too much to say - too little time
Oh I have so much to blog about that I have been putting it off.
There was th fact that our neighbour's lawn turned into an open sewer during the week and so we had to be nice neighbours and flush as little as possible (also not run the washer or dishwasher - gah!). They have a temporary fix now that cost them €6000 (nice Xmas present!) but the full fix may cost as much as €13000. The problem wwas caused by a council contractor breaking the pipe under the public footpath so can anyone explain to me why these nice people, who are luckily fairly financially solvent, should have to pay for this themselves. We certainly couldn't afford it without taking out a fat loan!
Then there was the report I had from a student who is doing her project for Arthurian Literature on the Prince Valiant roleplaying game. She said wshe was going to bribe some friends with beer to try out the game and see how it played. She asked 15 of them round (Fifteen!!!). She said it was lucky the game was designed for playing with children as dealing with 15 newbie role-players was rather like running a kindergarten. First they refused to play without beer, then the first lot of character sheets came back with lots of 'Sir Bonesalot the Boner' type names and had to go back. One girl went on strike and refused to play unless she could be Guinevere Queen of the Unicorns. Then they all made shields (except for Guinevere who made a nice wee crown) and coloured in their heraldic devices. Then they pranced off to rescue a damsel in distress, found a tavern and proceeded to do very traditional sounding gamer damage to said tavern. The first duel involved two PCs who had at eachother with their plastic swords and newly coloured in shields and were very reluctant to submit to the coin toss decider rules of the actual game and so insisted on doing both, with contradictory results. In the end I think the maiden got rescued and everybody went home talking about how much fun they had had (hic!) and how lame gaming was. There is apparently photographic evidence of some of this, including the wrestling match between my student and the Queen of the Unicorns as to who got to keep the crown. If the crown shows up at her oral presentation on the topic next Tuesday I'll know who won.
Yesterday Mr Wol did a surfeit of manly tasks, starting out by sawing an inch of f the bottom of the Xmas tree before hauling it into the house like a pine-scented strongman. Then he went outside to fix the car! We don't do that sort of thing but we had a bust brake light and finding the difference between what a garage would charge us and the price of a new bulb €1.50 spurred him on. He did fix it too. What a guy! Then he made sure he didn't lose his new man credentials by washing up the heap of mess in the kitchen and then making me dinner too. Can I pick 'em or what?! I then rewarded him by playing his new Battlelore game with him and handing him his ass playing the French at Agincourt. (Anyone who is curious can find his eloquent account of the conflict at http://mylescorcoran.livejournal.com/98065.html) He still loves his new game though - phew!
But then there was the Bishop of Southwark and I am afraid his Grace has to take precedence. Now it goes against the grain to give any kind of publicity to a rag like the British Daily Mirror but this was a GOOD story. The headline was "Bished as a Newt" which was fun in itself I think. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=bished-as-a-newt%26method=full%26objectid=18235855%26siteid=94762-name_page.html Seems his grace was rather over-refreshed after a party and got into a car that was not his and stared throwing all the foreign objects (child's toys) out that he found cluttering up his bishoply back seat. Luckily he was in the back seat and not trying to drive away. The owners of the car found him, did not find his explanation of "I'm the bishop of Southwark. That's what I do!" to be satisfactory and got him out of the car whereupon he fell arse over tit and cracked his head open before weaving off into the night. Later on they found his bag and cross in the car and realised that their drunken toy thrower had been the Bishop after all. There seems to be another version of the story floating round http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23377453-details/Bishop%20of%20Southwark%20is%20mugged%20outside%20his%20frontdoor/article.do that does rather more to confirm the Mirror exclusive than not I feel. News stories don't come more fun than this one and it has got loads of publicity over in Ireland because the party that the Bish was coming from was the annual Irish Embassy Xmas bash. The take on it over here seems to be very much of the "Shit! Do we throw a great shindig or what?!" variety. Soberer heads are doubtless clucking in dismay at this continuation of the drinking Irish stereotype but they seem to be in the minority so far.
