Telfords - Episode 02!

Karl was not about to back down. The soup stack in front of him created the perfect defence, not like the cereal stack he'd taken cover behind during the earlier shoot-out. That had come down right on top of him – a key Frosties box had been shot out from the base by well-placed foam torpedoes. He'd been hit in the leg by a smaller bullet as he ran to the next aisle, but that was only one point. He was still ahead, on account of that butt-shot he'd landed on Theresa. “Hehe,” he sniggered.

There was movement among the freezers. Karl wasn't sure where he saw it, something had bobbed in his peripheral vision. He shifted his grip, tweaked his aim, and covered the entrance to aisle 12. A quick look over his shoulder. Kerry was still covering the rear of their aisle; they wouldn't be able to flank him, but they couldn't wait all morning. Management knew they didn't get much done, but they had to have something to show for a morning's work, and this stalemate wasn't getting them anywhere. Before nine in the morning, none of the seniors gave a damn, and after nine, only about half, so half of the staff worked. Karl, Kerry, Theresa, Dave and Imran decided which half on a day to day basis - with Nerf guns.

Karl saw movement again, right in his line of sight this time - above him! Someone was crawling almost flat across the top of the freezer, their angled Nerf gun waving slightly in the air. He'd have a perfect sniping point to take Kerry from behind and pin Karl down. Karl would have to leave cover to catch him by surprise, but Kerry had his back to him, so he couldn't warn her without giving them both away.

He checked his watch; it was getting on already. The doors were open, and customers were moving into the aisles. The hunched shoulders of the prone figure cast a shadow over the floor of aisle 12. He was almost above the frozen promotions, ready to take a shot. It was Imran, had to be. No one else would crawl through the dust and grime, the forgotten debris, and scattered bird droppings, dragging themselves on a paper thin sledge made from their own apron. Imran was dedicated to everything but work. He would strive harder than any of them to take home his pay cheque for minimum effort. The Nerf gun mornings were his idea. Fortunately for Karl that didn't mean that he was also a particularly good shot. Creative though, and that turned the tide regularly.

Karl worked on home and leisure, but he was in a grocery aisle – this was Imran's territory. Maybe he was better backing off and entrenching himself elsewhere, but there wasn't time for that. And who knew where Dave and Theresa were? Waiting in ambush, probably, covering the middle aisle that separated them.

Imran had stopped. He was ready. Karl cocked his rifle and poked the muzzle just over the top soup can. He'd have one chance to headshot Imran as the grocery assistant took aim. One chance to end it.

A shadow to his left! Karl cringed as he felt his finger tighten on the trigger, and the recoil as the foam bullet left the shaft. It skipped off the side of the freezer, his accuracy destroyed by the shock.

Behind him, Kerry spun, and fired off two rapid shots, both striking the shadow. A girl – Theresa – screamed in frustration and threw herself back into the adjacent aisle. Karl turned his attention back to the sniping Imran, but it was far too late. Cocky as ever, Imran had taken the time to stand, and fired one clean shot straight at Karl's nose.

As Karl fell backwards, his grip on his rifle abandoned, he heard the echo of Kerry's shout reverberate down the aisle. “Nooooo!” None of the soup toppled with him, thank god, even though he'd scrambled at it to stay up right. Now he lay there in the middle of the entrance to the aisle, a defeatist smile on his face, which was very rapidly wiped clean.

His view of Imran was blocked by a tall, imposing athlete of a man. Neat hair, neat suit, neat, cheap tie. Oh God, they'd all forgotten. D-Day. New management.

The man seized Karl by the shoulders and ripped him off the floor. Kerry had vanished, and Theresa was nowhere to be seen. All that left was Dave, who came out of aisle 11 moments later, escorted by Marty, carrying his confiscated Nerf rifle. Imran already felt the burning glare of the new manager on him, and was now thoroughly regretting his decision to stand atop the freezer.

The new suit seethed at him: “Get down, before I fire you and throw you under a car!”

It looked like a whole new world was about to open up for Karl and the rest of the Telfords store as they were marched towards the manager's office. The next few minutes would decide a lot of things for them; everything would change. Karl knew only one thing: he would fight it.

Next time on Telfords:

Karl and Jason meet... THE BOSS

Heretical Review: Contagion

I think a lot of people will be disappointed by this film, and I'll be disappointed in turn if they are, because it doesn't do what it could have done, and for that it should be praised.

Not as sensational as its tagline.

