A grand day

Today has been an all round excellent day.

It started with my usual walk in the woods, listening to the Dark Tower on my mp3 player. This book has really grabbed me now, with a paradox created by the events of the Gunslinger and the Drawing of the Three tearing apart the minds of characters in two different worlds. Great stuff.

I got home to a nice cup of tea and my daily visit to Animal Crossing, where I managed to catch a Pale Chubb, a Clown fish and a Sea Horse as new additions to the aquarium in the museum. No Joan today, at least as far as I could see, but I am growing disenchanted with the returns on the Stalk Market. I’m only growing a red turnip to give to Wendell the next time he visits.

Next came an indulgent bacon sarnie for breakfast with a mug of fresh coffee, and then I settled down to finish read ‘Call of the Weird’ by Louis Theroux. It’s a fascinating read, part travelogue and part a return visit to some of the subjects of his ‘Weird Weekends’ documentaries. UFO fanatics, porn stars, gangsta rappers, hookers, con men, cult members and neo-nazis all, to a greater or lesser extent have some impact on Louis whether in his efforts to understand their particular subcultural weirdness or in his rather touching concern for their well being. An excellent read, but it is probably quite dependent on having seen the documentaries that it refers to.

The next couple of hours were spent reliving my mispent youth in two respects – namely a visit to a war games convention and also revisiting the Octagon centre where I seemed to spend rather a lot of my student days umpty-tum years ago. It was good fun to watch some of the elaborate and spectacular games, with a recreation of Sharpe’s Skirmish being one of the highlights, and also to browse the games stalls seeing some rather outrageous prices being charged for games that I owned umpty-tum-and-a-bit years ago. In the end I just bought a copy of The Archers board game for £4.00 which looks like fun and should go down well at the the uk.media.radio.archers barbecue this year, and Alicia bought some sort of pewter dragon candlestick thing which kept her happy. I also got to meet Kaliesin, albeit briefly, who turned out to be quite different to the mental image that I had of him.

Home again, jiggity jig, for another walk with the dog, and then another visit to the New York of the 1940s and my alternate life as a Mafioso in the Corleone family. I’ve now taken over most of Brooklyn as well as Little Italy, and finally managed to plant that well known horses head in the bed and hide a pistol in a restaurant toilet for use in an assassination. I am now a made man, and it felt quite an honour to finally talk to the Don in person.

Spag bol for tea, and now a beer and a bit of telly to round the day off. All in all, ACEBEST.