“One of the things forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.”
Terry Pratchett Guards! Guards!

Like a lot of people I know I was upset to hear of the passing of the (note the deliberate absence of unnecessary epithet ‘fantasy’) author Sir Terry Pratchett. It seems a little strange to get emotional over the death of someone you do not relay know, but there are people who have made a major impact on me through my life and as with many friends and family you only really appreciate them when they are gone.

I cried a little when I heard the news, in the same way that I found it hard to unemotionally take the death of Elizabeth Sladen a few years back and I know I will again when the various other heroes of my childhood eventually pass over – David Attenborough had better have a State funeral (hopefully in many years to come) to my mind, I’d certainly turn up to pay my respects to a man who gave me a true wonder and diversity of the natural world.

But going back to Terry Prachett, for me he had just always been there. I was always a voracious reader as a child but a bit one track and Pratchett’s work appeared in the shops at just about the time I was widening my net. The first two Discworld novels are, in my opinion, not great, but fun enough (and taught me about scrofula). Then suddenly with the third book ‘Equal Rites’, which is just as relevant sadly nowadays then it was back in the 1980s when talking about sexual equality suddenly appeared and he was off, and I was hooked. I met him the first time at a signing in Newcastle and a few times later on (most notably being a signing of the wonderful Good Omens in Oxford, I wore the promotional T Shirt with ‘My other T shirt has a crocodile on it’ emblazoned on the back until it literally fell apart many years later…) and brushed near at a number of conventions in the 90s where the presence of a floating black hat among the masses was always a sign he was about. There is no doubt he enjoyed what he did and that always came over in both the writing and at signings and the like. From his friend Neil Gaiman’s insightful article a short while back in the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman ) it is clear that like any other human being Pratchett could be difficult and angry, but he also knew the importance of not letting that get in the way of those who loved his books and loved him.

So I started my love affair with his work in my teens; I’ve just put down the last book published to date this weekend, although I guess there might be something posthumous. Once or twice a year a new book would come out so I’d drop whatever I had been reading and devour the new bit of thoughtful silliness. A new Terry Pratchett was less of a book, more of an annual event to be looked forward too. But no more and I find it especially sad as some really interesting books were starting to emerge, maybe precisely because he knew time was limited. In particular the non Discworld novels such as ‘Nation’ and ‘Dodger’; books you can enjoy as adults and give to teenagers that cover serious issues without pulling their punches whether that be asking questions about death, life, belief or the human condition. They are a good place to start for someone who is not ready to engage with the entire Discworld marathon from ‘The Colour of Magic’.

So I will look at my sagging shelves of hardbacks, some signed, some not (at one point we had a running joke that there were fewer unsigned Terry Pratchett books then signed ones) and look forward to rereading them and reflect on a remarkable publishing life and a wise man who has made both think and laugh for thirty years, which is no mean feat. I doff my cap, Sir Terry and Gaspode and I are off for a sausage in a bun.

Do you think this year is going fast? I certainly do. The blossom is starting to open and I’m starting to get clogged up sinuses as the tree pollen does its important (for the tree, and for those of us with plum trees that want plums from them – apparently) yet in my mind partly evil work. Near us is a primary school that has a massive carpet – the only way to describe it – of gorgeous crocuses under trees near the road; not only are they are all fully out, now they are starting to go over. The Black headed gulls in the park now have their black heads back (as opposed to a head marking that looks suspiciously like a pair of headphones). I’m not going to be surprised to see ducklings soon.

But it cannot be time actually passing any faster, can it? Or maybe it can. I’m a relativity open minded kind of person (groan). Or is it the just the perception of time rushing past like one of Douglas Adams’ famous deadlines? And if it is only the perception of passing time is that enough to make it real, if everyone seems to agree the year is flying past. And it does seem for a lot of people this is the perception for some reason, after usual generic comments on the weather the next topic of general agreement seems to be ‘the year seems to be flying by, don’t it?’ with sage nods of the head and scratching of heads (maybe starting to exaggerate the image a little there).

I was trying to work out why it feels that way and for me, and if it mattered. I do think that perception of time does matter. How we perceive the world impacts how we respond to the world both consciously and unconsciously. So if we feel we are running to keep still, we run a bit faster. A mouse ‘sees’ time and life in a very different way from either ourselves or an oak tree and the biology of all is related to that perception, perhaps partly driven by that. So it makes me wonder that if we perceive that life for many of us seems to be speeding up that we will be feeling the biological impacts of that on our bodies and the way we behave.

