50

Fifty years old.

For the first time since I was about twelve I celebrated a birthday with parties of a sort. On the Saturday prior I invited seven local friends and their families to join me and remarkably all said yes... there was me with a whole line up of substitutes and none got the call. Now, clearly, if I didn't invite you and you're fairly local then you were eighth on my list, promise.

Anyway, since my sister moved back to the UK we've travelled over numerous times to see her in South Wimbledon / Raynes Park, and driven past Fish! Kingston every time. I love fish, and having looked at the website it was a no-brainer.. top quality fish and chips plus other fishy dishes, mmm. As it was the food was exceptional, even better than I had dreamed! And the company, wow, wonderful, a lovely collection of people that I would spend the rest of my days with, thank you for coming out!

The following Saturday it was back to Suffolk to celebrate with my mum, Cheryl's mum and sister plus two. Tilly's, Halesworth is a 1920's themed tea shop. They recently started serving Friday and Saturday dinners and these were just as incredible. Brilliant grub and it looks like we'll be returning for mum's 80th in the new year: result!

As part of the celebrations I did some drawing:

I also tried to find 50 things I love but went slightly over..

Board Games	Books	Film	Food & Drink	Miscellaneous	Music	Music (cont.)	Places
Agricola	The Archbishop’s Children	Woody Allen	Beef Brisket	Apple Mac	4AD	Stephen Jones	Alte Lohnhalle
Andean Abyss	S T Coleridge	Luc Besson	Bread	Arsenal	‘A User’s Guide’	Jay Jay Johanson	Berlin
Boggle	Norman Collins	The Big Blue	Cauliflower	Badminton	Barry Adamson	‘Love My Way’	Bracken
Bruges	Dictionaries	The Billion Dollar Hotel	Champagne	Kevin Beattie	And Also The Trees	Billy MacKenzie	Bushey Park
Carcassonne	The End of the Affair	Blue Velvet	Cheddar	Blessings Roses	‘As Requested’ / ‘Mean Streak’	‘Making Plans For Nigel’	Dresden
The Castles of Mad King Ludwig	Richard Ford	Caos Calmo	Cheesecake	Blossom	Belasco	’Malicious Love’	Firenze
Codenames	Frederick Forsyth	Frank Capra	Chick Peas	Cricket	The Beloved	‘Mesopotamia’	Forests
Stefan Feld	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	Double Indemnity	Chocolate	Driving	Bjork	Mew	Fuchsias
Glass Road	Jean Genet	L’Enfer	Crumble	Gerbils	Broken Family Band	Morrissey	Hills
Le Havre	Graham Greene	Foreign Land	Epoises	Hedgehogs	The Cure	Conor Oberst	Lakes
Hawaii	Samantha Harvey	The Hairdresser’s Husband	Fish & Chips	David Hockney	‘Damaged Goods’	The Passage	Le Havre
Hive	Susan Hill	Alfred Hitchcock	Gruyere	Ikea	’Dear Heart’	John Peel	London
Kiesling & Kramer	Babs Horton	Jim Jarmusch	Jacket Potatoes	Ipswich Town	‘East St O’Neill’	Placebo	Lugano
Lewis & Clark	In The Springtime of the Year	Kitchen Stories	Kleftiko	Just One Sentence	David Eugene Edwards	‘Postcard’	Normandie
Memoir 44	John Keats	Fritz Lang	Lemon Sole	Charles Rennie MacIntosh	Dead Kennedys	Silversun Pickups	Otranto
Ora & Labora	The Last Letter From Your Lover	Leaving	Malbec	Margaret Merrell Roses	Annie Eve	‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’	Portman Road
Railways of the World	Henning Mankel	My Life As A Dog	Panna Cotta	Claude Monet	Gene	‘The Song From Under The Floorboards’	Soldeu
Rialto	Moscow 2042	Paris	Pasta	August Rodin	Vic Godard	Spearmint	Stockholm
Uwe Rosenberg	Jojo Moyes	Manuel Poirier	Rice	Scottish Terriers	‘Headache (for Michelle)’	David Sylvian	Streams
Splendor	Haruki Murakami	Jean Renoir	Rosemary	Alfred Sisley	'Heaven Sent’	Tracey Thorn	Suffolk
Ticket to Ride	Ivan Turgenev	Russian Ark	Rib Eye Steak	Snow	Kristen Hersh	Tricky	Tarn Hows
Tinner’s Trail	Mario Vargas Llosa	Trop Belle Pour Toi	Salice Salentino	Swatch	‘I Don’t Even Know If I Should Call You Baby’	The Unthanks	Trees
Tzolk’in, the Mayan Calendar	William Shakespeare	Western	Scallops	Swimming	Idlewild	The Villagers	Worlingham
Twilight Struggle	The Wilderness	Young and Innocent	Whisky	Frans Thijssen	The Incredible Shrinking Dickies	M Ward	Zurich

