The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Gamer....

 Good lord, it's two and a half weeks since last I put finger to keyboard...

I have been busy with getting to grips with one of the 4 Scottish Terriers who doss down here and sometimes pay their way with cuddles or ironic looks, going blind in a matter of days due to diabetes and thereby needing twice-daily insulin shots , as well as a really intense month at work. 

So, please forgive me - or don't as you see fit.

I have given much thought to the roots of my gaming and indeed, the way that gaming is largely nothing like it was, back when it was a subversive, underground subculture instead of the faux-nerd fashion icon it is today.

Shiny, everything is shiny and bright, but much of it is a polished turd, to be honest, so much inconsequential rubbish and flabby (like so many of thoseindulging in it) rulebooks which don't actually do anything more than fulfill the 'GW Standard Template' for rulebooks.

Oh, for a company that could come up with a no-nonsense set of rules, simply but neatly produced and a set of plastic figures with a few similar poses and maybe some head variations.

I remember (cue shimmering effect, to take us back in time - the De Loroan is in for it's MOT today) when straightforward rulebooks with white pages and clean, readable fonts were the norm. Colour pictures were a waste of space and time - we went to magazines for those, along with great and scholarly articles by seriously minded writers who really knew the history, and who didn't have to dumb it down because their readers had the attention spans of unicorns with ADHD.

True, Otto Von Pivka could irritate you sometimes and Chandler's Napolerotic (TM) fetishism over L'Empereur was a little OTT at times, but the idea of a one stop source was considered to be anathema and frankly, lazy.

I swear that the weekly troll through ths city (and many others) in search of this or that , was what kept me a lean, not-so-mean gaming machine, able to outrun and Skinheads on the Gallery here in Sheffield, or dodge the Hare Krishna or bloke dressed as Mr Wimpy (look it up kids) on Fargate.

Had my teachers only realised that by putting a new design of D20 at the end of my lane could have made me the undisputed under-16 sprint champion for Yorkshire, life could have been so different, alas, alas... 

Lets take a look at what an average 'Saturday Workout' in say, 1983 was like.

After awaking at 6AM without a clock or coercion, I'd head downstairs, watch some cartoons or perhaps see what I'd taped on the Betamax (yeah, yeah, I know, but I was not the bill payer) the night before and have a pre-breakfast bowl of grain related products in milk and sugar, before breakfast proper at about 8AM.

Thence it was ablutions, choose a suitable T-shirt, skin tight denims and brush my bush but not yet 'long' hair, wallop down my breakfast and by 08:20 I'd call for, or just meet with Alan (Stan in my book, but he's out of witness protection now)  and eschewing the fact that the 39 bus stopped 50 feet from our doorsteps, head off down Jenkin Road, a knee-killing hill in either direction to get the number 4 bus or , if we felt a little louche, grab a train into town. 

The reason we ignored the 39 was that it took 20 minutes longer to get to town and of course in the early 80s, every second counted on Saturday morning as we hunted down our thrills on the gritty and leaden-skied streets of Sheffield.  

Alighting from the bus, it was into the market and a quick look at what records had been released. It was still a possibility that 95p of my spending money could end up going on a 7 inch single. I was still a few months from discovering Marillion, and that was when music and gaming would truly segue into one homogenous hydra of expenditure and thrills.

Then it was a dash up onto the Gallery which was a walkway area above the market, ideally in the lift (but on Saturdays the lift operator - there because above the gallery were council offices - where I'd briefly work some 30 years later - was not well disposed to mere kids using 'his' public lift)but more normally up one of about half a dozen stair wells, which, could be hiding roving bands of wandering monsters - Skinheads or even the odd washed up Punk, who still thought it was 1977, because he'd bought really good glue that week - adding a frission of excitement and a cardio-workout that could not be beaten.

