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!

Train and Waggle Dance, yes again!!

So my Saturday has been taken up with two games. Not what I had expected but it's turned out to a fascinating day. I had plans of writing some of my teaching essay for Uni, it's due in tomorrow week so about time I dedicated an hour or two on it. As it was I got a lot more written than I'd expected and so was ready to learn a new game, The End of Atlantis. At Essen last year, Philip and I sat down at this amazing circular board and waiting patiently for someone to come over and sell it to us. Being British we were very patient for a good quarter of an hour and then sloped away hopefully unnoticed! Never mind. I picked it up a few weeks ago now, the few bits on the Geek read well and the board is so very pretty....

As it was Henry from Grublin dropped me an email saying he was hoping to submit Waggle Dance to the Geek today so that it's up tomorrow on its own page. That's where all games dream of being, and will be the start of the funding process too, with it being launched on kickstarter on the 27th May. As Hagrid would say, 'Oops, I shouldn't have told you that!' My resemblance to the character has been put to me before so don't go there. Henry was after some feedback on his blurb for the game so a few us have been trading insults and suggestions, changing words and tea-towel ideas. It was a very interesting process to be involved in and hopefully of use.

During the conversations I caught up with the fact that the mighty Tractor Boys have another season down under, although that will include a trip down the road to see them against Brentford. And an East Anglian derby of epic proportions is still looking very likely too. I then swooped down onto a conversation about depressing games. Depression being so dear to my heart, and even closer to my head, I was intrigued by the number of bizarrely themed games. Some well clearly humour-based but others, well, I don't know what the designer(s) were thinking. Then one provoked even more than the usual debate. A game simply called 'Train'.

It's taken me hours to read through all the posts on a single discussion about this game, it's heavy reading and I'm not sure I'm quite bright enough to have taken it all in. Anyway, the 'game' is a one off, not made public, only used by the 'designer' to offer her take on history, in this case placing Jews on trains as part of the holocaust. It is more of an art-piece than a game. But that gaming is able to offer such important subjects for consideration is important to me. Whether the designer should have ensured more historical accuracy I'm not so convinced about. Some of the more valid points, in my opinion, are;

• 'the strength of the game is that it gets a reaction from everyone who encounters it'
• 'it makes devaluing life shocking or horrifying'
• 'meant to elicit a knee-jerk reaction and prod our consciences'

There are discussions on the possible self-publicising nature of the designer. Those that say the hidden information should not have been hidden. That tragedy should not be politicized. For me though I believe that anything that raises this topic, in whatever form, has to be valid. We must never forget what happened there, never let it happen again although I'm far from convinced that we're doing that even now. 

A12

For some ten years after moving to London I still had a season ticket for Ipswich Town Football Club. For the the first couple of years it was a great way of keeping in touch with my dad, we'd been going together since I was seven. In those early days the team was at its best, frequently qualifying for the UEFA Cup. I remember coming home from middle school and being allowed to go to the Wednesday night games despite the fact that we wouldn't get home until 10.45pm at the earliest. I saw Johan Cruyff playing for Barcelona. I was thirteen when Ipswich won the FA Cup, and then the UEFA Cup just three seasons later.

We were fortunate enough to get to know some of the players, Kevin Beattie stayed over at our house many times. We'd go and visit his family and that of Allan Hunter before the matches, and go into the players' lounge after the games, me in awe of the stars all drinking together, my autograph book in hand. For one of my birthday’s Kevin gave me a fully autographed football of the England squad, including Elton John no less!

After my dad passed away in 1991 I kept my pilgrimage going. At first, I couldn't imagine not going, but after a while it felt part of the grieving process to watch the team doing their thing. I saw players that he would have loved, even more that would have infuriated him. Gradually the team worsened and there nothing that they could do but revert to second tier football. In 2000 I realised that I was making more effort getting to Ipswich every other week, and weekdays too, than the players were putting in on the pitch. My minimum four hours in the car, or five hours by train and tube, were more than the hours effort I felt some highly paid professionals were putting in across a whole week. I stopped going. Much to my surprise I didn't miss it at all. Twenty-nine seasons and it was easy to just switch off. That quite disturbed me. Such a huge part of my life became meaningless immediately.

Last Saturday, the family travelled most of my old journey to attend a family do in Dedham. The journey meant nothing. I drive so much slower than I used to do too. The journey was familiar but not in any nostalgic way, it was just a journey. After the lunch, Mrs Hora dropped the children and me off at Colchester station and we caught a train to Diss. For the first time ever I didn't even bother looking across the Orwell from the train station to Portman Road as we stopped in Ipswich. Even if I'd driven I'd park at the station so the five minute walk to the ground was a regular trip. They won two one today, home to Doncaster, the play-offs still a possibility. Did I read that they've been in the Championship longer than any other team now? Great.

This blog is dedicated to Cooper, Burley, Mills, Talbot, Hunter, Beattie, Viljoen, Osborne, Johnson, Whymark, Woods. [lest we forget; Sivell, Harper, Peddelty, Butcher, Osman, Wark, Muhren, Thijsson, Hamilton, Mariner, Gates, Brazil, Lowe, Wright R, Tarrico, Baltacha, Brennan, Zondervan,  Johnson D, Putney, Dozzell, Dyer, Marshall I, Wlson K, Forest, Williams G, Mowbray, Venus, Stewart, Scowcroft, Holland, Naylor, Mathie, Johnson G, Stockwell]