

I used to feel like that when I was running masonry jobs, thinking everything would go wrong. Lost a lot of sleep over a number of years.

Fell asleep several times on the coach trip on the way up. Each time I jolted awake, thinking I was about to pee myself. Anyone else get that?

Oh, okay then...

Got to Hammersmith pretty much on time. The MC on the coach has thankfully stopped making that joke about Ebaying lost property. Got out and jumped on the tube, to go to Piccadilly Circus.

Nice afternoon - but I had a heavy bag in tow.

The fashions in London at the moment are completely underwhelming. Baggy faded jeans, earth-shatteringly horrendous baggy woollen cardigans, beards and dresses, and ultimately look like you can only afford to dress out of a jumble sale.

Zero-style.

Ugly, unflattering clothes.

I walked to The Ralph Lauren flagship store. I'd recommend anyone to go in there. It really is something else. Like an Ivy League university from the 1930s in London.

As with all things, they’ve stopped making the one thing I always bought. In this case I was after RL Sullivan jeans, Buitoni-fly and no stretch. They even had a cardigan I was tempted by - half-jacket half cardigan. It was in cotton silk. 

I know, I know. Too many buitoni but they’re not plastic and at least it’s not regular soft fluffy wool. More like a jacket really.

Yes, that's what I will tell myself. It's not a cardigan, it's a jacket! 

(Remembers being admonished by upper middle class family 25 years ago: "It's not a sauce Geraint! It's a jus!")

I know, I know. Only £549.

Great plastic-surgery disasters of Mayfair

Filler here, filler there; filler everywhere. The unfeasibly rich doing their utmost to reclaim their former beauty and paying the price for their vanity.

Narcissus with botox.

Some are so grotesque they look like they're wearing a plastic mask. Demonic.

Body dysmorphia - must be.

No, you look great. Honestly...

Wimbledonia

That evening I stayed with Sophie and her daughter Olivia who I hadn’t seen for years, and who is now a confident young woman. 

All the young adults I knew as kids now seem more mature than me.

We had a lovely evening. I slept for 2 hours when I got to Sophie’s as I was shattered.

We had an amazing Chinese meal from Good Earth - a London chain. Just astonishingly good quality.

I felt like sending it to the 2 Chinese takeaways in Wells to show them how it SHOULD be done, rather than the care-free slop they produce which they then puke into the plastic containers.

I heard Sophie leave around 7.30 am. I had a shower, Oscar the lovely 12 year old brown lab was unresponsive at the top of the stairs, then had a banana and a cup of tea and left. What a beautiful road - huge bay windows - and front gardens. A conservation area too. Must have been built in the 1910s. Mostly occupied by families it seemed.

I looked up the house prices on Zoopla. Wow. 

The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery

Got into Russell Sq and did my usual of going to Pret for breakfast. Always a ton of foreign students around. Sat there and watched the world go by and do its thing.

Prof Warren said while I may or may NOT have dementia, the Semantic Variant diagnosis I originally had was incorrect.

I said I felt slightly fraudulent - so do I have dementia or not? My behaviour certainly changed and I got crazy angry until the Sertraline kicked in. And I do have problems with elision of words. My brain fog is as real as ever and despite my neuropsych tests it's increasingly opaque. 

He assured me it’s nothing to feel fraudulent about. The hospital is all about anomalous cases and they want to put me in a PET scan as the last MRI scans have shown the atrophy in my lobes has STABILISED!

There is something going on and they want to get to the bottom of it. 

A PET scan will show more the workings of my brain rather than just its volume, but is subsequently also prone to more of an interpretation - such is the complexity.

I did my yearly neuropsychology tests and was told it was pretty much the same as last year’s - it certainly felt harder. More brain fog, less cognisance that I’d got the right answers, and subsequently less confidence. 

I felt I was giving a best guess rather than knowing I'd got the right answer.

So who knows what I've got? 

And that was it for another year.

 

Surfing the waves of dementia

 A couple of days of mehhh...

It's been a tough last few days. Feeling a little down, lethargic, uninspired - which is unusual. 

Fed up of Wells, bored mainly. Missing London, dogs, gamers, non-gamers etc.

Wake up tired. Realise when I'm walking Tomos that I don't want to talk to other people today. People witter on as they're walking, like a result of some anxiety disorder. 