Present day Hong Kong and Gwyneth Paltrow is returning to the US after a business trip, leaving a viral trail as she touches glasses, pays by card, and opens doors. Every instance of contact is lingered on by the camera, giving you a vision of the inevitable. She is patient zero, and she's bringing the contagion home. Over the next hour and a half we watch the ripple effect caused by human interaction, social convention and genuinely felt inevitability.

With a name like 'Contagion' you could be forgiven for thinking that everything this film has to offer has been done before. The end of the world? An unstoppable, inescapable, horrific disease that spreads rapidly and kills painfully? Seen it before. You might expect it to have a lot in common with a zombie pandemic, with I Am Legend and Dead Island and you'd be wrong.

This is not a survivor tale, any more than it's about Americans sticking it to nature. It's not about humanity banding together in its darkest hour, it's not about sensationalising, or personalising, or rationalising tragedy.

A concept is taken, a 'what if', and it is examined – under a microscope. What if this happened, what if it really happened? Contagion tells that story, or stories to be precise. Because there is no one tale here, no one perspective. Many story-tellers will find the angle. Journalists are trained to do it, writers are born to do it. Take a concept, and tell it from a view point, from an angle that has meaning. Sometimes when you do this, you can lose sight of the big picture. Of course, that might be the idea. Titanic: take a grand event, and bore down to one story among thousands. Humanise it, sensationalise it. We can still find stories to spin out of that tragedy today, such as the initial premise of Downton Abbey – an heir lost at sea, and all the political and dynastic wranglings that then must follow.

Contagion is able to tell a weave of stories, from a panorama of angles, almost none of which crossover, and still maintain a coherent chronological narrative around a core theme – the contagion. In doing so it creates more of a docurama than it does a movie. This certainly isn't a Hollywood blockbuster. This isn't special effects and Michael Bay and George A Romero. It's entertainment, yes, but, for most of the film, that seems secondary. The pacing is more in tune with an Attenborough nature show. If you listen very carefully, you can almost hear him describing the trials and tribulations of the characters as they struggle to survive in an inhospitable habitat.

It brings to the fore every aspect of humanity when faced with mortality. Altruism is mixed in equal measure with opportunism, professionalism with paranoia, and loyalty with imperfection.

It resists the urge, repeatedly, to deteriorate into a B-movie horror-fest, tempering its drama and rooting itself thoroughly in a believable and recognisable reality. It deserves a lot of respect for keeping its path steady, and doing what a lot of films won't dare to do. Despite its tag line, it didn't pander to our innate fears. It was almost objective. Contagion: This is what happens. Live with it. Deal with it. It's not hopeless... It's just futile.

Telfords - Episode 01

It wasn't a new job, not really. Telfords stores were all the same, strained and hammered into unerring shapes so that head office planners could marvel at their uniformity and customer-satisfying, predictable layouts. When Jason Carper went through the front door of the St Michaels branch, it would be his first time as an ADM. He would see the sprawling mock market place with its uncharacteristically quiet fishmonger – Jason had always thought their fishmongers should be more classically vocal, calling all and sundry to check out their fresh-water wares. There would be the butchery, the bakery, the candle-stick makery, and the less aptly named produce section, overflowing with potatoes.

It was eight o'clock in the morning, and the store was already open, drawing in the elderly crowds, unsatisfied until their daily newspapers had been placed delicately into their baskets. Jason walked through this, straightening a Primark tie, one he hoped would pass for something more expensive.

There was a roller-cage still a quarter full of bundled papers, partially blocking the entrance and an assistant was still hurriedly snapping open the bundles and plonking them into place for the grey-haired punters. Probably not the boy's fault, Jason acknowledged. Couldn't help it if the papers had been delivered late.

He mumbled his apologies as he circled round the growing throng of paper-chasing customers and entered the market place through the automatic barriers. It was a little different from other stores, by necessity of design. He hadn't noticed it from the outside, but the store was actually incredibly long and narrow, rather than a more consistent rectangle. The market place apparently ran the length of it, with the produce laid out along the middle of the dauntingly long first aisle. The fishmongers, butchery, and candle-stick makery lined it on either side, along with the florist, the rug seller, rucksack vendor, electronics merchant, and phone unlocker. Telford had truly done a marvellous job, as ever, of replicating the classic British market place.

No one knew him yet, so he didn't embarrass himself by wishing them all a good morning, although from tomorrow he most certainly would. It was often conceded at training courses that management didn't do enough to make their staff feel valued, and Jason wouldn't be the one to continue that trend. In fact, he was determined to buck it with extreme prejudice.