I Saw You Coming

Mrs Hora and Jose recently decided that the store Dr China in Hounslow’s ‘Treaty Centre’ would potentially be the perfect treat for me, or perhaps that should be perfect treatment for my depression.

I believe in God, I go to church most weeks, I have my beliefs, loads of them: Ipswich are better than Norwich, Spearmint are the best band in the world, the best films come out of France, being a board-game collector doesn’t mean you have to play everything in your collection, ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’, all of those and more. As I have become educated about my illness, and have researched it more and more, I have realised how little is certain. Prescribed medication is a huge game of trial and error and I don’t think you will ever discover the optimum meds. For starters, what state of mind are you willing to accept? 

That non-depressives do not comprehend the illness is all too obvious - sorry for the sweeping generalisation. Had the situation been different I would definitely found it difficult to empathise sufficiently with sufferers. My expectations of others are therefore laid back. I have lost some friends, and gained some new ones. That would have happened anyway I guess.

It’s much more complex with the family though. They have to live with you, in a changed state, and almost six years on from my ‘episode’, I’m not convinced they believe I will remain unwell for the foreseeable future. My belief is that they expect me to wake up one morning and be fine again, whatever that might mean. It’s tough to dent their hopes.

But. Dr China. Seriously? 

Yes.

  Very. 

Bloody Hell!

In we go and Mrs Hora relates some facts about my illness. The two Chinese ladies ask all the usual questions and I answer them. They decide that fixing my depression is the first course of action. Then we can deal with my obesity. Like all good sales staff they mention the 20% discounts available and start with the most expensive treatments. Acupuncture. Mrs Hora’s father stopped smoking after acupuncture. He was much more malleable to different cures than I will ever be. My cynicism and sarcasm are raring to explode inside the shop. 

Apparently, I will need a course of twelve acupuncture sessions, twice or once weekly depending on which of the two ladies answer my wife’s question. The cost is huge in my opinion. Imagine the amount of food and alcohol that would buy. Imagine how many new CDs I could get, DVDs, etc. And that materialism becomes lodged inside my already tormented brain. Off it goes again..

For today I have a session of Acu-massage provided for me. I am laid on a typical doctor’s bed facing the wall. My feet and back are the areas that take the grinding, the poking, the bruising performance of my host. More questions come thick and fast, more thick the cynical me decides. 

‘Are your ankles swollen?’ I’ve just told her I weigh twenty-three stones, every single bit of me is swollen - barring that special little place, naturellement. Talking French reminds me that the closer to my shoulders she works the stronger the eau de garlic is. And despite me lying there as still as I can, with my eyes closed in resigned relaxed mode, she’s suddenly got her breasts in my face. I dare not open my eyes and the natural stirrings one might expect do not follow. Since taking the medication I am an asexual being; can you imagine?

        Never mind. Losing track of time, or being mind-numbed maybe, the session eventually ends. Returned to the shop front and the largest chairs I’ve sat in we complete a form while lady number two puts together a concoction of twelve different parcels of dust that I must consume twice daily ahead of next Thursday’s first acupuncture therapy. No details provided about the contents but at a further £39 - less the 20% discount - it’s going to taste supreme, I know it!

Essen: Kids in Sweet Shops

Essen, my favourite German city. But of course, saying that, I've not seen too much of it. A couple of venues, the Bahnhof briefly. Spent quite a bit of time on the motorways driving past it / through it. And then I've spent hours and hours and hours in the exhibition halls of the Messe. They're huge, deliciously huge, indeed with some delicious food too. But best of all, they've always been jammed packed with board games. Hundreds of brand new games being launched into the world. Last year there were over 1,000 new games on show, likely to be similar this year it would appear, but probably, just probably, enough.

Last year I spent a day working on one of the stands, it was great fun teaching The Castles of Mad King Ludwig to punters from all over Europe. Thankfully, it's a cracking game and I only messed up one rule so not too bad. Can't quite time my arrival this year to do the same again although one of the three chaps I'm going with will be working for the Netherlands own Martyn F. 

