Being Human

AI vs Reading and Writing

Another terrific article from James Marriott in The Times.

People aren’t reading. Especially kids.

Their attention spans can’t handle it. It’s social media of course.

University students are all using Chat GPT and its ilk to write their essays.

Since the 2010s every metric of intelligence testing is showing in the west we are getting dumber. 

And more unhappy.

Marriott: 

“Reading and writing are the cornerstones of thought: serious reading, I suspect, is the one habit that unites virtually every man and woman of genius who has ever lived. It may turn out that to abolish reading and writing is almost to abolish human genius.”

The ability to add, to take away, to alter, to delete - all part of the process of working through and developing complex ideas, arguments and  theories. It’s the reason Ancient Greece forged ahead above other iron age civilisations, and gave us the great stories, the great philosophers, the Olympic Games and baclava.

What does AI offer us? 

Well, all those bullshit jobs will be gone in 24 months. That’s what they say.

But we heard that from Keynes in the 30s who predicted a 15 hour week by 1980, so terrified of automation was he.

Several people predicted in the 1960s that by now we would have mostly leisure time.

Instead people worked longer hours in even more meaningless jobs. 

I’m sure AI will rise up  and engulf us, and today's bullshit jobs will be made to look as worthwhile as being a barrister or doctor by comparison.

The AI professor gives the following advice:

Opposable thumbs

I did some research on this. Pandas have pseudo-opposable thumbs - a boney protrusion from the wrist helps them grasp bamboo while they still have 5 fingers on each hand. Orang-utans and gorillas also have opposable thumbs. So do koalas and opossums which aren’t even primates.

Evolution is endlessly fascinating.

I blame the 80s (part 3)

The Fairlight in the 1980s was the start of making music without musicians. All that dreadful Trevor Horn-produced stuff with the screeches that’s aged particularly badly.

You know they’ve auto-tuned Freddie Mercury on the latest Queen re-releases?

It doesn’t even sound like him.

Perfection is not human.

It’s something to aim for, that’s always out of reach.

Being human is human.

Whatever that means.

Len’s Radio

I went to view a bedsit nearly 30 years ago.

I met the landlord and the present lodger. 

“Everything you see here is part of the room.” Said the landlord.

“Not the radio.” Whispered Len.

“No.” Agreed the landlord. “The radio is Len’s. Len will be taking his radio.” 

At that moment he looked at me as if I was coveting Len’s radio.

“That’s fine. I have a radio.”

“You must not play it loudly. There are other tenants in the house.”

“Yup. Sure.”

“So everything you see here is part of the rent.”

“Yes”

“But not the radio.”

It was Pinteresque I tell you.

PINTERESQUE!

Pure gold.

‘Me nan used to sell canoes…’

I had to take this down due to patient confidentiality. 

You should have read it. 

It was so good.

I was rather pleased with myself, I'll admit it.

It was all about...ooh, I can't say!

It was one of my best.

It was really funny.

Ah well. 

It was good while it lasted...

Get told off round here, you see.

Cxxts.

Pound Notes to be redesigned

Generic as balls

So one of the categories for the new banknotes is 'Noteworthy Milestones.' 

Why not add 'Significant KPIs' and where is 'Positive Outcomes'?

Honestly, has this committee been doing any work at all?

“Everyone’s wanking but the biscuit remains dry.” 

Siegfried Sassoon, 1913. 

As pertinent today as it ever was.

The Culture of Work

Why aren’t these people dead yet?

Having lots of video playback in my head- situations I regret. One period that always plays back like a nightmare, is the first job I got in London when I returned in 1998, 27 years ago. 

Until I got FTD I’d barely thought about it. But in recent years it’s been gnawing away at me like some disease. This particular period of my life is primarily what causes me to randomly shout out expletives. 

I’d decided to check out what the world was like outside masonry so I quit my job and moved up to London, living on the floor of my mate's living room for a couple of weeks until I got sorted out.

I'd lived in Wells for 2 1/2 years and was bored out of my head as all my friends had left and I was in a dead-end job as I saw it, earning £200 net a week in a stonemasonry workshop. 

Nothing to do, and no one to do it with.

