It's the reason I don't get angry anymore. It's also the reason I don't get sad anymore. I still enjoy things. I feel bad for people who are suffering.
But it was Mat's funeral the other day. And I didn't feel overwhelmingly sad.
I wanted to feel. But that part of my brain is just...inaccessible.
I've always found funerals odd. When my friend Jon passed away 30 years ago I didn't cry. It all just felt, unreal. That he's no longer there - that he's just gone.
I looked at the wicker coffin knowing Mat's body was in there. So tangible, feet away.
Just wake him up.
He can't be gone!
I was moved by Suzy's eulogy, and felt for brave Freya as she did her reading then came back and collapsed in tears on the pew.
While Sertraline stops my anger, it also shuts down emotions I want to have - to be able to share that sense of grief with others.
To feel pain.
I know it's in there.
This is the down-side of the drugs. They top and tail your emotions so only a thinnish line in middle is available.
A single layer of lasagne with a thin coating of ragu and no béchamel sauce.
I daren't come off the stuff though as the flip side is insta-rage.
It would just be nice to have the odd window.
The odd window
"Cranky-Pants! Cranky-Pants! Cranky-Pants!"
I have a cold. Don't come near me, not because I will spray you with mucus but because I will bite your head off.
Actually, it's very minor, but these days we all have to isolate when we have colds don't we? Back in the day you just went to work and got on with it.
When I worked as a banker mason in a workshop I got paid by the hour.
Don't turn up: don't get paid.
It took me years to get over that mentality. When I worked at the BBC I couldn't believe how many days people had off ill, and it was never questioned. They'd be off one day - back the next with no discernible thing wrong with them.
Probably all the BAD drugs people did back then.
The worst part of me having a cold is how horrible I become. I bite the heads off of medium-sized dogs, and bark at people in the service industry as I can no longer understand or speak their language.
So I just stay in nowadays lest I get into a massive ding-dong with a sabre-toothed librarian or 16 year old cashier-ninja.
A woman I worked with many years ago used to call me "cranky pants" whenever I was grumpy, which was most of the time.
I'm not like that anymore due to all the GOOD drugs I take.
Just watched Margaret Atwood talking about The Handmaid's Tale.
She quoted William Gibson by saying the future is here but it's not evenly distributed. She wrote the Handmaid's Tale not as a science fiction but as a portentous work like 1984.
I wrongly believed 1984 was Orwell's prediction of Britain's future, but it was an allegory of the Soviet Union and was just 1948 backwards - the year he completed it.
So a lot of those sci-fi tales or fables take something prevalent in the NOW and then crank it up and place it in a seemingly utopian setting, which then reveals itself to be utterly dystopian.
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.
Cog rooms which change configuration
The gaming table last Sunday
Ready for the Boss Fight!
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!
Until then, there there, and take ∞D6 damage in a 500’ radius.
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.
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.
Dream tons, which according to my sister and Robert Winston is a sign of good quality sleep.
I'm certain bad quality sleep over the years contributed to my condition.
Nevertheless, I woke up this morning (thankfully) after erotic dreams about an old flatmate (female).
My bedroom was like a scene from the Hangover movies.
Pillows everywhere except the bed, duvet halfway up the arse and books and iPhone on the floor. I'm glad I have the whole bed to myself or I'd be guilty of assault and battery.
Thankfully no ladyboys anywhere. 😬
Been really busy of late. Even putting together a complicated piece of flat-packed furniture (a wardrobe with drawers and doors) which took 3 hours (if Ikea is Lego this was the Technical Lego version) took it out of me. I was knackered: just slumped in a chair watching TV for the rest of the day.
I've also been prepping White Plume Mountain for DMing to kids this week in Pilton, organised by my friend Katy from Edspired Tutoring.
Everything is still doable - but it's taking it out of me. It just serves to remind me that in no way would I be able to work full-time anymore.
DMing for Kids
It's half term and for the last 2 days I've been DMing for a party of teenagers who went through the legendary White Plume Mountain - a bonkers funhouse dungeon from 1981, which I've mentioned numerous times in previous posts.
The first thing to say is they were really nice people. By the second day they were thinking more about strategy and working with each other rather than on the first day when they acted as individuals.
I had to rejig their characters around as they were pretty under-optimised. But with that done and some general advice about spell combinations, they went from being at the edge of a TPK (Total Party Kill) to triumph, but it was still enough of a challenge to get them to be fully immersed in it all.
They enjoyed themselves (apparently), and I'll look forward to DMing them next time, but I have to ask myself - in the voice of a corporate trainer from Basingstoke - "What are my learnings?"