It is not the same for everyone. We have good friends who live very different lives from ours and their pace is not the same. When we visit, briefly, things calm down. Possibly that is why it is something we like to do because even a weekend can feel like a mini holiday. I sometimes feel positively envious and then realise that one of the reasons I feel time is passing me by is that my time is full of ‘stuff’, and an awful lot of that stuff can be blamed not on work (which I would love to lay all my troubles on of course) but things that I am doing because I want to. So it is entirely my fault (albeit sharing the schedule with the Lovely Wife). But the diary (as opposed to the dairy, which seems to appear too much in my writing thanks to the vagaries of my typing and the inadequacy of spell checkers,  suggesting I am partly obsessed by lactose containing products) being so full does make it feel that we should be ‘taking bookings’ for 2017! And I think this is where the perception is being warped for us in a way I suspect not dissimilar to those with children having look several years ahead to plan and manage their future. This focus on the future is not a bad thing, any more than having a life full of incident is necessarily a bad thing; but it is tiring, and it does mean that perhaps things are flying past so fast that I am not enjoying them as much as I could. Sometimes when I go into work in the early mornings the relative quiet of the hour is rewarded with birdsong or a surprised rabbit and stopping for a moment to listen can be one of the nicest and memorable moments of the day, and if I want to make the most of my time I might need to alter my perception and take in the uniqueness of what my personal version of life looks like. That, I think, would be a good thing.

One of the things on my mind this week has been authenticity. I’m not talking about the providence of Grand Masters, which is the proper use of the word. I’m thinking more of the way it is often used now in language as a synonym for honesty. Except, and this is what I’ve been idly musing about, is that they are not really interchangeable. Related, yes, but there is more to being authentic then being honest.

Let me explain.

When someone tells me something and is authentic in the telling, there is something more than just telling me the truth. The truth – let us assume such thing exists, which is another discussion entirely – should be a matter of fact. In some cases it clearly is. If I have a broken leg, the truth is my mobility is going to be restricted for a while until it heals. The doctor telling me that can be honest, and that is probably all you would normally ask. But I think authenticity adds a different layer.

So let us assume I have a broken leg. I’ll confess up front that I don’t actually know what that feels like so apologise for any broken leg sufferers past and present. I’ve been incredibly lucky in that department, as the only piece of me I know I have broken was my nose, at 18, in my lest ever school rugby game when – unusually for me – I went rather too enthusiastically into a ruck and came out looking like I’d done a round with Tyson. Actually this is memorable in two ways – broken noses do not really hurt for long. What makes this memorable was on, the current physical evidence – by the time the nurse at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle got around to me the nose had already healed and, when he offered to re-break it in order to straighten it out my teenage cowardly teenage self quickly declined the generous offer, hence it is wonky to this day. Secondly is the experience of sitting for ages in A&E in what was a white shirt and shorts, covered in dried blood. Not a pretty sight and needless to say I had plenty of space to sit by myself on those hard plastic chairs beloved of all institutions.

Back to the broken leg scenario, and the doctor can tell me in a number of ways that my hopes to compete in the Winter Olympics (hey, fantasising) in a month’s time are now over. He can tell me honestly, because the facts are clear. I will feel awful. The fact I know he is right does not – at this point at least – help me at all. Surely, I think, there must be some new stem cell treatment that can allow me to keep a hold on my dreams of international stardom?

I suspect the pain in my heart might be more than any in my leg.

Or, he can tell me the facts and pitch it differently and say ‘I’ve racked my brains for anything we can do to make it heal faster, but we just can’t. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you won’t be able to compete.’

Let us assume he looks me in the eye and I’m convinced he’s not the biggest liar since the two robots tried to convince me that ‘Smash’ tasted better than real mashed potatoes.

I am going to feel better about the bad stuff because as well as being honest, there is some emotion in there. That is where I personally feely authenticity wins. When you give bad news and there is no way of avoiding it you need to recognise how the receiver feels, and if possible show how you too are emotionally affected by whatever it is. In a recent work presentation a difficult message was made much more palatable by the deliverer showing how passionate he was about what had to happen, how he understood how we felt and how he felt it too. Being open to the emotional aspect is very hard, and some people are going to hate you whatever you say. But they are going to hate you anyway, so take the hit and recognise that by putting yourself on the line you are going to take a fair number of them with you, who would not have done so if you had just been ‘honest’.