I'd really lost my confidence and at the time didn't realise that I was in the middle of a long depression.

I’d also just moved into a bedsit in Crouch End and was having a less than satisfactory social life. I thought I’d reconnect with my old London friends as it had only been 2 1/2 years since I’d lived there, but people had moved on to South London and in their social lives and I found myself rather isolated.

I got a job in a TV production company. I was quite excited as it was a company whose programmes I liked. So I got the job, met all the stars, and thinking I was in with them was pretty overfamiliar. 

One thing you don't do in these companies is get too pally with the 'talent.'

As a runner or dogsbody, it's your job to do everyone's bidding, essentially as a slave. People in the media industry proclaim their status by being as rude as possible to the runner, as you can't answer back and I was even earning less in London than I was as a mason in Somerset.

In retrospect I think this all points to a failure in my social behaviour which was always present - not knowing how to behave in certain situations - when to shut my gob and when to toe the line. 

As I've said before, I think my frontal lobe was pulled out of a skip when I was being assembled.

I made a few mistakes as a runner, said some inappropriate things to management and 'talent' and overall did myself no favours.

I had some bad luck too to be fair.

The flip side was the ugliness of the media industry - a public school bullying culture, where I was insulted to my face and spoken to as an idiot, which of course I'm not, even though maybe my behaviour had let me down at times.

It all started at the top with the CEO who was quite the tyrant. He didn't like me from the get-go. 

He was a classic public school bully.

And it makes sense, as the British public schools used the fagging system, whereby younger pupils went through a rights-of-passage as servants to the older boys and were often subject to beatings and bullying. 

These are largely schools which produced the kind of psychopaths who would have been sent out to brutalise the various peoples of the British Empire. With the Empire gone, where else would they go but The City and Television?

It got so that my mental health went from general lowness to rock-bottom. After a month or 2 I had to take deep breaths before going into the office building: I just couldn't do anything right for them. 

The abuse was relentless, and all the while I blamed myself for not coming up to par.

One evening I had a minor breakdown, and everyone was just either ignoring or laughing at me.

One person I did get on with there I confided in. She was a development manager and said she really didn't understand what had happened and that they'd got me completely wrong. She gave me a list of 12 people to contact in the industry and to mention her name. 

Within 2 weeks I had left for another much better job thanks to her kindness. 

Apparently they missed me when I'd gone.

Fuck 'em.

I still beat myself up about how pathetic I was in not standing up for myself and letting people treat me like shit. This is what happened and I've never told anyone any of this. I hope by writing it down this somehow acts as a catharsis and is the start of the end of these horrible memories that keep haunting me.

Because as you can tell I still feel ashamed.

I guess I just didn't have the backbone during that particular period. Especially when your opinion of your self has flat-lined.

Years later and everything seems to point to me having ADHD and some other neuro-divergent behaviours. 

Would they behave like that in this day and age? 

Probably. The media industry outside the corporations is largely unregulated.

Self-Employment

Since getting my diagnosis I now stand up for myself more than ever. Most people back down when you do that.

I guess I feel 'what have I got to lose?'

(I know - but this is relatively new to me... )

It took me until 36 to realise that I couldn't work for other people. 

I would be lost in a vortex where my life depended on trying to please.

I wouldn't stand up for myself either.

I lived, ate and breathed work. I could rarely get away from it. It pervaded my dreams and any waking thoughts, catching me unawares. And these were trivial low-paid jobs too.

In the case of some employers, I ended up exploding at them like a super-volcano of pent-up fury.

Other times if a few of us were unhappy about something I would be the one speaking up in a meeting, and turn to my brothers for support who would all be staring at their shoes.

Oh. it's like that is it?

Thanks. I know who you are.

Being self-employed was initially terrifying, but it was worth it. It means you can listen to your Spidey-Sense and not take on certain jobs. Also, you can call out a bad idea and it doesn't matter so much about the ego being bruised as they're not your boss.

You can tell a contractor to fuck off - or tell a client you're not interested in a job because they're a nutter.

I had a good guy working with me for a lot of the time. In the end he was doing about 75% of the work as my brain just couldn't get in gear.

There are more people who should be self-employed. I know who they are, even if they don't.

