Well, I am on the last day of my month's holiday, and so, I must return tomorrow to the rat race, albeit kicking and screaming like the condemned man being dragged to Madame Gilloutine's tender ministrations. Some of you may wish to contemplate that visual, given the comments you go to great trouble to leave me via DM on social media. Indeed, feel free to caress yourselves as you do so. It's free and harms nobody. :) I've deliberately stayed away from my studio, meaning that it's now a year since I put paintbrush to the first of my Citadel Giants. I guess I really ought to make some effort. It's been a busy 'break' for me with assorted hospital and optician's appointments, resulting in blood tests, steroid injections and new glasses, but it's not all been work.  We managed to go to a few galleries and museums as is our wont and spent some quality time in some great restaurants, wherein I ate a trawler's worth of crustaceans and molluscs, ...

 I wrote around 370 pages some years ago, ostensibly about being a tabletop gamer and roleplayer in the early 80s and beyond, but I think it's time to add to that and indeed add texture and context to what it was like to be part of something as awesomely different as this hobby was then.  So, let me try and fill in some gaps and widen the scope of my original writing. I make no apologies for being an unreconstructed man of my time. I don't have time for political correctness, nor for the identity politics of the world today. I believe that everyone has a right to do as they wish within the basic tenets of morality - it is private to them and should be kept that way. If you are 'offended' by terminology, recollections and the like, then please feel free to simply exit this blog and, off you can jolly well fuck, and live your own life. I won't be offended.  In  1981, I was just a normal kid - normal for the time, at least - and in that Autumn, I'd gone from Junior...