The last rounds of fruit and veg were being unpacked – a bit behind schedule, but surely that was to be expected when the store was short an ADM to keep them on their toes? Nothing spectacularly wrong there.

It was a long walk through the market place to the centre aisle, and in retrospect, Jason was now starting to wonder if he shouldn't have started at the checkouts. He would have been more likely to find his contact there, the supervisor he'd been instructed to meet. He looked over his shoulder, but the flow of customers was against him now, an inexorable tide of basket-wielding early morning go-getters desperate for fresh milk and bananas.

He advanced with the rest of them, stepping free of the rush at the far end of the produce section, beside the 'Grab it while its Fab!' section. Fruit and veg on the verge of falling over a precipice into the state of being less than fabulous. And yes, it was missing an apostrophe: par for the course. And of course this wouldn't be his section, so while incorrect punctuation did poke the stickler inside him, he would pass over it without comment.

Next stop, the ambient section. Jason's new domain, land of booze, cereal, DVDs, and light bulbs. It was not to be quite yet, however.

“Jason? Jason Carper?”

There was a small, balding man standing behind him. Now, Jason had never thought of himself as especially tall, but the gremlin that had inexplicably been able to tap him on the shoulder made him feel like a giant. Jason had a perfect view of his bald spot and his pointy nose. The man was wavering expectantly beside him, wearing a department manager's shirt and tie, with Marty on his name badge.

Jason held out his hand. “Yes. Jason Carper.”

Marty shook it excitedly, for a moment even using both hands. “Oh, Jason, I'm thrilled that you're finally here! The store's been in a terrible state with only one deputy manager, and the staff just don't listen, and the warehouse is a mess, and the shelves are empty and just now I had to rescue Chris from the freezer-”

“Marty!” Jason pulled his hand free and gestured for him to calm down.

“I'm sorry Jason, it's just that no one listens to me!” He lowered his voice and signalled for Jason to lean in. “Only two men showed up from night crew last night,” he hissed. “The warehouse is full but the shelves are empty!”

Curiously enough, the customers didn't seem too interested in the exchange going on between the oranges and the fruit juice, but Jason strapped an arm around Marty's shoulder and whisked him away anyway.

“Marty, the place looks fine. Produce, the market place, the counters, all fine.”

“Oh well, yes, that's because Natalie manages all those, and the chilled sections. Ambient is in such a state.”

Jason stood tall, rallying his management skills for the coming moments. “Show me,” he commanded. Jason set off down the centre aisle in long, confident strides, as Marty scuttled along behind him.

“Just brace yourself, boss. You've not seen anything like this before!”

Next Time on Telford:

NERF GUN TURF WARS

(A work of fiction, any similarity to real people is purely coincidental.

Inspired by personal experience, and the suggestion of a particular ADM.)

A Defence

I need a project. Or, more precisely, I need to choose one of the ones I already have in preproduction. I've spent a lot of time catching up on my absorption of drama, contemporary and period, written and acted, all along telling myself that it serves a higher purpose: bolstering my own creative pool. I'm watching what I consider to be the best of the best, striving to avoid sullying my memory with even mediocre scripts and acting. Unless there is a prolific application of explosions – looking at you, Crysis 2.

I get something from each of these series that makes it in my eyes a paradigm. Whenever I let anyone know I watch one in particular, I'm usually replied to with a repulsed screwing up of the facial features:

Desperate Housewives is a masterclass in how to sculpt a solid episode with a rigid core and flamboyant affectations, rather than to piece together a haphazard twist in an overly complex narrative that can come tumbling down if one loose string is toyed with. It's too easy to pull strings in today's drama, as producers (I hesitate to say writers, because I don't believe we do the following) underestimate their audience and straighten out plots with a blow dryer rather than an iron to satisfy the bare minimum in viewers and hurry out television to protect their bottom line. Desperate Housewives takes a theme, lays out that theme at the beginning of each episode and concludes it at the end, cohesively and convincingly. Every narrative step it takes is within that theme, while simultaneously satisfying the larger story, leaning out of the theme to join hands with the next episode, but never straying. It teaches me how to break a story down into chapters, how to tell a contained narrative in each, with the same characters that I used in the last, while continuing a overarching plot, and not just adding arbitrary end points to help the pace.

I was worried that when I thought about this I'd come to the conclusion that, actually, I'm lying to myself and that all it does is act as a guilty pleasure, but it simply isn't true. Is it entertaining? Hell yes, or I wouldn't watch it. But I don't just derive entertainment from it, I derive education.