Have a Session Zero. This would be a pre-game session on-line to flesh out the characters and discuss roles and strategies within the group, and to ensure they haven't done anything daft in the character generation.
Insist on character generation being done old school - analogue. With DND Beyond, you can just click and print out a character sheet. That's okay, but when you generate a character level-by-level with dice and pencil and paper, you know the character far better. The high level characters generated had way too many abilities - I likened it to making a choice in a restaurant with a menu that runs into pages. Just have 4-5 choices in any situation marked out - quickens the game and makes it far less frustrating for everybody.
Run a lower-level adventure. Plenty of good one-shots to be had with a heavier role-playing element than WPM, and lower-level characters have fewer options - see menu analogy above.
Where's me pills??
In Wells one has to - apparently - give the Health Centre 5 days notice before the prescription is available in the pharmacy. In Kingston it was only 2.
I'm not quite used to this yet.
I will run out on Monday. I have picked them up earlier before, so I'm hoping they'll be there on Saturday morning.
In fact, being a born worrier and now fixated on things like this (partly probably due to retirement and not having anything particularly to worry about, but mostly due to FTD) I think I'll call the practice to see if they can hurry it up.
Not having Sertraline for a day is...inadvisable. I may turn into Mr Hyde...and I don't want that.
Nor does anyone else.
Not finding solace in televisual delights
Amazon are now putting dreadful commercials into their programming every 12 minutes, unless you pay another £3 a month on top of your Prime subscription.
Monsters.
Netflix are due to start the same scheme. I realise there was an actors' strike but there is very little decent programming on either at present. So little that they've even started pushing awful 70s and 80s sexploitation films onto the Prime platform.
Rubbish.
So after watching an Orson Welles documentary, I then went back to my customary YouTube options -
Boxing
What's Trump said now?
Dungeons and Dragons
Other
So I went to other and started watching music clips, which I have neglected to do for too long.
It was great. I began with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band then sublimed (as one does) onto Heatwave and 70s British Disco which often had a heavy West Indies influence.
I always thought Heatwave was an American band. In fact the 2 lead singers were Americans but the keyboard player and main songwriter was a guy from Cleethorpes called Rod Temperton who'd had a job filleting fish.
That's him on the keyboards.
Anyway, he eventually went on to work with Quincy Jones and wrote songs for Michael Jackson for Off The Wall and Thriller, and hit songs for other people throughout the 80s and 90s,
Apparently (I'm quoting from the wonderful Gilles Peterson) after Lennon and McCartney Rod Temperton was commercially the most successful songwriter Britain has produced.
How cool is that?
Characters
Definition being distinct individuals who don't follow trends, are eccentric and amusing.
There appear to be fewer and fewer these days. Of my friends, David Bowles and Martin Duncan-Jones were characters.
Have you ever regretted asking that question? Sometimes if you're having a bad time of it and you really know the person who's asking, you can open up.
But otherwise, please spare the details.
I once asked an ex-work colleague how things were, and he proceeded to tell me every project that he had managed to get for the company. Oh my god - it went on and on and on. After half an hour he said "...and that one's worth nearly a thousand pounds."
At that point I just said goodbye and walked off. I didn't care how rude it appeared.
That one's worth nearly a thousand pounds! I think he'd got his decimal points in the wrong place!
We're British, and asking how are you is just a polite soundbite. It's showing an interest in the other person without wishing to be intrusive. It's not really asking for much of an answer either - it's more of an implied wishthat the other person is in good health in body and mind.
You never want to burden people by actually answering truthfully, or boring people senseless with the minutiae of your working life.
You just say, 'not too bad', 'mustn't grumble', 'fine thank you' - that kind of thing.
Saying you feel amazing - fantastic, is borderline vulgar. It's boastful. After all, no one likes a show-off.
I think this should at least be on the National Curriculum. It would help enormously for those of us who don't wish to be stuck in embarrassing and tedious conversations.
Concentrate
Why did the model stare at the orange juice?
I'm in a pretty good place at the moment. The Sertraline is STILL working - or at least mitigating the worst of my anger, and I feel calm and content most of the time. I can concentrate on reading and writing; I even did something useful yesterday and tidied and cleaned for an entire morning (long overdue it must be said) while I had the house to myself.
On reflection, I've stalled writing as I don't think I have any thing that new or interesting to tell you. I've been getting fitter by running in intervals with the dogs as I've joined in with their squirrel chasing. We've yet to catch any as the squirrels are unfairly advantaged by having eyes on the sides of their heads giving them almost 360' vision, and are also able to run up tree trunks.