I miss my friend Mat

I used to enjoy my chats where Mat would rationalise the world, break down the chaos and let me see clearly what was going on. 

He'd do it really quickly too, which was great as we could have more time for drinking and laughter.

How many people do you have who you can really talk to, completely unhindered, uncensored? 3? 4?

People like Mat leave a big void. It's only when I look to the phone to reach out to a friend that I become all too conscious of that loss.

I think of Suzy, rolling up her sleeves and getting on with a director-level job, running the house, walking the dogs and taking the girls to all their sports meetings and social appointments!

And the girls getting on with their lives. 

How bloody senseless his death is. 

That's real loss, that's devastation. Much worse than dementia.

Brains of the Rich and Famous

I'm a Fashion, me

Bruce Willis brought it to the Hollywood A-list, now some US talk-show host called Wendy Williams has it. I looked her up and she is 59. 

Looks like it's the in-dementia for the glitterati, the cognoscenti - the in-crowd. 

I look down my nose at those with Lewy Bodies. 

Alzheimers? Dreadfully common.

Funny how no one seemed to have heard of FTD and now it's known by many. 

I first heard of it in an article David Baddiel wrote about his Dad, who by the sounds of it was always (rather like me) amazingly inappropriate, but who at Baddiel's mother's funeral outdid himself by asking 6 different women if they fancied a shag.

Even by his standards that was extreme behaviour. It was later diagnosed as Pick's Disease.

Baddiel is a patron of RDS.

That was the first time I learned of Pick's Disease. I was also aware that Terry Jones had had problems with his Frontal Lobe. 

It always seems even more tragic when someone clever has a disease that affects thought and communication or an athlete a disease affecting their motor functions. 

It seems twice as cruel.

For the best part - and here I'm very superstitious about tempting fate - I do seem to have stabilised in my decline.  Which I'm really thankful for. 

Small mercies and all that.

Still conversing with dog walkers, still running complex daft games, still reading the papers and watching sport and not getting any more (or less) than 8 out of 15 on The Times quiz.

Next week the weather forecast is good so I will do some jobs. I have been as inert as a particular gas for 2 weeks. This always happens after a period of activity: I put my feet up, and they remain there.

But I must do a Baron Munchausen and rise from my throne of atrophy, shake off the dust once more and commence battle!

First, I'll have a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Satan's Snot

Battling a cold which I told to stay away. A bit like Kenneth Copeland did to Covid 19, I demanded judgment on colds. 

"COLDS BEGONE!" I shouted.

I'm on a war-footing against colds. Vitamin C with zinc, Vitamin Bs, Vitamin D and a green smoothie for even more Bs. Lots of water. No alcohol. Yep - still not drinking alcohol but still my gut has yet to recede to its required girth.

Optimum Girths should be a title for a future blogpost on slimming, but I digress...

I am keeping the cold at arm's length  - I wake up with a sore throat but that's it. Getting plenty of rest and mild exercise.

Always difficult to separate the tiredness from the cold from that of the dementia!

Spring?

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” Not me, but Great Expectations by a bloke called Dickens.

At last it’s ceased raining. The floods around here have been awful. Some people's houses now can’t be insured because flooding is considered an inevitability.

New housing estates built in fields push the rainwater off leaving it nowhere to go, so rather like ancient isles in the Somerset levels, they too are surrounded by floodwater, but this being the 21st century, sewage and other ghastliness.

And as I write this, I look out of the large window of The Sheep and Penguin. The Equinox is almost upon us. The light is golden and blinding, illuminating buildings and trees and giving me hope.

The familiar comforting smell of log fires and diesel fumes waft up my hooter as I hop along Chamberlain Street.

Ah yes, Spring is about to er, spring, but it doesn't half leave you hanging, with plenty of false starts and all. 

Magnolia, daffodils, buds on the trees. Such a mild wet winter. Barely a frost.

Should be a dry, bright week - a crack of light in the darkness.

What I’m watching/listening to

Rewatching Archive 81 and listening to the podcast that inspired it.

The podcast must have been really popular in order to have inspired Netflix execs to put money behind it, but the cowards never commissioned season 2. It was the most popular programme on Netflix at the time. 

