Ripley and Coventry

Well this weekend I started my Christmas shopping without the real intent to do so.

On Saturday I went over to Andy & Heathers Chimera shop in Ripley to play a 40K game with Dave.
Julie brought Dave up and we had lunch at my house before going to the shop full of kids all waiting to watch us play. Orks v Eldar, it took over an hour to set out the terrain and figures with kids circling us and terrain tables being knocked. Still we got a game in, and learned the latest rules as we went along, although we had trouble with a rulebook which had bad printing errors repeat and missing pages. By 5.30pm we decided to pack in and only one kid left, the rest had already returned home, he helped us pack away by heaping the terrain in a big pile.
While at the shop Saturday I also purchased a couple of games as Christmas presents.
After closing I went to local pub with Julie, Dave, Heather, Andy and their children, which wasn't a bad place, then went for a coffee, exchanged star wars ring tones and left for home.

Sunday on the other hand was a planned shopping visit.
I went to over to Coventry to Julie and Dave's to pick them up before traveling to the National Living History Faye at Warwick Exhibition Centre, where I hoped to be inspired to buy Christmas presents.
I was and bought a few unusual gifts as well as leather armour for myself, something I was not intending to buy, but Dave said why don't you try it on, and that was it, Julie suggested I try on tall grey wizards hat which suited me, and I nearly purchased that, but somehow resisted, which is most unlike me and hats.

Dave found a nice store selling children's crossbows, which he decided to test by firing a cork across the aisle at some armour, a risky move with passing pedestrians. The crossbow however had other ideas and not being designed for corks, the cork flew completely over the armour stand into midst of the exhibition centre landing who knows where Since people were selling delicate glass goblets the store holders looked very concerned, me and Julie hid behind Dave and pretended not to know him. The cork we found later in the middle of an aisle, I distracted people while Dave bent to tie his shoe lace and pick up the cork to return to the Crossbow stand.

While there we ran into Tom and Gail, Jeff and Lucy before returning Julie's home having spent few hundred pounds between us.

Another long day, I hit an accident which left what the matrix sign called congestion (I called stationary traffic) between junction 24 and 29 which made the hour trip some 2 hours.

Nice day and now have started my Christmas shopping at least one month earlier than usual; October is not a Christmas shopping month in my book.

Whats part goat, lion and snake

I spent this Saturday in the new Chimera Shop, since Heather asked me if I could be Saturday girl while Andy was away getting his kids injections sorted and her other Saturday girl is in America.
I arrived at the shop around 10am with few Kids in there already, I'm calling them shop orphans since they seem to have been abandoned by there parents, a couple were there until mid afternoon and one lasted all day and was returning Sunday.
Encouraged to play a few games I had small crowd for a game of Pirates and then played a game of D&D skirmish, both I did not know the rules for, Pirates I kinda made up the rules, since they would not wait for me to read the rule book, D&D I managed to get the basic idea before we played.

Overall a OK day I left about 4.30pm, having only intended to stay until Andy got back, but Heather gave me coffee, and the kids wanted to play, so I stayed.

I’ve posted a picture of the shop below, click for a larger image, but you can see more picture here on the website I updated Sunday with a few extra pages, a preview of Dave's Logo, which I'm still waiting the artwork for so I used a photo of the shop window.

The shop itself is very good, lots of things I could buy, and I like the sound of the plans to improve it, official opening Day is going to be Saturday 24th of November for anyone interested.


On Saturday evening I decided to watch the Rugby, I like the big sporting occasions, but generally don’t follow any sports since for that you need free weekends, which a few in number, or a be very keen on sports, which I'm not, still I enjoyed the game even though England lost.

Sunday was a shopping day, but one of those were you look and don’t buy, a trip for inspiration.

I also managed to find a place to leave plastic carrier bags for recycling, my local Morrison's now has a large steel container thing in the carpark, which is far better than Sainsbury’s cardboard bin which held about 10 carriers and was always overflowing, so I dumped about 6 months worth of carrier bags.

On side note my mother had to have the builder round for her cat, which had crept behind a kitchen cupboard, up a vent from the cooker and got stuck, the builder arrived to remove the kitchen unit just as the cat re-appeared :S after screaming for over 2 hours.

Tip of Day: don’t go down a road when a ploughing competition has just finished, not only do you get a bottle neck of slow moving tractors, but them sharp plough blades look very dangerous swinging about on there chains and hinges as they go down the road behind ancient machines.

Stringer

A selection of photo's of the rubbish negotiator, loveable, always left behind, and one of lifes loosers my Larp character, Blackthought Stringer

This is what happens if you forget to make Julie a cup of tea.

Its hard work ref-ing a Strangehaven event.

Dave the make up artist.

Car troubles, sort of.