But at least I am getting fitter.
One thing I have noticed with my vision is my eyes seem to work in slow motion. As I'm running I have to look at the uneven terrain and I have to concentrate on it. It's like the centre of my vision is more in focus than the outer, and the information is taking fractionally longer to get to my consciousness. So I'm really having to concentrate a little bit more to avoid hazards, in other words.
Maybe I should run on football pitches and the like. It's only a matter of time before I have an accident.
Spinal Tap
Had a lumbar puncture the other day. Odd procedure. I've got to say the staff at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neuroscience are incredible. I felt so put at ease - everyone there was charming. I would hazard a guess it's a great place to work.
So you sit on the edge of a bed and crouch over. They give you an anaesthetic and then the procedure. They asked if I wanted to contribute some more for research purposes. Yeah, knock yourselves out: take another pint!
So I was there as the spinal fluid was extracted. It took a few minutes - how many I couldn't say.
Repercussions - the next day I had pain around my coccyx area, and a slight headache. These pains I was told to expect, and they lasted about 3 days. Small potatoes really.
So now I have to wait till the new year to get the results.
Xmas
Jacqui's last day at work for 2022 is on Monday 12th. That means that the mad dash to get Xmas ready will be a gentle canter instead. I can't do the shopping - I've always hated it but in recent years I've found the crowds and general hubbub really disorientating and unpleasant. Thankfully one of the good things about shopping is miserable buggers like me can do it all online now.
I've always loved Christmas so I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family. I'm looking forward to playing games and good cheer. I realise some people hate Christmas and I understand why, but as an opportunity to be amongst people and have fun and good times it tops any other event in the calendar IMO.
Creativity
I've been writing character personal quests in Drakkenheim. These are secrets the players' characters have that they don't tell the others. There's a list of them from 'I need to reclaim a family heirloom' to 'I am the rightful heir to the kingdom!' to 'I must kill the leader of this faction.'
Threading these plot points into an already complex story is great fun. It gives me enormous excitement to secrete these things throughout the adventure knowing that the characters will discover the lost items or make a certain event come to pass.
The great thing about Dungeons and Dragons is the Dungeon Master AND the players make the story. It can potentially go anywhere.
It's the highlight of my week. And oddly I'm becoming less and less tired after a long session.Maybe because I'm fitter?
So the Sertraline is still doing the business. I haven't exploded into a berserker's rage for weeks now. Which is nice.
Yesterday was the last session at The London Wetlands Centre. Felt a bit sad in a way. Two of the couples didn't make it in. The weather was pretty inclement too. I let them know about this blog. I read a bit out of my last post - the bit about me being a miserable bastard which made them laugh.
Drugs are good.
Maybe I shall try CBD or micro-dosing with magic mushrooms. What is there to lose?
Data-deficient
We currently have no internet so I'm, tethering this computer what I am typing 'ere through my phone to the interweb. Amazing what we can do with technology these days. Waiting for the man to come and fix it. Which as we know this can sometimes take more than one visit.
in a moment I shall be venturing into Kingston town centre to get my Covid and flu jab. What fun!
Drakkenheim update - not that you're interested, and one could hardly blame you...
Did a 6 hour session on Sunday. 6 HOURS OF DUNGEON MASTERING! Wave after wave of attacks by various monsters on a fort that the players had to defend.
It was actually really good. Markedly different to the previous session which was predominantly role-playing. That's what's so great about this game - role-playing - exploration - combat. Something for everyone.
They all went up a level too. Just rewards. But things get tougher in the game now.
I'm loving this.
I also have to embellish their backstories which are tied in to the whole scenario - each of them has a secret or guiding reason why they're there, or what they need to do. They haven't told the other characters what they are and I need to expand and integrate these into the adventure, one-on-one with each player.
It will get complicated so I need to keep it clear and concise or yours truly will get very muddled indeed!
Don't like readin' or speakin'
Reading less of the paper these days. I used to devour it beak to arse, but now I just read some of the comments section and do the quiz, skim the rest. Is this symptomatic of a stage I'm going through or my condition worsening? Who knows.
I stopped reading Private Eye about a year ago - just couldn't get down to reading all that dense, forensic text. I'm considering cancelling my subscription to The Times. I would miss certain writers though. A paper becomes a familiar companion, and strangely comforting. It's dependable in that it always arrives and you look forward to certain features and writers, like familiar voices.