I love its Lovecraftian horror and its homage to The Order of the Golden Dawn and Crowley. The sound design is incredible; lots of droning and static and strange dissonant music. Inspired no doubt by Delia Derbyshire. 

Bob Todd's dad, Aleister Crowley

The direction really accentuates the cultish Egyptian-inspired Art Deco and the creepy, dehumanising aspect of the Brutalism. 

Best watched in a dark room with good headphones on. God it's good! Made on a tight budget too.

The podcast sounds like it was done on a very meagre budget indeed. Some of the actors in Season 1 are poor. 

Interesting as ever to see the changes they made when transferring it to screen.

There are very few other things I'm interested in on any of the streaming networks.

Moving about a bit

No physical activity for a couple of weeks. Maybe longer. I don't know. But, the weather is good for next week. That means I can go out and mow the grass and do some odd jobs for people. That's really good for me.

I shall reinstate my sister's window sills and mow the grass, and even use the new strimmer for the first time. Oh yes, life has its compensations. 

No, actually I'm going to hunker down here for a bit and watch more YouTube stuff. But I must finsih reading the paper and my adventures - less binary, more analogue.

Hypersensitivity of the wife

I was just on a chat with my other FTD buddies, and one was saying how his wife kicks him under the table whenever he says anything 'inappropriate', which as we know is symptomatic of Frontotemporal Dementia.

Not the kicking that is, but the faux pas. 

Me and my dangling modifiers!

The last year or so of being with J was very stressful for all of us. I felt like I was under watch the whole time. Anything I did or said there could potentially be an eruption. 

I was shouting out while they were working from home in meetings. I realise it was intrusive and at times aggressive sounding.

My indiscretions had become a THING. The elephant in the room. It was a pressure-cooker situation. 

I no longer feel that anymore. 

I guess when someone has something they can't help that we should try and laugh it off.

'Oh that's just X's condition! Ignore him.'

Easier said than done of course.

This shouldn't put your self-censorship offline, and I realise it's difficult to laugh or shrug something off, but I think rather than waiting for the next faux-pas to happen - and it will - building the expectation up just makes it worse for everyone. 

If you're waiting and waiting and waiting then the stress of it all just snowballs.

After all, we forgive the Tourette's Sufferer. 

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.

It's all in the mind...

 How are you?

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 wish that 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?

D is for Dementia

Drugs Update

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. 

So that is my goal for 2023.

Why I'm angry all the time

I never write these posts on Saturdays.

I woke up at 9. NINE! That's such a lie-in. J was out last night with a friend. No text as to an eta, but that's normal. 

Stanley couldn't or wouldn't grasp that his Mummy was coming home. And the fireworks were not conducive to his relaxation. The slightest noise was setting him off, so I waited up with him, trying to calm him. J got home around 12.15. 

I then took a while to get to sleep.

But back to today, I woke up in a really good mood. So what happened then?

I don't know. Something made me really angry: full of inner rage. 

I really busied myself - I cleaned the window frames, put the cellophane on the windows for the winter and used the hairdryer to get the creases out which was not wholly successful - even had to take the curtains off too. 

I also mowed the grass. I repaired the flex on the hairdryer. Little things.

I thought this would make me feel good; after all I was achieving things and not wasting my day. 

I guess J relaxing and not taking in what I was doing was slightly grating - how dare she not appreciate my toiling for the good of the house! 

I reminded myself she's worked a 50 hour week. She's allowed to relax.

J was at the hairdressers from 10 till 2. Mmn. I'm really angry.

I'm still at a loss why I'm feeling this way.

The Semantic Variant hasn't really taken hold, but the mood swings are awful. It's Behavioural Variant I'm struggling with. My Frontal Lobe is being eroded - eaten away - and I'm finding it so difficult to join in socially where I used to so 

What’s on the TV? Rupaul's Drag Race, Strictly Come Dancing, and variations on those themes. I can’t join in with any of those. Only Murders in the Building is the exception which we all like watching. 

I can't do the frenetic, camp, fizz anymore, that's for sure. It means I spend more time on my own in the house than I used to.

I'm not perfect. J does the cooking: I clear up. It always has been and it's getting more challenging. Things are left habitually, without malice I've come to understand,  but it's just never-ending.

