Tuesday... A Waste Of Calendar Space?

 Tuesdays... What are they good for?

Well, until 1984, I'd have said very fucking little, if you'll pardon my frankness on the subject. 

But, in 1984, after 2 years of being more permanent than a modern staff member, hanging around Games Workshop was paying off. I was becoming a 'face' or as Marillion put it a 'a toupee on the cabaret scene' and I think I can very easily claim that there were very few as committed to the dissolute gamer's life as I, for better or worse.

On the school holidays, I would be outside GW an hour before they opened, watching the staff go about the business of sorting shelves, indulge in the first coffee of the day - it would be 84 when I first actually got offered a coffee one morning; surely a sign that I had 'made it' - and watch them grinning and pointing at something outside in the cold. Apparently that was me...

It was early one morning when I heard Pete Berry - arguably one of the finest GW managers of all time, although in 1984 this was not the general opinion as Pete was fighting against a tide of 'Limpets' and trying to make GW more than a creche for a growing number of increasingly interconnected, long haired kids with one foot in the Barrow Wight's crypt - mention to his assistant manager that he'd been working on a new set of pike and shot rules. Now, I would guess that this would be 'Once Upon A Time In The West Country' but could have been 'Forlorn Hope'. 

Anyway, the ears pricked up...

Now, it would be about this time, certainly driven by the tidbit that I somehow actually got Pete to speak to me rather than reach for the can of Kid-B-Gon, and although the memory is not 100% on the exact exchange - unlike so many other points in my career - Peter mentioned that there was a Tuesday night wargames society at Sheffield University and that I may like to come as he was running some games of OUATITWC if I was interested.

Was I ever...

Now, the problem was that I was always somewhat young looking, so I would have to use some sunbtergfuge to get into the university as they had a guy on the door. So... On my first couple of visits, I latched on to older gamers who I'd somehow got to know - even now I don't recall how I met this bunch, it wasn't through Pete, but I recall I was doing some painting for some mature students, so it was probably through them - and made sure that I was full on, long hair and confidence, making conversation with the guy on the door, but being in amongst the pack, thereby being assumed to have a Union card and just passed on through. Thereafter I was able to give a wave and a cherry 'evenining' and breeze through.

It worked a treat, but of course, this was 1984 and a better time all around.

I played some of my most memorable games of OUATITWC at the uni' as well as a few games of WRG Renaissance, and of course at the time I was also mixing with older gamers, long embedded in the hobby which, as I keep reminding people was a truly 'underground' thing then,way less visible and accepted - and by definition, much better -  than it is today.

I also found that Kev and Graham from the Runelords as well as Cy, the assistant manager of GW were there too, so I was really moving in what were really heady circles for a 15 year old.

A few times I was accompanied by Martin Lightowler, a friend I'd made through my gaming buddy Darren Ashmore with whom Martin went to school.

Martin was and still is an irreverant and quirky guy and we hit it off pretty much immediately. We were both into rock, but mostly different types and bands, but that just made the friendship all the better as we had a wider conversational base. We had some really good times, both gaming and in other ways, and I'll probably cover some of these along the way...

Quite often, the games would end early and we found that there in the uni was a 'Gauntlet' video game cabinet. Now, Gauntlet was a favourite of ours as you could get 4 players on it at the same time and indulge in some serious dungeon slaughter at 20p per time.

I so fondly and clearly remember on night when we finished eraly, played some Gaumntlet and, as we walked into the city centre to catch our buses, it started to snow, the flakes building up in hair and on shemaghs, breath steaming and melting the snow. It was one of those things that I think only teenagers can truly appreciate, a sense of simple wellbeing and cameraderie, you seem to not have as you get older.

For a while at least, Tuesdays actually had a useful place on the calendar...

TTFN