Moaning about shit. Well it is January.

Memories of a failed radical

If art college wasn't bad enough I went back a second time. This time just for one year in 2006, to do photography. It was actually one of the best courses I did as we were taught (shock horror!)...SKILLS.

This kind of learning suits me anyway. This is a Mamiya RZ67. This is how it works. This is how you put film in. This is how you take film out. Go and hire one and have some fun.

Thing is, I was 37 when I started that course. I think the age range was about 21 to late 50s. Made a lot of friends there.

There were some 'types' there. Some really talented snappers actually. I did it for a while but just ended up doing corporate events and that's not where I wanted to go.

One guy was an archetypal radical. He was about 24 - his dad was a senior person in the EU and his kids got free and unlimited education throughout Europe. That's a thing. 

Pete had a house and cameras which his dad gave him. He'd hang around the student bar. Us oldies would buy a couple of rounds. 

"Pete - your round. Pete?"

He was either nowhere to be seen or he'd shout:

"I DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY!!" 

But u have a house and 8 cameras. Why don’t you get a part time job?

"What and give in to the bourgeois hegemony and exploitation of the proletariat? Fuck off!"

He didn't actually say that bit. But words to that effect. He reminded me of Reggie Perrin's son - too lazy to get a job, always moaning at his father's selling-out and then asking for a loan to keep himself going.

This guy was a professional student. 

The house owning euro-student. 

A stereotyped middle-classed armchair radical.

The nearly arrested. 

Nearly martyred.

Nearly revolutionary. 

The fully trust-funded.

A typical walk with the dog

Snippets of life played back to me on random every morning. No chronology - and the links from one to the other are probably too embedded in my unconscious to ever know.

I'm a toddler at Bristol zoo. A giraffe cranes its neck down to examine me; its face in mine as I'm being carried. I burst out crying at the innocent animal as it invades my personal space.

Crossing Cenarth falls - I'm scared but my Dad's hand is there. It's so sunny and deafening with the crashing water.

After tobogganing my wellies are full of snow and my feet are freezing. I'm crying in pain. Why can't I have snowboots?

Charles Hawtrey as Private Dibble. Terry Scott admonishing him.

"It keeps my dangler warm!"

Random snippets of comedy sketches in my head. Harry Enfield saying "Faster you bitch!"

Fish and chips. Extra scraps please. Looks awful tbh.

Tan Ford Cortinas with a brown vinyl roof and square lights. 2000E. Coolest car ever.

Sexier than a Chrysler Avenger or a (splutters...) Vauxhall Viva!

Me copying Richard Ireland as he does the penny organ round the classroom and thinking I'm just as funny.  No one laughs.

Blue Tupperware full of old pennies.

Mint gravy with a cube of chocolate sponge. Yum!

Oooh, you little minx!

Hotwheels Racers.

Matchbox cars.

Corgi cars.

Dinky....toys?

Plastic Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Crunching through the crisp grass on frozen mud in the shade of a hedgerow. Not a cloud in the sky: long shadows and golden, blinding light.. 

Oh! I'm back in the real world. 

(Pat myself on the shoulder for being back in the present moment. Thank you Mindfulness!) 

Tomos is over there.

No one's around. Fairweather dog walkers.

Grumble. In the distance I hear:

"Willowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillowwillow.'

Some miserable Uncle Monty-alike in Nigel Farage burgundy cords bellowing at his dog who is 200 metres away and understandably ignoring him. 

Also can't believe his dog is a Saluki - you'd think it would be a pug or a bulldog.

Damn. Was that monologue in my head or broadcast? 

I see an obviously schizophrenic man talking to himself. At least we have strength in numbers.

Pleasant small-talk with multiple dog owners. Can they tell I'm a demented?

Tomos loves me.

Lower your expectations

I'm sure I've let people down. I know I've let people down. I've also helped a lot of people too. 

It's nice when people acknowledge it. It's very nice when it's reciprocated, or you get a gift.

But since I've retired I've passed jobs on and got nothing back. I'm stopping as of now. These jobs were worth thousands.

I realise people help me. Tolerate me. My Dad is the most generous person I know. He's helped hundreds of kids get jobs, driven people to airports (even if they didn't want to go) and used to cut the grass for the neighbours, amongst myriad other things.

In short he'd go out of his way to help people he barely knew. 

Then he got too old and there was the pandemic and lockdown. 

The grass-cutting wasn't reciprocated.

Back in the day that would have been socially unacceptable - that would have set tongues wagging. But the pendulum has swung the other way.

You do a good turn - like when I had the van and a neighbour asked if I could deliver a couch to her son in Chelsea. Yup - gave up my Sunday morning to do that. 

"Oh you must come round for dinner."

Well, lucky I didn't hold my breath.