I'll keep it for now as it may just be a stage I'm going through. I've learned that with dementia it's rather like a wavelength. For instance yesterday I was really chatty and up when I arrived at the Wetlands Centre. By the last half hour I was withdrawn and elsewhere.
Dull
...what I am becoming. I have so few interests now: D&D, Abba, nature, politics (on the wane as the movers and shakers are so depressingly awful). The dogs are lovely. So are my friends.
Things are quiet before Xmas. I haven't done any Xmas shopping. I don't know what to get. My creative thinking seems to have gone. My imagination can be sparked but is as responsive and inactive as our broadband is at this time of writing.
Talking of creativity, I want to run Drakkenheim until its very end. This is because I'm finding it harder to prepare and I'm not sure when it will be too much and I will no longer be able to do it. It would be a shame if we didn't get to the end.
I've been very lazy recently. This extends to wearing the same clothes day in and out, staring at YouTube waiting for one of my subscribed channels to have something new on, and prepping D&D. Haven't cleaned the house. Haven't even done a blog post for weeks.
It's not good.
J was very kind and said I needed to have a list of tasks to do. She's right. I just drift off otherwise into the astral plane, floating untethered in the mists. I need to be reeled back down to terra firma and shown which direction to go.
Sertraline
My temper has been insane - worryingly about to boil over like a broken pressure cooker on a full heat. This was really uncomfortable physically and mentally. I'd had some Sertraline (an antidepressant prescribed by my neurologist) on my table since July 30th. I'd taken one on July 31st and it had made me do jaw-dislocating yawns. I didn't like it. It also listed the myriad side-effects and said don't drink alcohol. This was enough at the time, for me to not take them.
The anger was so worrying to me that I thought I'd start taking them anyway. I also haven't had a drink since early September.
The anger left me within an hour of taking the pill. Oh my god - the relief from the pressure was borderline euphoric.
I've heard they don't kick in until weeks after taking them, but that wasn't my experience. Something chemical happened inside me and since then I have been a far happier bunny.
The alternative to not having these drugs was awful.
Shows
I went to see ABBA Voyage AGAIN!! This time with J and our neighbours. It was wonderful. I think Mark was initially less keen, especially when the price was factored in. But both of them loved it - said it was incredible.
Going to this event makes me so happy. Like an old person, I'm sick and tired of comedians and popular culture where they say shock words or use pornographic language for laughs. I don't even find it offensive; I find it boring.
I can go down the pub for that.
Talking of comedy, J and I saw the play 'Spike' with my old mate Will and his partner. It's currently at The Richmond Theatre. It was okay. It was better than okay. But the casting of Spike Milligan was the problem - he didn't look like Spike, nor was he very funny. I guess we're talking about comedy from 60-70 years ago, so timing is everything. I guess if a chameleon like Benedict Cumberbatch had played him, that would have been something to see.
Culture, innit?
Dungeons and Dragons
Drakkenheim continues on Sundays apace. It is deadly. Last Sunday the characters were sent half-mad merely looking through a gate. They're exploring the city to get a sense of the geography - this is called a sandbox adventure. What that means is rather than a linear questline of goals and achievements with no deviation and a chronological order of events, instead the party go where they like. Luckily Drakkenheim is so well written that I can quickly review a section if I haven't prepared it and run it almost immediately.
The deadly nature of this setting is making for an edge-of-the-seat gaming experience.
My Monday lot are all high-level and seem to be immortal. No matter what I throw at them - and in this case it's rooms full of giants - they seem to win every battle with merely a few scratches to show for it.
This particular adventure is older than the players, being the first written adventure ever published by TSR - the original Dungeons and Dragons company - back in 1978, although it was first played as a competition module before then.
It's basic and brutal. Very combat-heavy. I wonder how long it will be before they get bored of it.
London Wetlands Centre
Every Monday morning I've been attending the above centre in Barnes. It's an oasis, but look to the horizon and you see the whole place is surrounded with the gray nastiness that is London. Also, every 10 minutes a gigantic AIrbus roars overhead on its way to Heathrow.
Apart from that, it's really lovely - full of Cormorants, crested Grebes, geese and ducks of many varieties, and also lots of songbirds.
There have been lots of activities there which I have not taken part in - miserable bastard that I am. But I felt I was at the Wetland Centre not to make things out of clay or carve pumpkins, but to immerse myself in the nature and fauna and look up and listen and smell the air.
In certain parts of London it's easy to miss the seasons changing, so places like commons, parks and Barnes Wetland Centre are great barometers and places you can breathe and relax and be human again.
Here are some photos I took on my iPhone. I decided not to take my SLRs as I don't have a 600mm prime zoom.
