World Of Spoons

A sad day

2009-01-07T23:35:00.003Z

A friend of mine pased away today.

Ewan Chrystal was a fixture at just about all the anime cons I've attended. He was a warm and friendly chap, who always had time to stop and have a word with other fans.
I'm not the only one that will be saddened by his passing.

A Good Read!

2008-10-18T20:00:00.001+01:00

I’ve been off work this week, mentally preparing myself for the chaos that is going to be my working life for the next month or so.

To cheer myself up, I popped into my local Waterstone’s, having talked myself into buying a E-reader electronic book. I can be a terrible gadget freak at times and for the first time in ages I found myself with money that wasn’t already allocated to bills.

So I was a bit deflated when the assistant told me they’d sold out. With money burning a hole in my pocket, I wandered about the shop, seeing if there was anything else I wanted. And I’m very glad I did! There amongst a pile of new titles was a book with a faux comic book cover and the intriguing title of “Wiffle Lever to Full!”

I had to have a look as that…

It’s by a chap called Bob Fischer (not the chess chappy) and it chronicles his experiences at some of the British Sci-Fi cons. I loved it, partly because I recognised similar events from cons I’d been to and partly because of his recollections of his childhood experiences of fandom (like him, I was a bored teen watching Star Trek - The Motion Picture at the cinema and glancing at the exit longingly).

It’s nicely written, and I’d recommend it to anyone of my generation who has guiltily eyed the toy sonic screwdrivers in Asda…

Farewell Big G

2008-03-08T20:07:00.002Z

Gary Gygax passed away on Tuesday.

For those that don't know, he was one of the co-creators of Dungeons and Dragons. I never met the man, but he had an enormous influence on my life. I met a lot of good people though gaming and I made my living for a while painting and sculpting gaming figures.

It didn't strike me just how much I'd been influenced until I had a visit from an ex I hadn't seen in nearly twenty years. We'd split just before I'd got into gaming and the look of amazement on her face as she looked at some of the gaming stuff laying on the dining room table suddenly hammered it home how much my life had changed.

I think like many people, I rolled a D20 in rememberance on Tuesday night.

Syncronicity

2008-02-21T23:44:00.004Z

Yesterday I had an appointment at the dentists. Not a source of great joy as I needed three fillings and I knew that meant at least a couple of jabs that would have me upper lip dead to the world for a couple of hours.
And so verily it did did come to pass that I got jabbed by my dentist three bloody times. As I went back into the waiting room to wait for the jabs to do their work, a lady was coming out of the other surgery, having obviously just been jabbed as well.
We got talking and rather freakily, it turned out she did the same job that I do, just at a different University.

I pondered on the odds of that happening through the subsequent twenty or so minutes of dental work that followed, it took my mind off the fact that my dentist sounds remarkably like doctor Nick Riviera from the Simpsons...

On leaving the dentist, I went to the local game shop to get my friend his belated birthday present. I'm pretty sure that the woman behind the counter thought I'd had a stroke, until I managed to slobber the word "dentisht", at which point her face lit up with relief.
When I got back to work, I realised that my mouth was plastered with blood. I must have scared the daylights out of her ^_^

Just great...

2008-01-26T22:22:00.001Z

This morning I recieved a letter from the inland revenue.
In it, using thinly veiled threats they demanded repayments of money they overpaid me over a period of years.
Which is bad enough, but considering that they never sent me a bill, that just makes them looks really bad.

What a set of pompous, overblown idiots they are.

Oh well

2008-01-12T21:58:00.000Z

Well, I'd hoped to do my first entry on this without sounding like a grumpy old git, but events seem to have overtaken me...

I popped down to my local Argos today, to pick up a new remote for my TV. I paid for it at the cashpoint and the cashier told me to pick the remote up at the collection point - she said it would be ready in two minutes. The time on the receipt said 13.35.

At 14.00 I was still waiting...

I managed to attract the attention of one of the women serving on the counter and pointed out that I'd been waiting twenty five minutes.
She took one look at the receipt and said "Oh! these aren't collected from here, the cashier has them on a rack behind her, she should have handed you one straight away".
Great.
She ran off and got one for me, stuffed it into my hands muttered a very unconvincing "Sorry"and scuttled off.

There was a little postbox to one side with "Tell us what you think" written on it. I made a beeline for it. Funnily enough there were no forms left to fill in, so I wrote a complaint on the back of an order form and posted that...

Amazing a similar thing happened to me in another branch of Argos in my town nearly two years ago. Again, that was for something that should have been handed to me at the cashpoint.

Well thanks for the customer care, Argos. You won't be seeing me or any of my family in one of your shops unless we get really desperate.

End of rant...