Well birthdays come and go. This one went very nicely and quietly with only a little bit of unplanned adventure as we got lost on Northchurch Common in Ashridge forest in the rain. But it is a beautiful place and even in the cold and the wet the thrill of pretty much guaranteed dear sightings – compliment with a gorgeous Goldcrest, one of smallest and loveliest birds more than compensates.
As an aside, I am somewhat amused at the unusual quarters that birthday greetings come from these days. Apart from the now traditional swathe of Facebook posts my inbox was full of cheerful missives of Happy Returns reminding me just how many mailing lists I have managed to be on. It was be nice of course if I actually believed that The Who, Snow Patrol and/or Pixie Lott had actually taken the time to send me an email rather than just generated it via an automated system, and I guess if I strongly suspect that 1D fans (considering their likely demographic) are particularly thrilled anyway to get one even if they do understand that the blessed ones themselves had not pressed send (to be clear, Harry Styles did not appear in my in box in any form, I am just making a prediction here).
It is harmless enough, and I think clearly meant to make you feel closer to your artist of choice, but I do get enough junk mail as it is (those mailing lists again). The only interaction I have ever had with a recording artist was a recent Twitter conversation with Josienne Clarke about her and Ben Walker’s new album expressing my hope that since she had self-appointed herself as the ‘harbinger of doom’ the new album would have to be as depressing as the last one – well, after all this is Folk we are talking about. She assured me that it was, and indeed it’s a lovely piece of melancholy (‘Nothing can bring back the hour’ is the album, in case you are feeling too cheerful. Kind of sets the stall out from the title, don’t it? Just do not buy as ‘getting ready to go out’ music as it is more likely to make you want to crawl back into bed. And hide under the duvet).
The automate emails though did make me wonder about how easily we seem to be pleased these days and how little effort we make. It occurred to me that I have only given one friend an actual, physical, card this year – and that was because I could hand it to him. We’ve received more thank you notes from God children and the like for Christmas just gone (well behaved lot that they are – or at least well behaved parents) than I received birthday cards. I guess there is a good environment story in there, but it is not the same for me emotionally. After the age of 21, you’re lucky to get a text. Still, what things mean a lot to some people mean nothing to others. I recall with some pain one Christmas when my father took me aside to tell me that my mother had been upset because the card I had sent them had obviously come out of a pack. I was mortified, and I never made the mistake again. It was not that my mum wanted a particularly large or fancy card; she wanted a card that she knew I had deliberately picked for her, that I had engaged personally with the greeting. It mattered to her. It matters to my dad as well, so although my mother is no longer with us, it is still important to find the right card.
I do not have shares in Clinton (other card shops are available). But I do think that we should think a little more about what impact we have with each other in all of our interactions and if they are important tailor them appropriately.
I hereby apologise for all the times I have and will continue probably to get it wrong!

Spending time with one of my God children and his siblings and family this weekend set off a series of thoughts about memory and childhood, and what a weird wee beastie that thing actually can be. On discussion with the Lovely wife later it was a thought we both shared. Why do we remember some things and not others, and what is it as a childhood memory that makes it persist when hours and days and years have been consigned to the dustbin – or at least filed away somewhere in a safe place in the archives of our brains (and, as we all know, the safe place is the one place we will never find again, that’s what makes it safe. There is a story in that somewhere.)

Now, I do not mean bad memories. I think that we all understand that when something caused us pain or intense embarrassment it burns it on our psyche in a way that can never really be removed, and I know we all have plenty of those. Let’s not give our own memory trolls anymore ammunition.

No, I’m thinking of the good nostalgic memories, things we look back to fondly, although perhaps with a bit of confusion.

For example, it is about a year since my Nana passed away and needless to say she has been in my thoughts. Some of the best quality time I had with her as a child as I got to spend the autumn half term with her in her caravan at Blyth on the North East Coast, sometimes with Mum, but often just the two of us. I have more happy memories of this then I really should have as Blyth in October – let’s be honest, anytime – is the back end of beyond and no one would ever suggest going there for a holiday.