Treating the gallery like a real life version of Activision's 'Pitfall', we'd generally reach the safety of Hopkinsons  Toys, with about a half mile on the pedometer already, and our first hobby related stop at just after 9AM, to look at model railways, model kits (I was a serial abuser of Tamiya 1/35 figures at the time, making interesting dioramas on the many offcuts of worktop and chipboard which seemed to accumulate as my Dad induged in DIY in tht peculiarly late 70s to mid 80s mating ritual of 'home improvements'  without recourse to a professional tradesman.

As I've written before. Mr Hopkinson was a legend, and he knew his products and more importantly he knew his clientele. Kids were to be nurtured, not thrown out, and if he ever had any trouble with thieving, we never once got the feeling that we had to be watched as a result of it.

As you will know, this was where I'd bought my first Citadel FTD Dwarf Stretcher Party and Ral Partha Galactic Grenadiers models from the rack of baggies next to the counter, but it was also where I came for obscure model railway bits and model kits at reasonable prices, sometimes some particularly rare ones. It was great.

Now, let me state for the record, that one Games Workshop opened in '82, we'd changed our route through towm, so much of what follows later, would have taken place earlier, but Hopkinsons was always at the start of the day, a hobbytastic amuse bouche as it were. 

We would then exit stage left, walk along the Gallery, enter Woolco via the side entrance, jump down the staircase a flight at a time - we did this religiously, for the buzz of it and out of stupidity and disregard for our joints some 40+ years later) axit into Haymarket and take the free 'City Clipper' bus which connected one end of the retail are of the city to the other, about a linear mile. Sheffield went from standard 'single decker' busses for this, to the state of the art bendy-bus

Now, these could be great fun if there were a few of you or, if you had the warped senses of humour we gamers would exhibit a couple of years later - and yes, you'll hear all about it at some stage, once we run it through the legal department.

This would take about ten minutes to drop us about 100 metres from Games Workshop, behind Atkinsons department store, which being kids with that inbuilt knowledge of back streets, store staircases and other 'useful' intel on the metropolis , we used as a short cut onto The Moor shopping area, straight across the road, past Harry Webb's shoe store (remind me to go back and look at those baseball boots in the burgundy quilted material will you? Thanks.) and into Valhalla itself. we've covered about 1mile so far, but, had we not jumped the Clipper, we'd be at about 1.5 miles taking a weaving yet interesting route via as many underpasses and escalators as possible, probably going out of our way to look at some Brutalist buildings (inspiration for sci-fi gaming and/or dungeons) with which I had a somewhat unhealthy obsession. In point of fact, that's still the case.

Back then we would probably only spen an hour or two in GW, and woul probably clock up a quarter of a mile as we broused, yelped at something new, did the odd little excited jig and all that jazz. Of course I was getting to know some of the staff, but long conversations were not yet on the cards, nor was (ever) chatting up the female staff. 

Money could and would be spent here, on a few figures - possibly the 'deal of the week' fronm the Figure Bar at the top end of the shop. We had no real interest in the computer games adjacent to it, overseen by Phil (they'll never catch on) who could it was said, turn a kid who tried to touch a computer over there, into dust with a glance and twitch of his moustache. It must have been true because the carpet was a little more worn over there and no kids were ever in evidence.

(You can see this area in the excellent 'The Dice Men) 

Once we'd finished in GW (this was before I'd moved into a wider gaming circle) we'd go down to the bottom of the Moor to Marcway Models, where I was a known face and the girl who worlked there seemed to be a bit sweet on me, or maybe just felt protective for this naive, well mannered youth.

We had recently discovered Sheffield Space Centre, which was about a mile away in Heeley Bottom, well away from anything else of interest, but being situated in the city's bare backside as it were (there's a lyric in that somewhere) taking us to about a 3 mile total, including the return journey to The Moor.

Oddly we never lasted more than 10 minutes in Space Centre . We were in it for the games and figures back then, getting our sci-fi kicks from TV rather than the rarified elitist purveyors of the craft. 