And of course, they feel they're tiptoeing around me, which of course they are. 

Apparently I’m leaving the oven on and the toilet seat up when I’m urinating. 

It's good to know this stuff. I can then work on these things.

Life is a balance and it's about choosing your battles.

Anyway, I sometimes feel my points of view are quickly dismissed in this house. Maybe that's the reason I get angry. 

It feels like it's me vs the females at times. Or me vs the non-demented at the least.

And there are plenty of people without dementia who can be just plain wrong. 

Many of whom are female.

Which proves it.

What do you do to relax?

John Taverner, exercise,  this video (below)? I'm much calmer on my own watching this CGI interior listening to the auto-Jazz in the background. Maybe Putin goes to bed listening to this. Maybe not.

Aside from walking the dog I need to do some proper exercise. My body's atrophied since giving up work. I haven't lost as much weight either as I thought I would since giving up alcohol, which is disappointing. I guess that's in part my age and a more sedentary life. 

I am not going to the gym. I used to be a gym-addict in my 20s. I went again for a few months in my late 40s. I can't stand the places.

Not sure the knees or ankles will stand running again. 

Swimming is my favourite exercise - wonderful flow activity with zero impact, but can you find a decent pool in this country?

No, is the answer you were looking for.

Dungeons and Dragons

Yes. You were waiting for that. And one can hardly blame you.

That's you that is.

So, Rick's pub is unavailable until 4pm so I've cleared it with the females and the 5 goblins will come here, to the dining room. I think the girls will make themselves scarce if they can help it. 

We can be quite loud and smelly. 

More fun in a Lovecraftian-horror, set in an epic-fantasy world akin to our own European Gothic-Rennaissance. How many boxes does that tick?

It really is proving to be one of the best D&D campaigns I've ever run - 'hugely exiting and full of peril'. Sounds like a modern film rating!

So we should have some fun tomorrow.

J and I love fantasy and sci-fi - X profoundly doesn't. J and I devoured House of The Dragon. We also found a really good Cyberpunk thing just started on Prime the other night: The Peripheral. Worth checking out.

So, on a positive note, I'll bid you goodnight.

Be nice to each other, read a good book. Remember the clocks go back tonight in the UK.

Ner-night.

(FACT: we only have GMT for 5 months of the year!)

 

Trying hard not to be a burden

Every Day is Nostalgia Day

My sister came up to visit briefly, in order to go to see Abba (second time for me). 

It's an extraordinary thing. Mainly middle-aged people; some older, some younger. Everyone in a party frame of mind. Many dressed up. 

The journey there was stressful only because of my condition. Once you get there it's a really lovely arena due to its pleasant staff and the calming environment of the foyer's wooden interior.

It's easy to dismiss, but this Abba show means something to people. It's the happy-sad Swedish nature of the songs - but also the time it was created. The 70s may have been bleak socially and economically, but it was very creative musically. And it was my childhood. There's a certain poignancy about the Abba songs that best reflects the time, in my opinion.

At the concert everyone stands up and dances. Especially the 'David Attenborough' guy (as my sister called him) in the row in front of us, though thankfully a few seats to our left. 

Luckily the people directly in front of us looked really square and lived up to expectations, not getting up from their seats until Dancing Queen, giving us a clear view.

So we're in the arena, sat down -I'm  feeling happy, nostalgic, sad. Such a mixture of emotions. FTD has given me a sense of melancholy - that I somehow long for my past, yet much of the past I remember is a past that admonishes me.  

I sit in cinemas watching Star Wars films with tears in my eyes throughout the whole movie, glad no one else can see me. Like a time-traveller, I switch back and forth from the present to the little boy in Swansea Odeon next to my big Dad, watching the whole film through a C-3PO mask.

I'm living my life in multiple time-lines. Everything has a resonance to a previous age - anything at any time can draw parallels with past experiences and I'm suddenly in a classroom getting told off and crying, or being a total shit to some poor girlfriend; it can be anything. The emotion generated is visceral. I cry out, swearing.

'Why are you here? Let's get back to the present.'

At last, that calm inner voice.