Some feel they have to fill every calming second of silence with something else that's gone wrong with them, all the while the pitch of their voice sounding like a deranged homeless playing a cornet that's been pulled out of a skip.

I have to turn away and get distance between us - at least 20-30 feet.

If I come across as rude then so be it. I just can't be doing with you today and the dissonant word salad that you're puking at me. And it's bright enough as it is. Too bright even.

This is way too much sensory information.

So leave me alone in my cave, on the increasingly creaky floorboards (must have them checked out actually) while I wile my life away on YouTube and my obsession with Trump, MAGA, rugby, and martial arts.

When I go out my trusty Sony XM4s are often on - muffling the audible world. Dark glasses or a welding mask would help, but they're further down the line.

I can feel myself being irritated with everyone. I have to remind myself that I'm ill and not in a great place currently - that it's the illness that's making me feel this way, and I need to create some space between me and it.

Sunday I went out today with Nerys and her friend Pip and their dogs. It was nice. But I'm finding it difficult to converse with people if it's something I haven't been briefed on.

I can feel myself becoming more detached from everything. 

The fog is becoming thicker, as am I.

Why doesn't everyone like TTRPGs, Louis Cole and rugby league? The world would be a much better place. And much easier for me.

Dim Watchio

I ran out of things to watch on Netflix, iPlayer and Prime, so I've renewed my subscription to Apple TV and there are some quality things back on there. 

I’m currently watching For All Mankind: an alternative history to the Apollo space project, where the USSR beat the USA to put a man on the moon. It’s actually done really well and you should watch it. But it does have some soap opera moments which if you're into sci-fi are a bit of an irrelevance. 

I fast forward through those bits.

Fall Out comes to Prime, based on the video game. It does look really good, but the gamers hate it already.

Some good looking films coming out too. Late Night with the Devil looks right up my strasse. 

Should go and see Dune 2 which is out now. But I won't. Because I'm rubbish.

Man at the bar, he say...

Man at the bar slightly right wing of Ayn Rand. Starts ranting at the 18 year old behind the bar as though she is in a position to challenge his bilge.

Blah blah... flat 10 percent tax, abolish the NHS, abolish state everything within time - within time! - and everyone pays into their own pension and health insurance...

Wow.

Flat rates. I remember them when I worked for Chorion. 

"Everyone is getting the same: a 10% bonus."

So the CEO gets a bonus of £23,500 and the receptionist a bonus of £2,500. 

Fair...my arse.

Of course it's not 'fair' or 'the same'!

Put into practice, the twat at the bar's economic theory would create social disparity on a scale we haven't seen since the late 18th century. Cue tent cities and riots like we haven't seen since the Poll Tax.

And plutocrats like him would be the first to blame the poor, the homeless and immigrants.

It’s the kind of nonsense hard right fanatics in the Tory party have talked about since the 1980s. 

Looks like certain nutters are still doing it. 

Next time I might join in. That'll be a whole post on its own!

He was like an octopus!

Looking after Tomos, who was like a 14 year old boy alone with his girlfriend. 

I was that girlfriend. I felt like a piece of meat I did. 

He was all over me, just wouldn't leave me alone. I just wanted to watch the rugby on TV.

Had to go down the pub.

Of course Wales lost.

It's ours!

Writing techniques

Benny Anderson writes abba songs by playing rubbish for ages and hearing accidental stuff that's great, and making a note of it.

He adds that if you do that 8 hours a day for 260 days of the year you should end up with 4 good songs.

I've followed this technique insofar as I witter to myself for ages then write down the less salacious rubbish, all for you.

Practising my Werner Herzog impression as people look on. 

That weird bloke talking to himself is me. I've yet to write much down.

It's becoming more difficult.

Old Ladies' Hairdos

What is it with old ladies and their hairdos? 

'An Ann Widdecombe my child, and make it snappy!' demandeth they.

Chop all my hair off and call me Doris. I shall have a complimentary fussy cardigan to boot.

This used to be a demarcation when women got to 40. Dress like a grandmother.

I'm glad women keep their hair longer for longer. 

I'm a baldy with a beard and fancy 'tache who dresses in t-shirts and jeans. Shirts are too fussy in the main. 

3 months off the booze and I still can't shift the final roll of tummy fat.

Growing old, eh?

Butt Soup

 Sleepy

Sleeping so much. Easily for 9-10 hours per night. Tossing and turning for hours. A terrier yaps in the garden below. It must be Stanley, but I then realise I’m in Wells and it’s the neighbour’s dogs.