The catch is in a question: Have I put into practice what I've learnt? No. Not yet. I've not tried to write anything from the roots since I started watching it a year ago. All my projects are either scribbles that I'll probably never return to, or primed and ready to skyrocket, if I give them the time of day. So there's definitely potential. Styx, for instance, would benefit enormously from a structured approach. Treat the plot as the story I want to tell over a series. Chapter by chapter, episode by episode, build the tension, lay the foundations, explore concepts of Greek myth: treachery and betrayal, antitheses and companions, et al.

Maybe I should move onto structure next, justify the time I've invested in Desperate Housewives.

Heretical Review: Assassins Creed: Brotherhood

I wasn't sure if I should let myself calm down or not before I posted this review, because if I write this while this angry, my opinions will be slightly skewed. But fuck it, life isn't interesting without a bit of emotion.

Now, a week ago when I got Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, I was thinking, hmm, if it's worth thinking about much I might write a blog review of this. Turns out, it was so far down the other end of the spectrum that I can't gush out praise for it, but instead will vomit bucket-loads of vitriol, because ARGH*)(^&$%$%&^*&^&(^*^&!!!!” God damn this game. Okay, so it's no Dark Souls; that's genuinely hard. This is just irritating and, frankly, not rewarding enough to warrant the effort required to finish. A lot of people will point out that I'm a PC gamer and that I was probably playing with a keyboard, and you'd be right, I was. I refuse to play a game on PC with a controller, because (seeing as how the keyboard is the dominant interface on the PC) if you're going to port a game to one, you bloody well better make it work with a f*cking keyboard.

I was really looking forward to this after Assassins Creed 2, which I loved even though it didn't handle all that much better. It did the same clever trick of luring you in with the simple, flowing agility of Ezio before crowding your fun out with clunky new mechanics that, yes, add layers to the game, but then also proceed to smother you with them.

No amount of PC-rubbishing can explain away this or the piss-poor ending to Ezio's contribution to the plot. It's spoiler time people, but if you haven't played the game already you probably never will, so listen up.

The password was seventy two.

Not forty two, no, but still bloody English. In an alien temple. Buried under Rome. It was a mystery built up from the beginning of the game and then blurted out in some incomprehensible anticlimactic burble by the annoying British guy.

We came to that part very suddenly in the last hour because Ubisoft seemingly got bored of making the game and decided to accelerate you through a gloopy narrative mess that leaps from place to place, mission to mission, entirely robbing you of the sandbox experience that gives the game its freedom. Oh, and during this locked-out linear final hour of game play, I was STILL getting reports that new missions were available. Was I given the chance to abandon memory and try them? No, so I have no idea how Ezio's pointless flashbacks within flashbacks with a generic female character played out. Badly, I suspect/hope. I can't blame the creators for this, as it reeks of money-men pushing for a quick release.

You will notice that most of my complaints revolve around this section, all of them in fact, because the game is still built on a solid concept which it takes full advantage of, bringing back many well-known elements from both of the previous two games, and adds the new dynamic of the Brotherhood – your own trained assassins. Not to mention the multiplayer, which is exquisite. However, to quote Yahtzee (and yes I went to grab this directly from the Borderlands video on Zero Punc): “A great game must be able to stand up on single player alone”, so for the purposes of my venom I am going to conveniently ignore it.

By the time I'd finished with Ezio and returned to the real world with Desmond and co I was just waiting for the game to end and growing more and more frustrated as Desmond (apparently so inexperienced with his manic jumping abilities that he pays even less attention to the direction of the arrow keys than Ezio) leapt off walls at ridiculous tangents that were nowhere near where I was telling him to go. All this did was lengthen the game and draw out my rage.

In the end I didn't actually complete the Assassins Creed: Brotherhood. I got so angry that I calmly took the disk out of the drive, sensibly placed it in its case, and then tidily put it back on the shelf next to Dragon Age 2 and... and... – wait, I only own one other game that's disappointed me this much.

I resorted to Youtube, skipped past the final irritating jumpy bit and saw the ending. Now, there is a slight nag of regret here, because during the cut scene the last activity you get to have with the KEYBOARD is a command to press any key. Doing so stabs your love interest with the hidden blade. That was pretty sweet, and I do wish I'd got to mortally wound her myself. She had so better die though, as I've one-hit armoured walking tanks with this weapon, so if she can take it in the chest and keep going my face is going to bruise my palm.