And I return to the present moment. Having done a Mindfulness course I'm 'mindful' enough to acknowledge my awareness in realising where I was in my mind and having the ability to return, and I give myself a pat on the back for doing so.

As an epilogue, my sister loved the Abba concert and I loved it just as much as when J and I saw it back in June.

Just as well as I'm going again in 2 weeks! 

"That's all I can see is green stuff!"

Those wonderful people at RDS have organised 6 Monday morning sessions at the London Wetlands Centre in Barnes. 

Yesterday was the second session.

Thankfully after the horrendous storms we had on Sunday, this was the breezy, bright Autumn day we needed.

We were encouraged to embrace nature. It was too far for me to go barefoot in the grass, and I've never been one to hug a tree. But I do find them enigmatic and mysterious. I've always been fascinated by what goes on under our feet, and it's only recently we're starting to discover the communication between trees and fungi.

Charlie and Raksha gave out notebooks and information leaflets. In order to give back I took lots of A-levellish photos with my iPhone. I have a ton of pro-photographic equipment which I have barely used for years as you end up being a photographer when you really should be experiencing being in the moment with nature. 

Twats.

Rather like the people who go to a concert and video the whole thing. They're missing out on the experience in order to get a third rate recording of it.

The title of this comes from a hide we were in. A dad was showing his little boy how to use the telescope to see the wildfowl. The boy was struggling and said "THAT'S ALL I CAN SEE IS GREEN STUFF!"

Made me laugh anyway.

Am I a burden?

J's having a hard time at the moment dealing with it all. Work, the future, the house, kids, the dogs, the past. I always think it's me and me alone that's the problem. I think of myself at times as the constant reminder to her that she made the wrong decision in marrying me. She asks all my friends and they say - no - he was always like this.

Thanks.

Really constructive!

Let me break this down. 

I have never been the easiest person. I am relatively thin-skinned, I am quick to anger, I am a total coward when it comes to confrontation...blah blah blah. Posts passim

However, in my 40s I had become a lot calmer. More thoughtful. Always trying to become better from my 30s, I'd read lots, been on courses, had therapy. None of us are the finished article. 

It is so hard. I have tried to get a thicker skin, be more calm, be less outspoken, think more about proffering my opinion etc.

When I met J I was in a good place: a more mature and less abrasive me. 

Then FTD. Oh the irony.

I became angrier again; with myself, with the world. Temper frayed, my intolerance worsened. My faux pas knew no limits.

I can hear my Mother's voice: 'Leopards don't change their spots!'

While an addict suppresses their addiction, the addiction is always there, and like a dormant volcano it can occasionally spring back into action.

I can't tell you how hard it is to keep it together all the time. If something angers me and it can be anything - the coping mechanisms I've created and deploy you would not believe. And it is really hard work, which adds to the tiredness people with dementia experience the whole time. Even a couple of days on holiday are tiring - and that's just talking to people you know.

So just remember that I am having to consciously deal with anything life throws at me now - when all of this used to be done unconsciously.

I am trying so hard not to lose who I am - to lose the best of me. 

I don't want things to be like this either.

Drakkenheim Continued

Sunday - a 4 1/2 hour DMing session. We had 2 special guest stars, Larry and Adrian from the other Drakkenheim group (from the games holiday) who met the Sunday players at The Bark and Buzzard Tavern in Emberwood.

From there they went to The Rat's Nest Tavern and and into the burrows, managing to defeat the hoards of Ratlings (2' tall bipedal sentient rats) and the Rat Prince and his Warlock. On the way back they chanced upon a wailing from a ruined house. It turned out to be a wretched ghost or in this context, a Warp Witch. On defeating the creature they heard a clapping behind them. 

This was a strike team of The Queen's Men - sent to duff them up and take their magic items away. 

However, by the skin of their teeth our heroes prevailed. It was a really exciting session in a really vivid setting of a shattered city, its characters and lore. 

I'm really looking forward to the next session.

My Monday session with a different group of players and the world setting is markedly different. Their characters are much higher level and are unfortunately going through giants like a dose of salts. D&D is very difficult to get the balance right at times.

And it's very tiring too, but worth it.

