Quick turnaround

Just back from a 72 mile pilgrimage - London to Canterbury - raising money for work with homeless in London. Off again in a couple of hours to visit new in-laws in Cardiff for the rest of the week. Quickly washing clothes, repacking bags, and catching up with online games in the meantime......

Chris Farrell is posting about Monopoly - and he's taking the game seriously:

We've been playing Monopoly a bit recently, and enjoying it. We've settled on the 4 player configuration, playing to the second bankruptcy, and then counting assets ..... This configuration works well, and I honestly have enjoyed it more than many new eurogames.

Ticking them off

Here's an excerpt from my task list for this month:

Task 1: Get married
Status: done
Comments: this went amazingly well, considering how many things could have gone wrong that didn't - Sue turned up, the weather was good (very important as we used a marquee), the food was great (thanks to hard work by many of the guests), and no-one got food poisoned! Even my speech went OK, and my best man Phil (my younger son) didn't dish too much dirt. At least he didn't tell the story about when .........

Task 2: Play games at wedding
Status: done
Comments: Vic Thiessen kindly organised an (optional) game session after tea. He set up and explained 2 games (Trans-Europa and Trans-America) to a small crowd of guests. These games went down very well with the non-gamers. In spite of it being my special day, I still lost.

Task 3: Go on honeymoon
Status: done
Comments: we had a lovely time in the Castleton area of Derbyshire. Beautiful self-catering accommodation at Shatton Hall Farm. We played the classic honeymoon game Lost Cities a few times- not sure why this is recommended for honeymoons as it's actually quite a nasty game when you get into it - as Sue clearly has: she showed me no mercy.

Task 4: Move to Tottenham
Status: done
Comments: thanks to marvellous help from friends (Simon, Fiona, Cathy) and family (Phil) my stuff was moved to my new home in Tottenham in a big van over last weekend. It was a big job, and left us sitting in a chaos of boxes and disassembled furniture on Sunday night. But that has (nearly) all been sorted out now - order is restored and, most importantly, my game collection is now happily established in its new quarters in my "den" upstairs.

Task 5: Find a local game group
Status: still outstanding
Comments: I'm wondering whether to try out the Swiggers in central London on Wednesday(?) evenings. But there must be a more local group in North London, but not sure how to find them. And icing on the cake would be a local and genial wargames opponent....

Task 6: Sell off some wargaming geare I never use
Status: still outstanding
Comments: in the quest for space in our shared home, I need to get rid some painted figures (an English Civil War army), some white metal (Teutonic Knights, Napoleonic ships, cowboys etc) and some home-made scenery. Perhaps I will take them to Salute (is that soon?) for the bring-and-buy?

Task 7: Go paragliding again before I get rusty
Status: still outstanding
Comments: Green Dragons and Butser Hill are both a fair old drive away now, though I would like to go to one of Andy's after-work winching sessions at Green Dragons soon. The local club is at Dunstable Downs - must investigate.

Homage to Surrey

One more day to go, then it's goodbye to Surrey and off to North London to marry Sue and live in "the smoke" for the forseeable future.

When I moved to Farnham, it felt like a big wrench saying goodbye to my little terraced house in Salisbury. I felt especially sad to be leaving behind long tramps through the Wiltshire countryside, long gaming sessions with my Salisbury group, and a long history with my local church. I didn't really see how Surrey could match this.

Three years later I can say that Farnham was a very pleasant surprise. A bit of exploration revealed lots of wonderful countryside on the doorstep - heathland walks nearby, hills and hangars in East Hampshire, and walking back to Farnham along the North Downs Way after a bus-ride to Guildford.

Then I was very fortunate to be introduced by Dave Farquhar to a great local gaming group - I've had so many fun sessions with Les, Keith and Trevor over the last 3 years. Thanks guys!

And my decision to worship at my local parish church turned out very well. Anglicanism was very new to me after decades of non-conformist churchmanship, but I found that I relished the liturgy and music at St Thomas, and made some good friends in my new church community.

So it's another wrench saying goodbye to all this, and I'm wondering how Wood Green can ever match it. But who knows? I may be in for another nice surprise.