My car is in the garage again because of the intermittent squeak from the front wheel going on since June, blamed 1st on dust/dirt, then worn discs I said well why is the squeak one side only, stuck break calliper. Today they rang to say they are replacing the drive shaft to the front wheels because its worn, they rang later to say they are also replacing the main drive shaft to rear wheels, because of a worn joint.

All this is covered under warranty because it otherwise sounds expensive, so my only cost is time going to the the garage, the parts are not in stock so on order and I get to keep my brand new top spec Freelander2 courtesy car for a few days, which is dangerously fast for a diesel, pity its automatic, I don't like automatics.

Aliens visit York for surfing Holiday

I had great weekend at York, helping run Strangehaven a live role play event.

After travelling through horrendous traffic Friday afternoon leaving my house just after 3 we arrived at York at 6.15pm a 3 hour trip, which is normally 1 ½ hours at the most, Still Julie and Dave spent 5 hours on the road, so I guess I was lucky.

Anyway despite the late start we managed to get playing and introduce Julie's plot and the LGM's (little green men), and with no major parts to play on Friday night I got to ref the encounters, do bead draws and answer OOC players questions which went well, I have learnt a lot since the 1 st event and that made it all far easier and gave me the skills necessary to give it a nice atmosphere prior to LGM's arrival.

(click for larger image)

The LGM costume's (Bob the Hero, Flat Face & Technical One) where great, put together mainly by Dave and well received by players and crew alike, although I suspect those playing them may still be slightly green, since the pigment in the make up was quite hard to remove. (According to Facebook the LGM's are no longer sporting a green glow)

(click for larger image)


Saturday I played Stringer a man beaten and tortured to death then later sent back as a paradox with bomb strapped to him. (Photo will follow hopefully), improvising plot as I went along. Then I did a bit of fighting along Commander Drusa played by Julie, who despite her knee got stuck in to combat and did well.

AndyL removed his shirts a sure sign of a major fight coming which everyone backed away from, since they knew what to expect, that's everyone bar the new player Nathan as Mallerkie who decided to challenge Andy with no shirt to a duel. He fought well but Andy let him off very lightly since he was new.

From then on mostly improvised strangeness which was fun ref'ing and playing the odd combat bunny, until Sunday.

By Sunday morning the player's had worked out the plot, between them they where a very good team and quite sharp, too sharp, we actually had to start throwing in false paths to slow them down a bit.

Overall a very enjoyable weekend, even if very, very tiring, I seem to have woke with bad back and aching limbs, I was fine yesterday.

My thanks goes to Julie for writing a great plot, although I do want to find a way of being more involved in the plotting the next time whenever that is, I may have to go back to writing side plot for Acendancy although when your not ref'ing it's almost impossible to get your plot out, unless you do it yourself and not half as satisfying.

Wild night out?

On Thursday I went to Derby to socialise with my friends, Jock real name Andy, Assy real name Andy, Andy real name Andy, and Ste, all mates since school.

Assy and Jock shared my hobbies wargaming, table top roleplay and reenactment although neither are into Larping my current main pastime, Jock gave it a go and Assy can't get past mild mockery, although I think he might enjoy it.

Andy and Ste shared my interest in comics when I was younger, but are my oldest friends, I'm blamed for getting Andy's lad Christopher into Larp and Ste drags me along to Memorabilia.

Anyway since we are now spreading out (not just our waistlines) and no longer all live in one town it takes a good 2 hours plus for one driver to round every one up and hour and half to drop everyone off, that's when you don't stop quick natter with the your friends wives. So setting off at 7 means and couple of hours in Derby and before you have said hello its nearly midnight and well gone 1 before your home.

So while I drank my orange and passion fruit J2O we talked about Assy's dangerous motor bike trip to Himalayas from which he brought me a excellent hat (see photo below, click for lager image). We chatted about other strange topics American Football which I'm not into, Kids which I have none, but twas a good night out.

I mentioned Facebook and blogging which they don't do apart from Assy who has dipped his toe onto Facebook and they don't get it. For me its essential social interaction, since most of my current network of friends don't live closer than a hours trip away, and my cat Jasmine doesn't understand me.

As for wild night out with the lads no it wasn't, but we didn't talk about favorite jams and marmalade's.

New Website

I have just change the link on my blog from Shards LRP to Ascendancy LRP which is the new website I have been working on along with Julie.

Julie put together the Forum since she knows far more than me about the languages used in setting it up, although that meant it was more like work for her, while I put main site together i.e all the pretty picture and links and I think it all looks good.

The colour scheme was chosen by Andy and Heather who run Ascendancy and while it seemed very bright at 1st, spending a few weeks with it as made it grow on me and I now think its quite a fresh look, especially after looking at the dull, woody, green dark brown website of other Fantasy sites.

Now its case of others grammar spell checking it for me and finding any broken links, plus remaining keen enough to keep it up to date and current.

Overall though I achieved a goal and learned a few tricks, and idea's for next time, and feel quite pleased with my efforts.