Up to that point, all I wanted to do was stop playing and install Crysis 2, which arrived today. So toodleoo Ezio, its time I get on with what (proper) PCs were made to do – get raped by the Cry Engine.

Ahhhhhhhh...

Fantasycon: Saturday Night

Let's set the adulatory and hero-worshipping fanboy tone right away: Fantasycon Rocks. Like a boss.

Three years ago I was hovering awkwardly, but purposefully, at Inklight's stall at StAnza – Scotland's largest poetry festival. That purpose was clearly defined, but that didn't mean it was a simple task. I was hard-selling our journal to anyone who stumbled within flyering range, and in such a small foyer, a lot of people were being shunted past me. Despite this, it was not going well. It wasn't expected to, and one sale would have made my day. But this was looking less and less like even the remotest possibility until, when all hope seemed lost, a lovely lady called Di came upon my stall, saw the simple and fruity cover of our amateur publication, and allowed me a moment to pitch it.

We hit it off, but it wasn't until I told her that I had an extract in the journal, that she agreed to buy it. The personal connection was important, so I later learned. She met the author, found him (dare I suggest it) interesting, and determined that it would be worth a moment or two of her time to read his work. £3 went into Inklight's coffers, and I gained a little something for myself too: advice, for an aspiring author.

Fantasycon.

It took me a while to make it there, but armed with a kindred spirit in the undauntable Clare Hicks, after three years, I was there. Best advice EVER.

Fantasycon is an annual weekend of fantastical awesome, and this year it was in Brighton, during the hottest October in recorded history. Within 30 minutes of arriving we'd already received more than half our ticket costs in free books. The next day, we received the other half, and then some.

For a weekend we were walking down the same hallways as dozens of authors, passing them and daring ourselves to make eye contact. We sat and listened, like rapt little children in awe of a six foot BMX biking teen that would be their one-time hero. They imparted further advice, like the need for a personal brand, reinforced by, yes, a blog, and that maybe I should rethink the chosen one thing. Oh, and let's be clear. We are NOT talking costumes and kids, but adults and a whole lot of mutual respect.

I'm going to have to cover the highlights of the con in particular, rather than the trimmings, and boy were there trimmings.

Let's start off with the juicy stuff. There was a frickin' burlesque show. An adult fantasy geek-themed burlesque show. The first girl made Cthulu sexy, and another introduced me to Puscifer. Immense. On that same night, we threw shapes. And we saw shapes cast around like paper aeroplanes by famous authors to some seriously epic tunes. How many nights out include Rock Me Amadeus and Let it Rock?

I mean, damn.

That's a taster. There's more to come, and I hope it'll be enough to convince a few of you to join me next year, because there's no way I'm not going back.

Visionary, CEO, Messiah

“Where were you when Steve Jobs dies?”

“Me? I was in bed. Why? Where were you?”

If Apple can keep control of the phone and tablet markets for the next half century, by some miracle, it will be down to the foundations that Steve laid, built upon, and reinforced with space-age consumer foresight. After those 50 years are up, we'll probably find ourselves asking the above question. Last decade's big celebrity death may have generated the same sort of cathartic wreath-casting response, but Michael Jackson's death was hyped by the scandals of his own life, lifestyle, and death. Steven Jobs has drawn a (frankly) not at all surprising outpouring of sympathy and eulogy. World leaders, CEOs and competitors are all crying to have their voices heard as they seek to praise his works and deeds louder than the next man. No one wants to show apathy for a man who, in more ways than one, has evolved the western world. No scandals blighted his career; his death was expected, and he went quietly with family. Even Samsung, embroiled with Apple in over a dozen lawsuits across the globe as the iphone/ipad and galaxy lines duke it out, stepped forward to gush praise upon the competition.

I'm no Apple fan, and I never will be, but there's nothing stopping me (indeed, there's a lot encouraging me) from seeing what the man has done, and what he may continue to inspire in death.

Apple polarises. It's regularly the Marmite of the technology world, and even if you don't think you're a particular fan, there's a good chance they've got their sleek hooks into you anyway. Not many people go iphone and then 'advance' to Android. No matter what side of the fence you're on, Steve Jobs has undeniably made lives better across the western world. He's built up a sleek white empire, employed 50,000 people in the process, and flooded the world with gadgets that, to many, may not be all that important. To others, the ipod and the iphone were revolutionary devices, and they genuinely believe that their lives are better with them than without. The truth of that matter is irrelevant, and comes down to opinion anyway, but if you perceive something to have made your life better, then it has. There are plenty of Jobsians out there that perceive precisely that, and Steve made that possible.