But there are so many good memories. Windswept walks on the promenade, empty of course, and the drowned bandstand. The weird Bill and Ben (as in Flowerpot men) sculpture in the park (as this is the late 70s mercifully un-vandalised – I bet the poor things are not there now). The newsagent halfway along the three mile walk into town from the largely deserted caravan site, responsible of course for sweets, but most importantly the place I found my first issue of Doctor Who Weekly (issue three as it happens but I was always a bit late to catch onto things).

What amazes me is all these things are incredibly, well, minor and frankly (Doctor Who weekly aside) naff (good underused British word). It goes on. There was a little cinema in Blyth and I went there a lot. But the only movie I remember seeing there –well – was… Roger Corman’s ‘Battle Beyond the Stars’ (1980). Never heard of it? Not surprised. Roger Corman made a successful career of ripping off major hits with a lookalike on a minimal budget. Spielberg does ‘Jurassic Park’, Corman does ‘Carnosaur’. Most of the movies are truly terrible, but hey, who cares. He was not trying to win BAFTAs. ‘Battle’ is actually rather good in places – it is the magnificent seven in space, and has a decent cast, although I just love that Robert Vaughn is in it playing exactly the same role that he plays in the classic western. I bet he was grinning all the way through that. I love jobbing actors who can laugh at themselves.

But why is this special movie to me? Well, I think it must be that I was on holiday. In itself it is not memorable or even any good, but it was watched at a time I was feeling relaxed and happy.

Not a revelation really but, and here is my long winded point, if we want children to remember things I think that the aspect of game and the fun is all important. I’m a bit with Mary Poppins on this. My friend’s kids have special names for places in the landscape around where they live and you just know that in thirty years those places will be clear in their memory and strong in their association to happy times. I just wish I could apply this to everything I do, not only when we are on holiday as maybe we could retain even more of the richness and uniqueness of life.

A lot of last week – time, energy and brain power – was spent on one of those corporate external trainings where a mixture of exercises, buzz words and diagrams attempting to make you see the world differently – and, in theory, operate differently and better than you have been. Now, some people, myself included, have a tendency to roll eyes, groan (not again, twenty plus years of this for goodness sake!) and already begin to write off the effort as a waste of several work days on something you are going to then shove in a desk draw for the rest of eternity – or rather until the next records purge.

Most of that is true.

Not all of it though. The reason why big companies pay vast amounts of cash for this kind of training is because usually at the heart there are some powerful and good ideas. It may be the perspective that to really understand something you need to hear it about eight times (I think that is pretty true actually), or the ‘S’ bend as people adjust to change of any sort (look it up). I found Benjamin Zander’s talk on possibilities very affecting, even if he is quite abrasive as a speaker (maybe that is the point, unlike a lot of this ilk he does not want you to love him) – the concept of how to capture in young people ‘the light in their eyes’ as they finally grasp a little of the possibility they might be, and the attitude to treat any setback without an Anglo-Saxon expletive but rather with a ‘how fascinating! I wonder why that happened?’ has certainly stuck in my head (but while I cannot play music, music speaks to me).

So anyway, we go back to the latest lot of stuff. And I found some of it pretty useful – none of it is earth shattering, it never is. But sometimes it is the obvious stuff that needs a little reminder every now and then. Every time I go into Wilkinson’s I’m reminded that an awful lot of people need a remedial course in manners (and before I am accused of my Waitrose orientated middle class bias here, let me say I don’t see the same thing in Iceland and the staff, bless them, are the ones that get upset by people’s impatience).

So this time the big old new thing for me was this ‘Best ever’ concept. Put bluntly, the idea is that everything will work better if you treat every interaction as the ‘Best ever’ – considering the circumstances. Or, try and make the best of any interaction you might have. Try and make it good for both of you. Smile and chat with the person on the till. Do not scowl at the Inspector checking your train ticket. Shake the hand of the traffic warden giving you a ticket. OK, I’m pushing it on the last one, and actually it is not always about being nice to people, but making the most of each opportunity.

Sounds terribly fluffy… And I guess it is, but it is also quite fun. I’m writing this on my way to Brussels having consciously tried to apply this to my experiences at security; at passport control and in the lounge. I’m trying to make it feel like a fun adventure rather than just another slog through the Channel tunnel and it is kind of working. Mainly I think because it makes me feel positive, when naturally I am a glass half empty person. And if I can keep it up and this kind of attitude can be perpetuated – well, happiness is overrated anyway. I am not sure it is every achievable. But as someone pointed out to me some years ago, is it better to yearn for happiness that may never be attainable then to be perfectly content with where you are?