Every morning I awake not knowing where I am, around about 9.30am.

Wells is lovely and quiet but nothing much happens here, apart from the odd murder. Lots of heroin too if that’s your thing. And arts and culture and god-stuff with that Cathedral and all.

It’s funny when you see a place change over 50-odd years. The awful new houses - little boxes cheek-by-jowl, no new services; schools, doctors’ surgeries and sewage pipes all overflowing

I’ve considered moving back here for the first time in 30 years but I’ve concluded that even as I am it would be a retrograde step for me - just as it was in my 20s.

Failures #23

Whilst I was here at my parents’ (now in its 10th day) I was supposed to read and précis a ton of first edition Dungeons and Dragons adventures, make them meals every day and clean for them.

I read the adventures several times but failed to make much more than introductory notes. I read some of my other books. I read The Times most days but far more selectively these days, rather than just cover-to-cover.

I listen to Podcasts.

I watch Anthony Newley. 

That’s it. I made 3 meals my parents were rather indifferent about, did no cleaning apart from the dishes and my own laundry.

Social life - I go out for lunch every day so I get out of the house.  I see my sister, I’ve met up with old friends Tanith, Paula, Clare, Franca, Stuart and Mark. But I had 2 nights of back-to-back heavy drinking and still haven’t recovered 48 hours later! #middleage

More Memories of Martin

My reminiscences of the enigma who was Martin Duncan-Jones went down very well with those who knew him. More anecdotes…

“An architect is an artist whose pallet is your wallet.” This was Martin’s view on the fact that architects get paid a percentage of the cost of a build, so it’s in their interest to not save you money.

He once accused me of being Rupert Murdoch when I was trying to get a website together where we could all publicise our work.

“I’m keeping my head below the parapet.” This was his stock phrase when people were trying to ‘make him do things’ in his words. What that translated as was ignoring phone calls from his one client (The Diocese of Westminster) offering him work.

On rave culture: “If those were factory conditions people would complain.”

“Er, no.” His response to anything I said whenever I was out of favour. Mary Mary…

He had great anecdotes. One of the things he was very proud of was never having bought rubble bags but using the empty sand bags instead and these were to be reused as well. “Ollie once…ripped…a bag. I remember it well…” and on and on about some great transgression when Ollie had cost Martin by ripping a plastic bag.

He also had the worst vans in Britain. He had an old Citroen van for years that bled brake fluid. He had to stop every 40 miles to put break fluid in but he’d worked out it was cheaper than getting it fixed.

One of the last jobs we did I would start at 8 and then go to pick him up at 9.30am from the station (he would be up till the early hours fighting online with people on blogs and comments sections) and he was reading a book in ancient Greek “Dual text dear boy, but it’s all coming back.”

I could go on but will stop there.

The Disney Democratic Republic

The supermarket at the end of the road. It was all in Disney colours. I went in with the intention of buying a special chocolate biscuit. I knew I was being monitored by an unseen entity. The last of these biscuits were on the shelf. They were intended for consumption by infants, but they were so good I just had to have one. 

This was strictly forbidden behaviour.

So I took it. I realised then that the die had been cast. I needed to get out of there. The entity was intent on my capture.

I went through colourful yellow and red doors onto a platform where I took a very new yellow and red train which hurtled along and ended up in a huge colourful resort with around 12-15 other people. 

Our hair was all silvery grey. We knew the entity or entities were in another metaverse to our own and they were looking at us. Trying to grab at us through the phlogiston. I suggested we all stick together but some people didn’t. One woman went outside and started cleaning - sweeping the floor. But the entity came and touched her. You could see she had been affected as her hair had turned from silvery grey to silvery purple and she could no longer see or hear you. 

Others went out to save her but one by one they went to their doom, mindlessly cleaning as automatons, with their newly purple hair. Then it got me.

That was a dream by the way.

Sorry.

Waiting room

Nothing

 I can't think of anything.

 Just sitting here. Drizzle outside. Dogs don't seem interested in walking, That's a let off.

Nothing springs to mind. No more Youtube clips. Done all of the only podcast I like. 

Cars go by. Too fast for this road.

Can't concentrate on reading for long enough. Have to make myself.

Head is numb. A light head cold with no other symptoms confines me here. It's the wafer-thin mint that tips me in to total atrophy.

Apart from this of course.