I can’t get my head to think

Games Holiday

 So I went on holiday, a gaming holiday. And the 2nd day I got Covid and had to come home and isolate. Very annoying. I'd hired a car too and had (naughtily) taken Wilbur the spaniel with me, despite the 'No Pets' instruction.

(Anarchy or what? Yeah, I know!)

I came home and all symptoms were gone in 2 days and after a clean LF test I came back. 

We played some games but not so much any RPGs, but for the last 2 days I Dungeon Mastered for 11 hours . It was so exhilarating but really tiring. The players all loved it too. Very kindly, the guys rearranged the timetable to accommodate me. How very kind and thoughtful of them.

Lots of other games were played: 6mm Napoleonic wargaming, card games, railway games (this is a genre) boardgames or other weird things. I even played one where you had to feed a Panda bamboo.

Napoleonic Wargaming using 6mm figures. Can you see them?

But my thing is Role-Playing Games and with a few exceptions they're pretty much all I really want to play. Those exceptions are Marvel United and Here's Negen and a few others.

By the way, this was the first time in 20 years a timetable had been used to organise the week. 

Some said it would never catch on. Others that it would upset the apple cart. 

It proved to be quite the game-changer (see what I did there?). 

At least when something is written down it can be changed/moved.  With RPGs once you start a campaign you need the same players as many sessions make up the whole game, rather like chapters to a novel. Some of the games can last years even played weekly with a 3-4 hour session.

In previous holidays games sessions were conducted on a far more ad hoc basis and there were hours spent waiting around for other players playing games we were told would last no longer than 80 minutes. 6 hours later and they were still playing.

Wilbur's Holiday

Wilbur loves it on the farm but he found the composting area in the private area at the back. I ran through to the private area of the owners, through the huge hissing geese and posh chickens and despite calling his name several times I ended up having to drag him out of the compost by the scruff of his neck, still with a rotten fermenting apple in his gob.

He woke me up at 3am to puke it all up. Thanks Wilbur.

Farmer Wilbur 

I tried taking him for a walk, but 200 yards in he just dug his paws in and headed back for the farm. He just loves tootling around there and there alone. 

Luckily the other gamers (for the best part) like Wilbur too. He takes a seat next to me so he's on the same level when I'm DMing.

He's one of us.

Everyone you know is mental

Gamers are mental. This was the fourth time I've holidayed with them so I should know. 

I am now an EXPERT.

And it's all of them. People who don't wash, or do wash but not their clothes. People who have a room in their house full of Amazonian tree frogs. People who have made 6 attempts to leave the house because of their fear of getting Covid. People who are rules lawyers with no self awareness whatsoever regarding how they impact on others, who deny the existence of rules they aren't aware of. People who have the loudest voices you've ever heard. People who look at you in utter horror if you use a metaphor or analogy because they are so literal and cannot make that leap. People who can't bear any material on their feet. People who cannot bear any material on their arms. People who cannot do anything for themselves as their wives/mums do it all at home. 

Of course, I'm only scratching the surface here. But you get the gist.

Gamers are also kind, gentle, inclusive, accommodating, interesting and thoughtful.

And this is why a demented - such as myself - fits in with it all.

Life back on Earth

I had a stress-free time at the gaming holiday. It was hugely enjoyable and relaxing (except when Wilbur runs off to eat compost). 

Dungeon Mastering  for that amount of hours and the intensity of it also turbo charged me into a good place, but now I'm back I have all manner of crazy negative thoughts coming into my brainage, none of which were present on the holiday. A lot of these are the same old stupid things that have been haunting/possessing my conscious these last few years, all of which happened years ago.

Possible reasons as follows:

1. The Conservative Party. They certainly don't help matters.
2. Pelotons of city-boy cyclists on 15 grand bikes shouting about their what their broker's advised them while tearing round Richmond Park don't do my mental health any favours.
3. Knowing that I'm on a high as far as cognitive function goes means I can expect a trough in the very near future.
4. We all feed off of others' fears and worries unconsciously, whether from hormones, smells etc or body language and the subtleties of communications.
5. Other/don't know.

As always, I tell myself to remain creative and keep busy and all will be well. I still haven't drunk since that Friday in September when I lost my shit.