If you still don't accept that Steve made the world a better place, consider this: he forced Google and Microsoft to get better, and Apple will continue to force its competitors to raise their game. Even if you never buy Apple, you know that Google is fighting harder than it ever would have if it led the market, just to keep up. He raised the bar.

Steve has done some incredible things over the years, gathering followers and making something out of nothing. The Jobsian cult is now a fully formed religion, complete with a messiah who threw his life into his work to rescue common man from the curse of the phone that was only a phone all those years ago. His success was somewhat appropriately miraculous itself; the ipad in particular still doesn't actually fulfil a consumer need. It doesn't have a purpose, but it found a niche and wedged it open with titanic force. Still, Jobians snap them up by the bread and fish-basket load!

The man has been called visionary more than once, and some have satirically compared him to the Christian messiah, not without some justification. Did you know that when a new Apple store opens up the employees are whipped up into a fanboy frenzy, that the part of the brain stimulated by love of Apple products is the same that shows greater activity in religious fanatics?

This is definitely another heretical post – hearsay can wait.

Only time will tell what Steve Jobs' death will do to Apple, for while he had given up day to day running of the company, he was still its face, smiling assuredly from the trademark turtleneck. Could the cult take another step forward, idolising its great leader? Will his icons continue to lead the surge of Apple's quarterly figures or stem the growing tides of Android and Windows 8?

Cupertino has its work cut out for it after the collective media grouching that was the 4S launch, and without Steve to pick up the slack, times could get tougher for Apple, but I seriously doubt it.

Apple still has its zealots, and no religion was ever weakened by the death of its founder.

Heresy?

Truth be told I'm preoccupied by something else at the moment, something rather more weighty than anything I'm going to discuss for the moment. Maybe that will change, maybe I'll need to find a venue to lay out my thoughts, like I'm bouncing inner demons off the rag dolls I'll hang up to represent the readers this blog will probably never have.

How do you express an idea to the world, so that it's out there, so that you can feel free of it, without anyone else reading it?

I know that goal thoroughly defeats the point of a blog; perhaps its even heretical when it comes to the blogosphere. If I'm not writing this to put out my thoughts and beliefs, what am I putting out there? Heresy and Heresay? That's just a title that it took me far too long to come up with. I fell back on good, solid, reliable alliteration. You can't go wrong with it, any more than you can go wrong if you use a pencil.

I am not in the habit of using pencils. I like to use pens and make mistakes. I like to throw myself in at the deep end, fish myself out of any seaweed that I might find there, and then learn from my actions, so that I don't repeat those mistakes.

This time I'm being conservative, not because it goes against my better judgement, but because my judgement is overwhelmed. I dipped a toe in the water earlier this evening. There is an outside chance that I attracted a shark. Too late now though, my toes in the water, and I can't seem to pull it out.

We'll see what the fallout from that is later, if there is any. My baited toe may catch nothing. That might be even more painful.

As I was contemplating this blog I thought of a lot of other reasons to write it. I want tell you the world about the joys of Fantasycon 2011, and drag some of you next year. I want to remember how Brighton felt like another country. The sun, the people, the beach... and I went to St Andrews! I thought nowhere had a more eclectic bunch. And I've seen 1 or 3 beaches in my time. Brighton does beaches like Bioware does story-heavy rpgs. Geocaching is great there too, loads hidden in a fairly small area near the seafront.

At some points along the way I will review things too. Like Picus the Thief (obtained at Fantasycon) – First Impressions: A fantastic foundation concept and three moments in the first 50 pages that made me squee and point avidly at the page. Aside from that, despair. Where was the polished prose, the snappy dialogue! I cringed, hard. Twice. Or more.

So why write this at all?

Because I met people, and decided that it was time to listen to some other views, besides my own. How does a blog fit into that, I ask myself (not expecting that as yet anyone else is here to ask the question). Well, if I'm putting my views into the public domain I'm going to have to learn to accept other views. If I want people to acknowledge my values, then I need to acknowledge theirs. When you are one voice in a small environment, you don't have to worry that no one sees as you do, but if I am to put that small voice into the cacophony that is the blogosphere, I will have to temper it, and in so doing, hope to temper myself as well.

Can I be more tolerant? Can I be more trusting, forgiving or accepting? Can I grow in wisdom, because of the restraints I place upon my own words?

I suppose we'll see.