Sip some expensive herbal tea. Drinking too much caffeine these days.

The others are working upstairs.

At breakfast J talked about when she was married. I don't think she counts this as one. Or certainly not anymore anyway.

I don't have much in the way of empathy but that was pretty telling.

It must feel like that to her though. That's valid.

Nothing like feeling a spare part. Reminds me that it's a recurring theme of my dreams - abandonment, isolation, pointlessness; purposelessness. 

Continue waiting.

Driving Fail

I cancelled a hire car this week. A slight cold was enough to dent my confidence in my concentration levels for a 3 hour drive on motorways. 

Expensive waste of money. 

The others need a break from me. I don't know how they experience me. The shouting is pretty horrible I gather. I'm trying to keep a lid on that.

More difficult than ever to be self-aware - nigh on impossible. Self-analytical is different of course.

Would have been nice to see everyone. I'm only going to take trains from now on, to Castle cary and back again.

It would be good to see other people but they all work hard and need their weekends.

My parents are properly old now. That part of middle-age where your parents' generation topple like dominoes.

I have to get out and go places for everyone's sake. Their mental health as much as my own.

Games

This is what I live for now. Meeting up with people. The joy, the energy of the shared experience.

I even watched some of the rugby. I don't like it so much these days - all that kicking drives me nuts. Finding rugby league more fun. More tries.

When I can't run D&D games anymore it will be something. Maybe not as profound as I expect. A gradual decline to nothing and then total apathy. I think that's how it goes.

Sorry for being depressing. I promise I'll make it up to you.

Stop this self-pitying bollocks!! 

Right - Pick myself up out of this fug and get on with it. Get into my walking trousers (for there are such things) and get the dogs walked. 

READ READ READ!! Force myself to do so and take notes. Prepare for Sunday and Monday - 2 - possibly 3 sessions of Dungeons and Dragons! Madness I know. 

I will be very knackered.

I move back and forward like Arthur Fowler "Shut up, Pauline!" in an effort to galvanise myself out of this seat.

I can only control myself in all this. Get up and do stuff.

It's the only way forward! 

Am I a fraud?

No news isn't necessarily good news...

I was going to write about Bruce Willis's recent diagnosis of FTD, but I won't because we had a meeting with the Neurology team as a follow-up to my lumbar puncture in late November and I know more about us than him.

The neurology team had sent a letter we hadn't received as a follow up from the lumbar puncture. They told us in its absence, that the tests had shown up no signifiers. This is more than likely, good news.

They did a quick neuropsychology test which as usual I performed with flying colours.

They said the MRI from 2 years ago and the most recent one showed no obvious increased atrophy in the frontal or temporal lobes, but did in the Hippocampus. They are going to use an AI program to 3d model one image over the other to get a more accurate picture of my brain.

They said they didn't know for sure what my dementia was - Behavioural or Semantic variant or other, and that in time it will show itself, but for now my dementia symptoms (searched long and hard for that word!) are atypical with any one dementia and are mild.

I'm due an MRI scan in July again.

As for the replaying of events over and over in my head and me shouting out for them to fuck off, that could well be a psychiatric problem.

When we got home I checked my email and paperwork. 

Despite my illness I'm still very organised compared with most people.

I put all my medical correspondence in the green box file. The letter isn't there, nor do I ever recall seeing it. They said they'd emailed it too. Nope. Been waiting months for it too. I would have known if it had arrived.

Who cares for the carers?

J has taken yesterday really badly with another sleepless night. 

No definites - no tangibles - from the best neurology department in the country.

She no longer has a husband. Just this child. What is the future? How can she plan? This isn't what she signed up for. And am I making it up? 

She's not so sure it seems. 

Geraint earlier today

That old adage of walking a mile in someone else's shoes. Very difficult to do of course. The nearest thing I can do to communicate where I am is write this blog.

What with work, family and the house, and the lack of sleep that induces, J doesn't have time to write a blog.

This aspect of the disease and how it affects others is horrible.

I don't want to put words in J's mouth, but it's clear to see how awful this is for her.

So do I have dementia?

Well, I'm finding reading more difficult. It's more of a mechanical process and I don't always ingest the message of the writing. I will sometimes start at the last paragraph then impatiently dart to a previous paragraph, then to others, not completing the article, and then move to a different article entirely which will hopefully garner my undivided attention.

I can't cope with work. Haven't really been able to for years. Fyfe was doing everything by the end.

