Memory Lane Part 19: Getting Feet Under The Table. Or, First Steps In Creating A New Circle Of Friends In The 80s Pre-Apocalyptic World

Having no siblings until I was five, I got used to and enjoyed my own company.  At primary school, I had a few friends, such as Paul Heeley, Matthew France when I was at Firs Hill, and then, when I was at Limpsfield (a groundbreaking 'community school' run on an experimental framework, the name of which escapes me at 06:30) Alan Staniforth, Andrew Moffatt, Vinny Wilson, Carol Herbert (who killed my Lone Ranger doll in a mining accident) and Ian Vollum (or so I thought, but when we met in a nightclub aged 18, he had no memory of me - or so he said, despite being in the same class and hanging out at school every day for 3 long child years).

UPDATE: 24 hours after this post, I was speaking to Ian, and reminiscing about things going back to being 11 or 12 years old. And as for the meeting in the Limit, nightclub, I was apparently 'a bit scary' which back then, with a 14 inch mohican and/or assorted leather clothing and makeup, is understandable. 

When I moved to comprehensive school, I made a few new mates, in the form of Ian Hill (best man at my wedding, but whom I treated awfully in the mid 90s), Tony Vesuvio (we both liked Rock), Ruth Simnett (rock again) Craig 'Stav' Stainrod a couple of other passers-by, and I remained friends with Carol & Alan despite being in different classes in a much larger school building than we'd come from at Limpsfield.

Alan as you will recall, was with me for much of the early adventures in gaming and wanderings around the city on what I realise now were psychogeographical meanderings as denim-clad Flaneurs, discovering places and things which were unknown to so many kids of our age and reacting to what we found. It was in this way that we discovered Games Workshop as it was being fitted out in Sheffield and how, by going into a part of Beatties, we normally never ventured into, we found RPGs and boardgames in a locked glass cabinet.

In the early 80s, the world was in a shitty state. We lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation and living out lived in a concrete wilderness under the Soviet jackboot. 

Actually, we did live in a concrete wilderness, with an excellent selection of Brutalist buildings, including a fantastic sub statation and a town hall which is now no more, replaced by a soulless wood and glass structure and swanky (I'd personally drop the 's') hotel rather than the futuristic 'egg box' building, redolent of location in an episode of 'Blake's 7'.

Games Workshop was not the horribly overzealous, man-child filled horror show it mutated into in the 90s. It was a serious shop, where male staff wore shirts, proper trousers and interesting 80s knitwear, and the girls wore similar knitwear, great hair, boots and mini-skirts, the way that god intended.

There were a few T-shirts with assorted GW and White Dwarf logos, but that was it and they weren't 'corporate uniform'. If you can find one of those excellent early T-shirts, it will cost you a small fortune and probably have heavy stains to the armpits.

Initially, alan and I were on our own on our gaming adventures, we played at each others houses with sundry family and friends from school who were really NPCs in our teenage campaign, losing interest and moving on to pointless things such as under age drinking and sport, while we killed Orcs in their thousands, plundered crypts, established border strongholds and found that girls preferred long-haired dreamers to the majority cromagnon thugs who populated our 80s teenage world.

Alan and I were for a while the youngest members of Sheffield Wargames Society and then, as Alan and I drifted increasingly apart, I was on my own, but learning the ropes and ways of historical wargaming and meeting people ten years my senior and more, who were in the very first wave of gamers - some of them 'faces' in the hobby - and whom my parents were comfortable with allowing care of their firstborn, meaning I got to travel to many a strange city to look at toy soldiers and play games.

GW still played a large part in my life, and it was from the notice board just inside the door on the left, next to the front cash till (where Lisa and later on Jo held court, whilst Chris and Pete manned the barricades on the 'figure bar' at the back of the shop) that I found a wider world of gamers.

It was here that I learned of Sheffield Runelords and after a shaky start. which led to parting company with Alan on Monday nights, I started playing Runequest, discarding at the drop of a D12, my BECMI D&D collection and met even more adults who would, unknowingly shape my life for the next 45 years.

I also began to notice that I saw some familiar youthful faces in GW and at the Runelords, so I somehow - probably awkwardly if not tactlessly - got talking to them and thereby forged new friendships which ran hot and cold and still do to this day. 

