Ruminations On A Wasted (?) Life...

 I really have lived a life shaped by gaming. Sometimes, I wish that I had never walked into Hopkinson's Toys here in Sheffield, in 1981 and purchased that first pack of Citadel Dwarves for the princely sum of 75p.

Had I not done that, I may have simply been an average 'normal' kid, bullied, wearing the youth uniform du jours and listening to inane and uninspiring music. I would have been content to go with the flow, pass my exams and possibly make something of myself.

Instead by age 13 I was a lost cause. I coasted through school and did OK, but my reason for existing became gaming, fantasy worlds, history and the general sense that I was not really made for this grey and drab world.

Instead of of blending in, I stuck out. I was awkward in company, became separated from my school mates and indeed by 15 I had absolutely no friends in my local area, because frankly they bored the bollocks off me. They were so mundane, with their Stay Pressed trousers, Doc Martens and obsession with trashy music.

Did I mention that I became opinionated to a weapons grade degree? And arrogant? Oh, you'd not noticed that... Good, good.

Instead, I swallowed the red pill and become literally detached from all that was supposed to be 'normal'. I decided that as I'd not be anything mundane in my later years, I did not need to go to university. I was literate, numerate and could knock up 3000pts to WRG Renaissance lists in short order.

I grudgingly went into training for retail work and later into the Civil Service and Local Government postings, but by then it was too late. My life had been wasted and I was almost two thirds of the way into my allotted time on Earth, or in this incarnation , which is increasingly something I am coming to take as a given. I am going to have to make a few changes next time around, such as punching people squarely on the nose a lttle more often, and employing a figure painter, earlier on in my life.

I have been told many times over the years that I could and should have done something more academic instead of wasting my talents on toy soldiers and pretend battles with monsters.

But, here's an alternate view...

I purchased those figures, then a year or so later, Games Workshop came to Sheffield giving me around 5 or 6 places to waste any spare time. I was already playing basic D&D in the Eric Holmes version and I'd found that the life fantastic was a brilliant place to be, a place I never wanted to leave.

I was addicted to a lifestyle which in no way resembled that of my schoolmates, who had by that time (with a couple of exceptions) become burdens to my new way of viewing the world.

Grey concrete underpasses became dungeons, staircases and carparks became the interiors of starships and increasingly, every night was spent gaming somewhere in the city, with the exception of Sundays, which were usually spent reading through an ever-growing pile of RPGs, wargames rules or magazines, or more often than not, painting an ever increasing pile of lead figures.

I went all over the country in pursuit of my hobby, teachers piled old Tolkien calendars and posters for some new fangled thing called 'Fighting Fantasy' on my desk, and somehow, they realised that this dreamer was not a waste of space, but a quiet, sensitive and shy loner who just wanted to 'be'.

I was an extra in the Barry Hines film, 'Threads' (a most sobering experience I can tell you) , I began to win trophies in painting competitions and I learned how to cut deals with traders who were often at least twice my age (at least)  and pay for my hobby by application of my artistic skills.

I became a re-enactor when it was not the 'off the shelf' hobby it is today, I haunted Underground Press establishments and found a love for abstract and conceptual art forms, often spending Sundays with my one remaining school friend, Alan Staniforth  or my ever expanding circle of gaming mates, stalking museums and galleries, or tramping across moors and sometimes along rivers (normally in them), whilst constantly talking history, fantasy and gaming. All of these were a million miles from my previous trajectory. I met the kid who was to become and still is, my best friend, Roger along with a literal platoon of other gamers, who over the years fell by the wayside. Roger and I parted company for a couple of decades, which I think we may mourn, but equally it gave us time and space to mature, realise our ambitions (his are greater than mine, but remember I am a slacker) and when we met again, I think we just picked up where we left off - That's pretty bloody brilliant, and I'll not misplace him again.

In the 80s, we had no internet, no mobile phones and strict parents (mine being a tad right of the Gestapo, when it came to obeying the rules) but together we wargamers went all over the country to conventions, painting competitions, shops. The roleplayers were a more parochial bunch for the most part, unless they were also wargamers. A yearly trip to Games Day in London was a rare treat for them, a trip to the big city carefully chaperoned by the GW staff.

 All the time, I was literally absorbing the hobby. It was not cool back then, it could get you beaten up if word got out that you played games with little toy soldiers or listened to rock music, but it was, like cocaine, 'a hell of a drug' and the beatings, bullying and abuse were the 'come down' you suffered to experience that high.