It's easy to blame Margaret Thatcher for the selfishness phenomenon, but it was the 1970s (when I was a kid) that was known as the 'selfish' decade. Of course I was too young to notice. It must have been a cultural offshoot from the hippy movement - a movement I felt kinship with in my youth but one I've come to despise. 

Proto-eloi most of them.

Anyway, 40 -50 years ago everyone on our road - and probably your road - knew each other. 

That's a distant memory now. 

People started to put up their barriers and isolate themselves from everyone else. Buy a property, do it up so it's almost unrecognisable, put gates and high fences everywhere to keep out the zombie hoards but only the hedgehogs were affected.

After the country of Iceland became bankrupt I listened to a documentary about it on Radio 4. Icelanders observed that when neighbours became super-rich they isolated themselves, and that a good thing about being poorer is that people were at least talking to each other again.

People are just selfish.

If we acknowledge that we should lower our expectations.

Yes, we're ALL Neurodivergent now

 What's your diagnosis?

Many of us have got a diagnosis these days. Lots of adults are being diagnosed rightly or wrongly with ADHD. There are lots of people on the autistic spectrum too. It seems to be getting larger. It's almost galactic in its proportions these days.

It's easy to dismiss all these things now as the latest hook to hang your coat on, as though we're all automatons devoid of free-will and and our neurological make-up is to blame for any discrepancies in our behaviour and societal misdeeds. 

Our behaviour is usually a mixture of nature and nurture, though we still have the fight or flight from our reptilian brain, there to keep us alive in extreme circumstances.

And while it's easy to mock the trendy new penchant for diagnoses later on in life, it doesn't half give you some relief. What I mean is, it can go someway to explain why you are who you are.

Disclaimer: I'm not a trans person. I've always been happy in my body and never for one moment doubted I was a male. However, I do exhibit a lot of classically non-masculine behaviours. Masking is one of them.

As a child I felt very awkward socially. What I said wouldn't go down well with the other kids - I was a follower not a leader. I was a cry-baby, and the following of others became outright copying.

A kid came to the school and I really wanted to be his friend. He seemed so confident and life was just easy for him - I thought. I don't know how he put up with me to be honest. I would have been a bit freaked out. The only things I didn't copy in the end were his taste in music (all that Goth crap!) and I couldn't get my hair to do what his did.

There were other kids I tried to be like too. But I wasn't tough or working-class or good at sport. So I didn't fit in with them either. 

I just wanted to draw things and play with Lego and play Dungeons and Dragons.

Why did I never fit in to one 'friendship group' as they call them now? To be honest I never saw the need for social cliques and I didn't really understand them, but I knew I ought to be in one. I would look at them and think - well, I like these people, and she's nice from that group - he's a nice person in that group, but you have to choose a group or you're an outsider. If you do choose a group you then like 3 of the people but the other 3 are arseholes and you just have to put up with them. 6 to one and all that.

So when I went to art school I reinvented myself with long hair (which I'd I'd always wanted) and trying to be cool, which tbh I wasn't very good at. I guess I was a late bloomer so when I was older (out of school) I was a lot more popular with the girls, which was nice. But it was all a bit of an act.

You're probably asking what does all this bollocks have to do with neurodiversity? Here's a list of my worst traits.

• Easily-distracted: can't concentrate on 70% of lessons, can't even start to revise, loathe exam times, can't read a book, 
• Lack of concentration: silly mistakes, lack of focus, 
• Copying others, behaviour, dress-sense, style,
• Oversharing, inappropriate information, too much information, wrong time, wrong place, faux-pas
• Inappropriate behaviour, saying the wrong thing, being outrageous, being obnoxious
• Oversensitive cry-baby, stress-monkey, worrisome, sleep-deprived, self-loathing
• Insensitive -smart-ass, gob-shite, harsh, hurtful

That's me. Now I'm not trained in any of this and I haven't had any diagnosis other than that of FTD, but I share a lot of the above traits with people with ADHD and those on the Autistic-Spectrum and seemingly always have done since I was little.

And while I may or may not have ADHD or be on the spectrum, at least by analysing myself and identifying the above, the elephant in the room is there for me to see it. Now I know its there I can train myself to be in the moment and identify when it is operating and either stop it or work around it. It's actually really handy for the person, not as an excuse as though to say "Yes, sorry I was being an arsehole - it's my neurodiversity" rather like the drunk would blame the bottle, but to acknowledge the signs and signifiers of behaviours and either mitigate for them or withdraw myself from a situation.

It's actually really pleasing to have this - it makes life easier and it makes liking myself a lot easier too. I'm kind and sweet-natured most of the time. I'm perceptive, a relatively original thinker and I am a very good judge of character. I'm an oddball and many of my friends are oddballs and characters. I'll help anyone who's a friend. I'm generous with my time and money. I'm all right in other words.