It was an odd osmotic process but somehow, my circle of gaming friends grew. At SWS, strange new faces of a similar age to me began to appear and we mixed and chatted, and, when Warhammer started to get a following in probably late 1983 (despite what GW tell you, it was sold off cheap in stores where it was stacked up in 4 foot cubes until 2nd edition) we all started playing it at SWS, much to the consternation of older members who remembered the 'AD&D Plague' of the 1970s where I am told more RPGs than tabletop wargames were played. But I reckon that by 1984 there were over a dozen 16 year old gamers in that club, all of whom had started to hang out together at GW, on assorted Saturday jaunts across both Sheffield and the surrounding metropolitan areas in search of fresh gaming experiences. We also spread ou to other clubs albeit not as a great shoggoth-like entity but rather as a swarm of Mi-Go, with members of that swar forming new hives across the city .

My introductions to adult gamers served me well, and I was soon able to get into previously unknown gaming circles in the homes of older gamers as well as the Sheffield University wargames society and the Sheffield Polytechnic roleplaying club, the former meeting on Tuesday nights and the latter on Wednesday afternoons, with Runelords on Monday night, SWS on Wednesday evening, and assorted 'home meets' on Saturday & Sunday in tandem with living in GW, Sheffield Space Centre, Redgates, Beatties and Hopkinson's Toys (see earlier instalments for more details on these) 

Two of my most enduring friendships down the last 45 years were forged this way. The meeting between me and the annoying kid who would become Professor Darren Ashmore is covered in detail in my book and would not have been so hilarious had my mother not grounded me on a '21 day stretch' for some petty misdemeanor as she was wont to do.

Roger, I still consider my best friend despite 20 years or so, where we just lost touch with each other, initiated by a girl. I love him like a brother - he'll squirm if he reads this, but he's a big boy and will just have to deal with it and prescribe himself something - and I wish we could get together and game again.

I had been misusing the notice board in GW, with wily cunning to sell stuff I had fallen out with, and Roger contacted me from a call box, not having a phone at home (for very practical reasons I won't go into) and we met up at GW. 

Lo and behold, he too was a long haired combat jacket-wearing besneakered Rocker too, although we had quite different tastes in music of that genre, with Roger being into more Bluesy stuff and I being a bit of a Marillion, Yes and Rush fan.

I also liked Big Country which even at the outset of our meeting got me some serious piss taken out of me by this teenage music critic... I could have easily gone off him, but westarted hanging out at each other's homes, and Roger was often found staying over at my Mum and Dad's along with Keith Rhodes another 'long hair' ne'er-do-well I'd met at SWS.

Roger became a member of SWS and we shared many a youthful adventure both involving wargames and somethimes just being relatively normal teenagers and getting up to some 'interesting' things along the way.

Through Roger I found a lifelong love of Jethro Tull, as I'd been turned on to Yes by Kev Fisher and Nog Northing, older Runelords members. I'd found Marillion on my own, but Pete Armstrong really opened my eyes to the band as Paul Green, a younger Runelord got me listening to Rush and Peter Gabriel.

When I hit 16 it was Runelords members who got me interested in the ECW, and into reenacting for a couple of years. I playtested Once Upon A Time In The West Country with it's creator Pete Berry at the Sheffield Uni' wargames group... I got around. Thursdays became the night I met up with other reenactors and by extention more gamers at the Red Deer, with Friday being spent on pub crawls with - you guessed it, more gamers.

And so, you will see that in a matter of three years my world had changed from following the normal mundane pathway to one where every night and often a day or two in a week were dominated by gaming, with wargames shows also adding an additional layer of things to do and people to meet.

But, as I said it was an organic and osmotic process and sometimes I got the feeling that the hobby had a life of it's own which somehow brought kids from all over the city and who would have probably assaulted each other had they met in any other 'normal' manner back then.

I'm glad I met and angaged with these people, be it for a year of 4 decades, and they have shaped who I am, who I was and gave me a life filled with wonder and memories (good and bad) which I treasure (for better or worse) 

Some of us are dead, many of us still communicate or see each other periodically, but as is the way of the world, we went our own ways. Some of us followed our dreams of sorts and others caved in to a normal existence, but I am sure that there are many 50-somethings out there within whom a happy-go-lucky 15 or 16 year old still dwells,  and who if given the opportunity  would be quite happy to run amok for a while...

I never locked the teenage me away for better or worse, and I am glad, because the world today is starting to feel like it was in the 80s, and that teenager never even broke into a sweat, and is doing well not doing so in 2026. 

TTFN