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Today I was looking through photographs taken while I was gone. A bunch of family events now have visuals, which is cool. When I was done with that I had a look at the video shelf, which holds a bunch of videos taken over the last fifteen years or so.
And I find one entitled ‘Morgan and Katrina (Pre-Ball)’.
Oh my god. I remember that night.
I put it in and watch it and after about one minute I am laughing so hard that I can’t breathe properly. It’s agony, it’s beautiful, it’s so amazing to see… oh, man.
Katrina was my first girlfriend, but this was long before we were going out. I barely knew her at the time – just before her big 7th-form ball, the guy she was going with had to pull out and I was the friend-of-a-friend ring-in. But hey, I was up for it. Why the hell not?
It’s late in ’92, I’m 16 years old. The video is taken at my place, where the picking-me-up process had all gone a bit wrong. Because everyone wanted to see the girl in the dress, and me in the tux, and somehow everyone ended up inside and kind of got stuck there.
It all takes place in our front room, and it’s a whole lot of lovely happy chat, but it’s not me or Katrina doing the chatting. It’s our parents, both sets, plus my grandparents. And hey, my sisters are both in there as well, gawking away for all they’re worth, and look! My baby sister’s friend is there too! And I think my brother was in there for part of it. We have, like, an audience of eight people. A freaking audience.
I’m standing by the door, in my tuxedo (which was Percy’s actually and somehow fit me quite well), in absolute agony. In agony. I just want to be gone. Can I please be gone? I don’t know how to stand. I’m trying to find a place to put my hands and I have this weird please-lord-strike-me-dead look on my face, a needles-in-the-eye-would-be-preferable-actually-go-on-STICKMESTICKMENOW sort of look.
And it just goes on and on and on. And then on some more. And I’m in agony the whole time.
It’s like this: the camera shows the families chatting, and then the camera pans up to show me dying there. And then it goes back to the family. And then it goes back to me, where if you look carefully you can see me trying to use my psychic powers to explode my head or something so I don’t have to stand there one second longer.
And, of course, the camera shows Katrina, too. She looks absolutely stunning, which I remember didn’t help matters (SO out of my league). Not to mention the fact that I hardly knew her, and I sure wasn’t going to do the getting-to-know-you song and dance in front of the families. Although with her dad and Percy talking railways there was no chance for us to do anything but stand there and listen. And stand there. And listen.
Early in the video she pulls on her coat, but the hint didn’t drop too well because five minutes later we’re both still in exactly the same place. I know she was wanting to get the hell out of there too but you’d never know it to look at her – she’s got that actor/dancer thing happening, with the happy smile and the not-freaked-by-people-staring attitude, and

Grief, it’s been a mad few days. The weekend passed by in spectacular form. I saw loads of people, had a neat time, and stayed out ridiculously late.
Of note was the Open Roleplaying Community session on Saturday – I was bringing to an end a game that has been running weekly for two years, with the aid of co-GM David Wright. In one of those couldn’t-plan-it moments, the group I was dealing with achieved their goal at the exact moment the group David was dealing with failed theirs. The exact order in which these two events happened would determine (dum dum dummmm) The Fate Of The World.
We gave it a 50/50 chance and rolled the dice. It didn’t go well. The bad guys won. The world went up in flames. It was a crazy end to an amazing game.
Now I’m in hardcore packing and sorting mode. Most of my stuff is in boxes. I’m almost ready to jump on a plane. One more day to go. It’s all rather exciting, really.
There are so many big things that I’d like to have formed some cogent thoughts about and posted here – the deaths of Robin Cook and David Lange among them. (Nice obituary for Lange in the Independent today, by the way.) But it’s just not been possible. This blog is going to be fairly quiet for the rest of the year, I think, but not completely silent.
We’ll see how we go.

Today was my last day at work.
Finishing a job is always a weird thing, especially when you’ve been in the post for 2 1/2 years. There weren’t any tears, but I definitely felt a big sadness saying goodbye to folk today. It helps that I’m going to see them again when I’m back in Edinburgh in November – it makes this farewell not a final one and that makes it easier to manage.
It’s been good at QMUC. I’ve liked it there. Time for different stuff now though.
Wednesday morning I’m on the plane to Chicago…