It's all right being a weirdo, oddball, nerd. In fact it's actually rather good.

The End of Dungeon Mastering

I've been running 2 campaigns for months and months. In fact, my Monday online group has been in the same campaign for over 2 years. But both are ending pretty much in the next couple of weeks, and I will be a player once more.

I'm a little worried that my brain will atrophy quicker now I will be sitting back letting someone else do all the hard work DMing, with all the planning, research and writing involved.

I have 2 new characters I want to use: a gnome wizard called Bibble Babble, and a Gloomstalker Ranger/Assassin for the longer in-person Sunday campaign.

Not to be confused with Babble Bibble!

I can't wait.

I will be back to DM though. It's been really good and I think I am a better Dungeon Master than I was before. You never stop learning, despite the fact you may have a leak in the knowledge banks...

Silence!

Where's my anger to?

It's gone. Seriously. I'm also not reliving past confrontations and shouting out aggressively in the house. This is a great relief to everyone working from home, but J suspects I'm just trying harder and could have done better all along (which I can understand - I'd be suspicious too) but it's honestly not like that. It just stopped. 

Is it possibly because I'm now forced to look forward in time and make decisions for my future?

I suspect that is the reason. Plus the Sertraline.

What people don't get about the broad basket of neurological conditions known as dementia is that the sufferer can show different symptoms even during a single day. It's like a rollercoaster. 

My cognitive abilities are definitely on the wane though. I can't deal with complex plans and what ifs. I get it all confused in my head and all I remember is the last things that were said. For example - I remember a conversation as starting off unpleasantly but ending pleasantly. 'So it's all going to be all right then', is how I interpret it, having forgotten or not taken in the main meat of the sandwich.

Perhaps then, it's my new found ignorance that has chilled me out.

I'm going with it anyway. 

Fat shaming myself

I'm fat again. This is due to a relapse with the beer. Luckily I'm a happy drunk again - not a maniac. To be fair I started off having the odd pint again then built up to 3 or 4 on a Tuesday, and 2 at the end of a long session on the Sunday. However, I am paying the price for my week in Wells and the week of indulgence spent in the rotten pubs there. At least they're cheaper than Kingston.

So I'm a fat bastard and should do something about it.

Perhaps less beer?

Reading/Watching

At least I'm reading tons at the moment., The other day I received a new RPG book from a company I'd backed on Kickstarter. It's about 240 pages and I read 70% in a day - obviously skimming parts of it. 

I am writing stuff for adventures but I am creatively bereft - I'm on empty. I'm not sure I will ever be able to churn ideas out like I used to. I can develop things but only very slowly. It sometimes takes days for an idea to gestate into something useable.

I'm also reading a novel in bed. It's rubbish, but easy. Like Neighbours or most movies these days. Algorithmic bollocks.

Don't want to read something heavy like Chomsky in bed, although it would get me to sleep quicker: boring old sod.

However, one of my current addictions is Rugby League (again) particularly the NRL, although I prefer how the game was played in the 90s and noughties rather than it is now. So a lot of my time is spent or rather wasted watching YouTube clips.

What I also do is read the comments on a news page on YouTube from Trump/Putin/conspiracy supporters which is utterly utterly depressing. I never ever join in the conversation as it would be very bad for me to get swallowed up in such a mire.

Are they still there? 

D&D

Monday's D&G (Dyslexic D&D) session seems to have atrophied - people have busy lives and probably playing with a cranky demented DM in charge may be straining the credibility of enjoyment, but people have busy lives, family and work. The trouble is the lack of communication. In this day and age with digital communication there is no excuse. Even if you're late (fewer and fewer people seem bothered about punctuality anymore - as a general observation) a text is all you need as a courtesy to those you are directly affecting.

The Sunday session - Drakkenheim - is approaching the final chapter. Lots of politics and diplomacy afoot, as well as more sinister plots and undercurrents. It's so fascinating. It's the only complex web of intrigue I can get my head around these days. Don't get me wrong - it's difficult to plan but I've discovered (rather like the writers of the TV series 'Lost') you don't need to start off with answers - just start new threads. Watching the players discuss them and come up with their own theories as to what's really going on is part of the game. 

As Larry says, Drakkenheim has been truly 'epic' - it is the most Game of Thrones as far as political intrigue and role-playing that I've ever experienced in a D&D game. Considering the old school stuff I played years ago was just open a door, kill the random monster and nick its treasure, this is a different ball-game altogether.

It still has all the combat and peril of old school, but things matter more with vivid characters and different factions all competing for control - life is more complicated than good vs evil, humans vs orcs. Both old and new versions are fine - but this has been one of the best written campaigns ever. And it's a 3rd party product.

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.