In the late 80s I lost my way, my friends and pretty much everything after 'The GW Incident'. I lost contact with Roger and although I was gaming, it was with people I met during those wilderness years. It was OK, but it meant that I became very cynical indeed, emotionally detached and so bitter that I lashed out at my past at the slightest provocation - real or imagined. I was frankly a fucking mess for about 4 years and the scars of my actions are still visible in 2022.

But, in the early 1990s after meeting my wife (who, let the record clearly show, literally rescued me from oblivion) in '88 and playing my part in the creation of the next generation, I got a million to one opportunity for a kid who always dreamed of working in the old style Games Workshop. I was painting figures to help keep the wolf from the door (in fact it was a warg, not a wolf) and placed an advert in Wargames Illustrated. I got some responses, one from a Chris Harvey of Walsall - yes that Christopher Harvey, who ran Flying Buffalo U.K, whose name I had seen so many times in my cherished copies of Flying Buffalo News. It was as if I'd been asked to work with a god.

I was so poor that I could not even afford a telephone, and so may conversations were had from public call boxes. Thanks to Chris, I was given the chance to outfit and run Dungeons & Starships, something I will always be grateful for and an experience I'll never forget.

Many of us dreamed of working in a games store, let alone managing one. For my sins, I ended up owning it until 1999, when my world crashed in around my ears and I went (to say the vey least) off the rails, almost ending it all as I spiralled towards bankruptcy when all I had wanted to do was sell enough games to pay my bills and fill the fridge of our 2-bedroom council house.

In 2003, I went into the Civil Service and tried, oh how I tried to be the normal, well balanced human being, but in 2011, I decided that my tolerance for idiots (and believe me,that is an accurate description of some of those who were supposed to inspire and lead me) was at breaking point, and one morning after spending two weeks in a new posting, without a desk or indeed a case load to work on, I threw in the towel there and then and went home. It was a valiant attempt at being normal, but the cards were not in my favour. For well over a decade now, I have been painting miniatures every day to pay the bills and getting by rather nicely or writing books. In short, I've been living life my way and by my rules.

I am a dreamer, a creative and an individualist and I guess that no matter how much I rant at myself or opine to my wife that I feel I have wasted my life, the truth is that I probably haven't. But that doesn't stop me wondering if that's how I'll be remembered, with an air of contempt by those who survive me.

I guess I'll never know the answer to that. You don't tend to get recognised for an OBE through painting tens of thousands of wargames miniatures, writing a memoir on gaming and playing your part in keeping alive a hobby which can be such a force for good (as long as it keeps the hell away from politics, social non-issues and remembers that it's a hobby not a fucking excuse to dress up as a wizard, unicorn or pink Llama) and that does nag at me a little.

So, I've lived a full life and, if  I sit and really think and remember the things I have seen and done, the friends I have made, (and often cast aside because I am a temperamental asshole at times but, let the record show, that the friends I do still have are as precious to me as my own family)  then I consider myself a very lucky person indeed, but I still can't help but worry that I may have not followed the correct path for the last 40 years...

For a long time, I have pondered whether I made the right decisions, and finally, I think I did. I may not have saved lives, become wealthy or an academic tour de force, but I know that I have been able to bring pleasure to hundreds who all effectively own a little piece of my immortality. 

When I hear that my exquisitely painted model have been played with by the children of my clients, clients you understand who are discerning and unrelenting in the pursuit of their hobby, I feel great, because those models are helping to introduce and encourage another generation into the hobby. I like to think that long after I am dead and buried, my work will live on and thereby, so will I.

It means that I have not wasted my life whilst at the same time having lived my life according to my rules and not based on the expectations of others.

My parents hated the fact that I gave up a promising career in the Civil Service and all the security it offered, but hell, I earn more than I did in that role. True, the work is hard and often quite grim, but it's honest and creative work at the end of the day, and I get to interact with passionate and interesting people who share the same world, but who view it in their own unique way.

Now, albeit later than I may have wished, I have a dedicated gaming room, I don't have to paint my own figures and I've got a friend for whom I'd lay down my life, several I'd take a bruise or two for, and a wife and family who are all geeks in their own right. My wife is an absolute gem. We don't always agree, to be sure, and that's one of the things I respect her for, because I am a strong willed bastard at times and she can square up to me when required, without putting a hair out of place.

And with the Superpowers flexing their muscles and egos, it's just like the 80s again... CHAMPION!

TTFN