Luckily I found it again. 

It's just retaining my shit that's the problem.

Quaint little hellhole

 Vanless, clueless

Having sold the van I’m now consigned to public transport. I came down on the train for the first time in years. I’d thought Castle Cary was much further away  - the same distance Bath is - but it’s only 10 miles. Dad was there to pick me up - just like when I was in my early 20s! It was a really nice journey on a new train. My noise-cancelling headphones and a half-full carriage added to the quality of the journey.

Dad chose a really dumb way to go back. I wanted to go back through the pretty villages of Croscombe and Dulcote for old times’ sake. I used to cycle to see friends who lived there. Bike lights back then had about as much illumination as a cigarette. I never got run over, but I did end up in ditches a couple of times. 

Instead we went back through country A-roads with high hedges and littered for miles. With the detritus poured out of vehicles by scum. 

Long-haired hippy bastard!!

What can I tell you about this place? Well it’s changed and I’ve changed. We’ve changed. More populous, more affluent and at the same time more down and outs. Visible heroin problem and lots of mental heath issues. The 2 are not necessarily mutually exclusive of course.

I realise this is par for the course for almost every developed country in the Western World, but hey.

I know very few people here now. It always amazed me who came back, not who stayed. When I left and being a creature of habit, I never wanted to leave, yet I ended up in London, dirt-poor, looking for work. But it was so exciting and vibrant. To a young person it was great. No one calling me out for looking different, no one trying to ruin mine and my friends’ evening because it was their way of feeling better about themselves. In fact, lots of people like me, relishing their new found anonymity and that no one else gave much of a fuck either. No one was going to try and ruin your day. There were lots of people much more edgy than me so I really truly was a minnow in an ocean. Bliss.

Freedom in other words; a chance to reinvent oneself. I shone brightly for a few years, thankfully realising there was no place for me in the world of advertising - despite having won an award as a student - and then after an epiphany and retraining to be a stonemason, I found that the umbilical cord I thought had long-gone snapped me back home like a bungee and I got a job in a local stonemasonry banker shop - the only positive reply I received from a dozen letters, and so I returned, churning out stones in factory conditions at £4.15 per hour in 1996. A 39 hour week meant I would have a net pay of £130 if memory serves. And the place was like Lord of the Flies with the chosen alphas at the top who would give beatings out to the apprentices, but had their favourite - a surly little bastard just like them. They’d call it toxically male these days. 

I spent a year there an then went to a much nicer place in Shepton Mallet which produced a far better quality of work.

But I digress. It’s strange moving back to a small place when all your peers have left as well. It’s like the heart and soul of Eden has just disapperaed making it feel like a semblance of itself. There are people who never left who can be quite resentful that you were ‘disloyal’ as they see it. I find the patheticness of that really funny.

It’s also funny - to me at least - that the biggest rebel I know returned there. I know she’s told me why but I can’t remember and I think the reason that I can’t is that I could never truly get my head round why.

Brain not compute…brain not compute…

So after 2 1/2 years I packed everything in and moved back to London, but that’s another story.

Modern life IS rubbish (but it has its compensations)

I’m at the cafeteria of The Bishop’s Palace having a vegan sandwich. I’m not a vegan but I’ve developed an intolerance to lactose. It’s an age thing, you see.

Middle-classed hippies with their home-schooled boundary-free kids running and screaming at the other end of the restaurant. I’m here at the furthest end from them, safe with my coffee and cake with my noise-cancelling headphones.

What would I do without you…?

I recommend these to everyone who has dementia or any sensitivity to noise. Other people’s dogs, children, mobile phone conversations, loud revolting students (a tautology, I realise) and just general pub/restaurant/classroom etc noise. Makes life more tolerable. Not a cure, but a treatment.

You probably need a product demonstration. In fact, you definitely do if you haven’t put a pair on. Unless you’re already hard of hearing which I would say is a far better place than being hypersensitive to noise.

I should have been in advertising. 

Actually, no.

Even the people I know who went into it regret it.

Stonemasonry was the least worst way of earning a living I ever found. I tried a lot of different things see. I would have much preferred to be a trustafarian just doing course after course. Loved learning new things.

Maybe in the next life.