So I’m sitting here in my new kilt.
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Went out for my farewell meal last night, with work folk. Was great. Went to Monster Mash. Yay for sausages and mash as a big important farewell meal. I had a wonderful time.
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You know that thing where you don’t lock your cellphone in your pocket and it accidentally rings someone?
I managed to send some text messages to my new friend Aaron. He’s used to it, apparently, because his name’s Aaron. But it was a special moment even for him – I sent more texts than people usually do in these circumstances.
How many more, I hear you ask?
Aaron, I should add, turned up at ORC a few weeks ago when I was talking with Malc. As you all know, I’m from Wellington (Lower Hutt really but Wellington too) in New Zealand. As some of you will know, Malc created the indie RPG A/State, which is not the most well-known game in the world. So Aaron walks up and introduces himself as Aaron. I say, so Aaron, where are you from, and what games are you into? And he says, I’m from Wellington New Zealand, and I’m currently into this game you might have heard of called A/State.
Malc and I looked at each other. Sayeth Malc: “Is there a hidden camera in the room or something?”
But no, it was all for real. Just one of those things. (Wellingtonians: Aaron worked at Weta with among others Svend and Katherine, and indeed flatted with Katherine. The law holds true.)
It was 58 texts, by the way.
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Not kidding about the kilt. It’s Blackwatch tartan because I couldn’t find a Gordon tartan long enough that I could remotely afford. And I’m wearing it.
Like a true Scotsman.

I’m preparing to store my stuff.
Shipping things to NZ from the UK is not cheap. I’ve tried not to accumulate many things while here, and I’m trying to be ruthless now in figuring out what I don’t need any more. But it’s hard. I like stuff that reminds me of times past.
I’ve had a strange evening, going through old stacks of paper, figuring out what I can dispose of and what I want to keep. So many surprises just from the 2.5 years I’ve been here. The biggest surprises have been the pages and pages of theory and philosophy and design and planning and manifesto and self-analysis and exploration that I wrote in my first few months in Edinburgh, before I had a job to take up my time; thousands and thousands and thousands of words. Some of it sounds scarily smart. I have a clipping from a newspaper of an article saying it’s time for Europe to get over its anti-Americanism, and tucked inside is a response in my own hand saying exactly why and where and how the article is full of shit. For four large and tightly-scrawled pages. I don’t remember writing that at all.
And letters, and postcards, and other bits and pieces. Emotions gently woken, so they turn over inside my belly before sinking back, or not quite sinking, for I still feel that strange tightness just beneath the ribs. All these people, all the things they meant and mean to me.
And plenty of wacky stuff. I liked all the wacky stuff.
I have several boxes of this sort of thing back home, too, sitting in the attic of my parent’s house. I have always been a scrawler; I’ve never kept a diary (except for one year) but I’ve documented pretty much everything important that happened inside my head on paper, somewhere, if you know where to look and how to decode the references. It’s evidence of the life I’ve lived; it’s proof of where I’ve been and where I’m going. It’s also, to be honest, assistance for the fact that I’m not nearly as good at remembering stuff as I think I should be (something that bothers me a lot).
This stuff is really important to me, and it’s coming home.

Pics from the beach trip mentioned yesterday are up on Malc’s lj, and very fine they are too. He has a new camera. It is very nifty.
I am making pancakes. Except they’re turning out very strange, because I had an extra egg, and decided I’d just put it in the mix as well because I couldn’t see myself eating a lone egg soon, and it was best before a week ago already, and apparently that was a bad idea. My pancakes have a distinct omelette mystique. But I’m going to drown them in maple syrup anyway, so I’m sure it’ll turn out all right.
I am also trying to organise The America.
Yum. Pancakes. And maple syrup.

Sunday. A beach.
There is jumping off of things.
There is improvised two-lid flying discorama.
There is cheese. And cracker things. And olives and stuff.
There is, above all, good people.
It is… choice. It is choice. These are our Sundays in summer – great company, great food, and great places.
(And balancing. Lots and lots of balancing.)

Living is noise.
Living right is music.

A quick flowup to the last post:
The Curious Hamster continues to carry on his own Capitanchik-watch, and offers a quick response to my previous post, over on Big Stick Small Carrot. I’ve started looking through his archives and he’s got a lotta good stuff in there, so go check it out if you follow UK politics’n’stuff.
And everyone’s favourite knife-wielding maniac made my day with this.

Today, 29 July, is the traditional date on which members of the Church of Daffyd celebrate the birth of Daffyd.
I mark this occasion with the traditional raised glass and bowed head and sacrifice of seven healthy goats.
I have been a member of the Church of Daffyd for nearly ten years now, and it has filled my life with emotional confidence and financial success. Yea, Daffyd knows how to lay down a good spiritual methodology, and he smacketh it down right in the solar plexus of his faithful!
I have cherished each day my privileged position as one of his two scions on this earthly plane, and I look forward to the day when I can once again sit alongside him and make bad jokes about Star Wars.
Best of all, he’s never minded terribly much that I’m also the founder of the Cult of Leon, and a member of the Boys of the Bread. Or maybe he doesn’t know. Whatever works.
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David is also, of course, the originator and host of the additiverich blog collective, and hence you’re only reading these words because of him. (So blame him, not me.)
Thanks, man. Happy birthday. See you in six months!