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.

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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)

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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.

My week

This week started with a trip to friends on Monday evening, a trip to South Wales for work in tiny Peugeot 207, new roadworks just before A449 joins the M4 at Newport delayed my journey since I hit them a rush hour.

I went to see Bourne Ultimatum at Derby and did enjoy it, much of the same thing as the 1st 2 movies in the trilogy but it works and story was concluded, it would take a very warped Holywood mind to make another to earn a few extra dollars.

Other than that I had record (for me) 4 meals out, 1 on Monday, 2 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday, spent some dosh on nice new coat, doodled with the web site since its all done (I will put a link here when its officially released), read the web site blog as Julie wrestled through the problems with forums, and finally watched the new Casino Royale DVD.

That's it, not really a week to remember.

Weekend haircut.

Yes my weekend did not go as planned, not that it was planned in the place.

Saturday morning I went to the barbers and while describing what I wanted to have done I said I wanted a no.2 for the beard on trimmer, this was not heard correctly by the barber who shaved my head with it, me only realising when I saw a lot more than the usual amount of hair falling in my lap, too late. Anyway it doesn’t look bad and will grow back, besides most of is gone anyway.

I spent Saturday playing with the website, then watched the film Independence Day on the telly, I have no idea why I dislike the movie, only realising why when Will Smith punched the alien, still I enjoyed a big bar of chocolate which gave me a headache Sunday morning, the curse of me and chocolate.

When Sunday did arrive I discovered Jasmine had decided the cat litter needed spreading around the kitchen, the cat litter tray was obviously not big enough.

I visited my brother’s new house in Cromford, which is old Arkright Mill house, with 2 foot thick stone walls, internal gutters, tiny windows, no mobile phone or radio reception and lots of other odd feature’s, it’s protected by English Heritage and cannot be altered. It also has garden which you need mountaineering skills to get to, going up a very steep unsafe path, which winds between other peoples gardens you get to level which about 6 stories above his house and gives you a amazing to view across the valley to Blacks Rocks a local site seeing attraction.

Sunday evening I watched Return of the King which is a good movie, although I did intend to watch Micheal Palins latest adventure.