This was normally about a 45 minute jaunt, then it was up to Redgates at the top end of the Moor and a browse through4  floors of toys, models - and in a dark corner in the basement (so aptly), which could take a good hour (on a good day), exiting via the rear stairwell onto a backstreet facing a multi storey car park, under which was a sandwich shop, where we would stuff our faces on a fremch stick, liberally buttered, filled with searingly hot chips and cheap, vinegar-cut ketchup, which we'd take to the top of the car park so that we could look out at Sheffield like gods on Olympus. (in later years it was a great place after dark for an al fresco fuck whilst watching the lights of the city).

This would easily take us to 3.5 miles, and we'd often run down the actual ramps of the car park rather than the stairs. We once did it on skateboards on a Sunday, and that was fucking amazing as it was empty on the traditional day of rest. 

Then it was into Sugg Sports on  Pinstone Street to pick up any archery bits I needed, if my Thursday night archery over in Rotherham had ended in disaster with torn fleches or broken arrows, or maybe just to see if there were any new longbows in stock to drool over.

Now, remember that my spending was goverened by the limitations of pocket money, dinner money and paternal goodwill at this stage. It would be a year before I was earning £20-£40 per week, painting figures after school, so my buying patterns could vary somewhat.

Sated, we would head up to Beatties, further up Pinstone Street, where we could easily spend an hour looking at model railways, more model kits and of course Standard Games, Grenadier Miniatures and SPI boardgames as well as a slightly more dated range of TSR stuff which could throw up some great stuff at great prices.

Then, it was across the road, past the town hall and onto Fargate, where we would visit W H Smiths to look at magazines and see what was in there toy department and to maybe look at the computer games (they'll never catch on) before going to the far end of Fargate and Boots, who in those days sold the Fighting Fantasy and other books, taking us to 4 miles.

From here, it was back up Fargate, taking a left into Chapel Walk to look at the craft shop and bead shop - don't ask, OK? - exciting at the far end, taking a left and walking around to the front of Rackhams department store and up to the top floor by lift where I would spend a good twenty minutes in the 'Knobs & Knockers' franchise, looking at the wondrous selection of door furniture with which I had a real obsession. It was the colours, textures and sheer variety. This in time led me to soft furnishings and bright scarves, which to this day remain high on any shopping list not directly related to games.

If we had time and inclination, we'd cross the road and into Schofields department store, to listen to the free jukebox in the womens fashion department and maybe get to know a few girlsm, who'd be there browsing stuff they could afford and, like us, listening to the latest grooves for free.

And to round out a busy day we'd add another half mile round trip to the absolute sphincter of Sheffield, that was West Bar to EXIT Books. 

EXIT was run a by a 'studenty' looking guy who was that stereotypical caricature of the earnest radical, card carrying 'Lefty'.

It stocked equally Left Wing propaganda and literature as well as 'Underground' publications and comics. It was here I first saw the amazing illustrations of Robert Crumb. It was a grubby little store, and even more alien than Games Workshop would seem, which is saying something. It was a remenant of the 70s, but in the politically charged early 80s, with Labour still reeling from Margaret Thatcher's landslide victory, it was hanging in there, waving a defiant red flag through the fug of second hand mung beans and lentils. But it was an education.

I don't know how we figured it out, but we realised that here was a countercultural place which was somehow aligned to gaming. Go figure... But it felt 'right'. 

Our parents would probably have had conniption fits had they known where we were ending up on Saturdays, but for us it was all grist for the experiential mill.

And so then, we would take the number 39 or number 1 bus home. Both took about 30-45 minutes, which gave us time to look at our purchases and have a debrief in our mobile chill out room. The 39 dropped us a few yards from our doorsteps and the 1 added about a 500 yard journey.

Thus we probably covered 4.5 to 5 miles on our weekly gaminbg jaunts, increasing to around 7.5 if we set off early and took in the assorted art galleries and museums of which we were great patrons.

Now, you waklk into one disappoinbting store, maybe two and then back to the car... It's just not as much fun, nor as beneficial to your health.

Well, I better go and do the two staircases to my studio, and have a sit down...

 

TTFN