There was th fact that our neighbour's lawn turned into an open sewer during the week and so we had to be nice neighbours and flush as little as possible (also not run the washer or dishwasher - gah!). They have a temporary fix now that cost them €6000 (nice Xmas present!) but the full fix may cost as much as €13000. The problem wwas caused by a council contractor breaking the pipe under the public footpath so can anyone explain to me why these nice people, who are luckily fairly financially solvent, should have to pay for this themselves. We certainly couldn't afford it without taking out a fat loan!
Then there was the report I had from a student who is doing her project for Arthurian Literature on the Prince Valiant roleplaying game. She said wshe was going to bribe some friends with beer to try out the game and see how it played. She asked 15 of them round (Fifteen!!!). She said it was lucky the game was designed for playing with children as dealing with 15 newbie role-players was rather like running a kindergarten. First they refused to play without beer, then the first lot of character sheets came back with lots of 'Sir Bonesalot the Boner' type names and had to go back. One girl went on strike and refused to play unless she could be Guinevere Queen of the Unicorns. Then they all made shields (except for Guinevere who made a nice wee crown) and coloured in their heraldic devices. Then they pranced off to rescue a damsel in distress, found a tavern and proceeded to do very traditional sounding gamer damage to said tavern. The first duel involved two PCs who had at eachother with their plastic swords and newly coloured in shields and were very reluctant to submit to the coin toss decider rules of the actual game and so insisted on doing both, with contradictory results. In the end I think the maiden got rescued and everybody went home talking about how much fun they had had (hic!) and how lame gaming was. There is apparently photographic evidence of some of this, including the wrestling match between my student and the Queen of the Unicorns as to who got to keep the crown. If the crown shows up at her oral presentation on the topic next Tuesday I'll know who won.
Yesterday Mr Wol did a surfeit of manly tasks, starting out by sawing an inch of f the bottom of the Xmas tree before hauling it into the house like a pine-scented strongman. Then he went outside to fix the car! We don't do that sort of thing but we had a bust brake light and finding the difference between what a garage would charge us and the price of a new bulb €1.50 spurred him on. He did fix it too. What a guy! Then he made sure he didn't lose his new man credentials by washing up the heap of mess in the kitchen and then making me dinner too. Can I pick 'em or what?! I then rewarded him by playing his new Battlelore game with him and handing him his ass playing the French at Agincourt. (Anyone who is curious can find his eloquent account of the conflict at http://mylescorcoran.livejournal.com/98065.html) He still loves his new game though - phew!
But then there was the Bishop of Southwark and I am afraid his Grace has to take precedence. Now it goes against the grain to give any kind of publicity to a rag like the British Daily Mirror but this was a GOOD story. The headline was "Bished as a Newt" which was fun in itself I think. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=bished-as-a-newt%26method=full%26objectid=18235855%26siteid=94762-name_page.html Seems his grace was rather over-refreshed after a party and got into a car that was not his and stared throwing all the foreign objects (child's toys) out that he found cluttering up his bishoply back seat. Luckily he was in the back seat and not trying to drive away. The owners of the car found him, did not find his explanation of "I'm the bishop of Southwark. That's what I do!" to be satisfactory and got him out of the car whereupon he fell arse over tit and cracked his head open before weaving off into the night. Later on they found his bag and cross in the car and realised that their drunken toy thrower had been the Bishop after all. There seems to be another version of the story floating round http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23377453-details/Bishop%20of%20Southwark%20is%20mugged%20outside%20his%20frontdoor/article.do that does rather more to confirm the Mirror exclusive than not I feel. News stories don't come more fun than this one and it has got loads of publicity over in Ireland because the party that the Bish was coming from was the annual Irish Embassy Xmas bash. The take on it over here seems to be very much of the "Shit! Do we throw a great shindig or what?!" variety. Soberer heads are doubtless clucking in dismay at this continuation of the drinking Irish stereotype but they seem to be in the minority so far.