My anticipation has been growing for a good two months now. The exhilaration of learning which new games will be launched by which of my favourite designers. The wading through smaller publishers and seeing what they've come up with. The pictures of prototypes, the little disappointments that some game launches have to be postponed. The realisation of how much time I'm spending researching rather than playing but consoling myself with 'but I'm a collector first'. This time tomorrow I'll be on a ferry departing Dover, playing something like Too Many Cinderellas with three great buddies. I've even baked cake for the crossing! Banana, oatmeal and chocolate..

This is an additional hall for 2015 such is the demand from publishers, retailers and distributors. In the photo below you see Hall 3, it's monitors in size and takes a good long walk to get from one end to the top.

My budget this year is more than a little contained although I have sold a few games in an auction to boost spending money. Similarly, the new Horacar is nowhere near as big as the Scenic so we're hoping for vehicular assistance with game-muling from friends.

Anyway, the cliche 'kid in a sweet shop' doesn't cover it. It'd be like Willy Wonka's parked next to Ben & Jerry's, which has as neighbours the kitchens of Two Hairy Bikers, Two Fat Italians, and a heavenly host of Roux, Blanc, Lawson and Stein. Oh, and on the front lawn there's always the Bake Off tent. 

I Can Lock All My Doors

Two weeks with no vehicle has been an interesting time. Public transport for shopping, for work and pleasure. My preferences for the bus have meant lengthy journey times and much walking. Or just staying in. Delaying plans for hall furniture has been a pain, the contents of the pre-decorated hall are encamped in the half-decorated lounge and our box/drying room. Not that it will all go back anyway. But we have to make those decisions with new furniture, naturally.

Online grocery shopping, for the first time in a very long time. But the thought of dragging more shopping back from wherever was too much. I watched the algorithm documentary over the weekend and so impressed was I by Ocado's warehouse that I just had to test it out. A friend is writing a novel about algorithms, from their point-of-view. Genius.

Wednesday I'll be up much earlier than normal. It takes four trains to get to Gloucester, wow. But the brilliant people at Skoda are collecting me and taking me to our new car, hurrah! And then a gentle journey home, take the family out for a spin and off to games, all under my own steam, result.

This week's music has been Everything But The Girl. Having loved the early Tracey Thorn, Ben Watts, Marine Girls on Cherry Red it took me until Walking Wounded and Temperamental to get into EBTG, odd that. Bought the enhanced versions of both recently and have loved hearing them and all the remixes over and over. The only other noticeable music thang was Gary Numan selling tickets for fans to go along to his tour rehearsals. I like that idea, why not? Good man.

Time for me to ask you to click on 'my poetry' under 'outpourings' from the left hand side menu. Only three page views - and I've looked at them four times - to date. Poetry's worth a brief look, even I'd argue for that.

Decor

It was 20 years ago this week that Cheryl and I moved into our house, a typical 1930s semi. Last week we had new wooden flooring in the hall and carpeted the stairs and landing. After 20 years we have decorated this house in its entirety. A few rooms have had several remakes but we'd never been able to strip off however many layers of gloss from the stairs and so never decorated the hall, landing, stairs. Well chuffed is what we are, that and bouncing up the stairs on our super new carpet!

In other news the inaugural meeting of a new writing group took place at the Orange Tree in Richmond last Tuesday evening. There were nine of us, quite an amazing number for a group I think. Plus two who weren't able to make it are very likely to join us. And the best part of it is, without exception, there is such a wealth of talent, such a refreshing amount of honesty in the feedback, that we can only continue to learn our craft together in sweet harmony as jonny b. love once sang. Very exciting!

Last, but by no means least, my friend Philip came out of hospital this week. Philip is a gaming buddy and unfortunately is bi-polar. He's had ten good years but in April suffered a huge set-back - brought on by Mr Cameron unsurprisingly - and has been in hospital for two lengthy spells. We played a close game of Bruges, close by my standards anyway as I only lost by about ten points, and it remains a huge favourite of mine. But more importantly it was good to have a chat with Philip in his own flat, and despite him being on his own quite a lot at the present time, I hope he continues his recovery at his own pace. He's an exceedingly bright fellow and I find him most agreeable!

That's my exclamation mark paragraph endings done, another poem's been loaded up. Take care all..

I am troubled by the space between sea and food, I'm sorry!