I leave lights and the oven hob on. I discover unfinished tasks, and search for things I never used to lose.

I need to make notes about a D&D session so I know it really well. I open my notepad and the notes are already there. A vague recollection of doing it; the names and contents are familiar, but I don't know it well enough to run it, but I end up doing it anyway because I can't knuckle down to study for the reasons above. 

More mistakes but the players don't know and are  - hopefully - still enjoying it.

I'm just being rude when I think I'm being funny. I can't do light and noise like I used to. I just want to get out of party-situations, which I used to love.

I don't want to go out or do anything, apart from games and TV. I obsess about something for a while then another thing after that. 

I'm more absent-minded and my short-term memory is going. I lose words, take ages to find them straining my brain, then forget them again in seconds.

I flap at anything unfamiliar. I can't deal with stress at all. I feel the physical effects - brain-stalls, headache and blood-pressure sky-rocketing almost instantly. I can't take this in. Got to get out. So I walk away.

Is it part-Alzheimers, part FTD, part Semantic Variant? I think a bit of all of them. 

But even putting one name to it - does that even really help? As we know dementia can have a name but it brings out very different behaviours in the sufferer. 

Floating in the void.

Remembering Simon Mayo

Simon Who?

 Lying in bed at whatever o'clock. Thinking about a film review and it took me ages to think of their names. 2 familiar people but no names. Mark. French surname. Not Lamar. The other guy. Philip? Odd surname again. Mark Kermode! 

Then I forgot the name again.

I went back to sleep. I woke up and the name - Mark Kermode. That's a good start. And Simon. Simon what though? Amstell? No.

Mark Kermode

I got downstairs and remembered Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo. But that's a new one. I'm forgetting names a lot more now. I need to keep practicing.

Bruce Willis

So Bruce Willis who we knew already had a form of dementia. His family have recently released the news that it's FTD. (J as usual guessed it was months ago.)

I hope they use his fame to promote knowledge of the disease, rather than lie back and do nothing.

It's quite nice knowing I'm a trend-setter.

Walking the Dogs

J and I walk the dogs every day. J uses it as a form of catharsis where she works through her work out loud. I don't say much at all. Just listen and occasionally drift off into my own thoughts. 

Most of it is jargon-rich corporate stuff and people who I've never met and never will. I don't understand most or any of it. But it helps her and I don't have much to say when we walk - just take in the natural world and the joy of the dogs.

Now and again she expresses the burden she feels, being the primary earner, the runner of the house, mother to me as well as the children, the dogs, her parents, her family.

It sometimes takes a while for me to express how I feel - to first work out the elemental message from all my thoughts and verbalise them in a way that's factual and free from emotion.

So I go quiet and she knows I'm upset.

I'm sorry she's burdened with my illness. It's not what I wanted either, and don't think I don't feel both guilty about it and grateful to you at the same time. But what am I supposed to do with this information? What do you want me to do?

Fair point.

I'm glad I expressed myself like that. It's increasingly difficult to express myself constructively as the alternative would be an irrational, emotional outburst.

I ask myself what do I want to say, what is underlying all these emotions?

It doesn't get any easier.

Elden Ring and gaming update

Love/hate relationship with Elden Ring. After 174 hours of game play. - 174! -  I'm on the last 2 bosses. I'm not expecting a good outcome. Some of them take 30-50 goes to get past. I ended up asking myself if I was enjoying or hating the game.

I left it for a couple of days and told J I had had enough. 

She looked relieved the man-child was off the console.

I was back on a day later. It is daft though. I'll be glad to complete it. However it's such a massive game world you could play another 100 hours to complete it all.

I've 2 D&D campaigns which are both in their latter halves - the Monday crew at its final chapter. 

I'm finding it more and more difficult knuckling down and properly prepping the games. I think having the temptation of The Elden Ring in the other room doesn't help.

But when reading and taking notes my eyes dart around the page and then I've lost my thread. Staying on a page is tough. Making notes is good but not if you find yourself on autopilot. You end up with notes that mean nothing.

I really have to knuckle down today and get my head round it all. Try and visualise the party in a situation, the motives of the NPCs (non-player characters who I run) and then play out possible outcomes. Of course, the players rarely do what you expect them to do but having various options gives me food for thought - it fleshes out the characters - so when the players throw me a curveball I'm more in the head of the character and can react accordingly.

Sunday afternoon - here I come!