And as people deserve references:

http://www.verusglobal.com/

and http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion?language=en

So, after my glowing endorsement of the art of roleplaying last week I did kind of suggest that there were problems. There are several, but first, let us be clear what I do not mean.

I do not mean that people get disturbed playing games and/or confuse reality and fantasy. They are much more likely to do that watching reality TV shows (which are far more disturbing and much less connected with reality than a game set in the far future on another planet). There was a fair amount of anecdotal rubbish pushed around in the eighties on this topic, and half a minute of coherent thought on this one I think justifies the somewhat dogmatic way I am viewing this. The clincher for me is that one of the major points of roleplaying is to consciously create a new reality. It is true that listening to gamers talk to each other about a game can be a bit disturbing, especially if the game is horror based, and the Lovely Wife has noted that, on the occasions where normal people like herself are around my gaming friends we do often branch out into a special brand of undecipherable talk that makes no sense at all to anyone not playing that particular game. So this is real problem number one; it is very easy indeed to fall into the abyss of in jokes and references that the players find hysterical (time and time again) while the long suffering loved ones look on in a mixture of confusion and pity. Or worse, sometimes these same loved ones, out of a misjudged sense of loyalty, pick up on some of the odd references and even start to use them… While mercifully not understanding anything about the reference (‘well done fluffy!’ is a particular favourite and has infected several households despite being a throwaway bit of silliness from a game we stopped playing over twenty years ago). Richard Dawkins – if you think religion is a powerful ‘meme’ mate, it has nothing on the longevity of some of these things.

You see, this is the worst and best kind of in jokes. With something like my Doctor Who obsession I can at least point to literally millions of people worldwide that are even more devoted that I am, and while my mind is full of useless ‘Who’ trivia I know that there are many with even more. But these gaming in-jokes are shared by maybe six or seven people, tops. That takes obscurity to new heights. We don’t have to share with thousands of juvenile latecomers. They’ll never feel exactly the same thrill as we finally won the battle of Illyria (against obligatory overwhelming odds, no fun otherwise). Or when the nuclear device exploded in space throwing us into a dystopian future (that one confused us to, still does). Or from the same game, when confronted by the name ‘Barney’ do not immediately think of the dinosaur (terrifying though he is) but of a marauding purple (no relation) time travelling bio-mechanoid whose appearance general meant character death, or at least the disintegration of large parts of the local area. Mean nothing, gentle reader? Well, sorry about that, these are ours and to be frank this is part of the fun.

But there is the other problem, which unfortunately we cannot do much about. That problem is time. Time for the beleaguered GM to create an entire world – or even if they are using sourcebooks, read the things enough to know what is going on well enough that they will not screw up in game play and have to initiate the embarrassing ‘shift reality’ manoeuvre as a major character suddenly is alive/dead/changes sex or suddenly it is actually Tuesday and not Saturday as previously communicated. A single game session (an actual game can, literally, go on forever in theory) takes the best part of a weekend to get into and with children, volunteering and general Real Life stuff does make it difficult to get even four of five people together; it was so much easier at university, which kind of explains why that is one of the times when most games (of incredible complexity at times) are played. Now it feels an increasingly rare event, although as with anything you enjoy and have to ration, when it does happen it always turns out to be memorable in some way.

Just last session, for example, it turned out that my Inuit shaman, washed up on the shores of Roman Britain in a block of ice (no, I don’t know why either, yet) might actually be about to be immortalised in this game world as that Merlin bloke.

Now that doesn’t happen every day.

A follow up to last week; staying with friends in the Chiltern’s on Saturday resulted in a temporary and beautiful bit of snow fall; just enough to make you think ‘ooh isn’t that lovely’ and wish Christmas was in fact about to happen rather than several weeks ago now. Also, it went before you could start to get a little nervous about that late night car journey home. So, yes, happy now, roll on spring time.

When of course I say ‘staying with friends’ I’m avoiding the real truth of the matter which is that I was ‘playing games with friends’. Roleplaying to be specific, something which periodically I do think about whether it is reasonable to for a man in his forties to be involved in and not something I should have dropped when I left University. Of course every time the result of this idle thought is a resounding yes. It is precisely at this age that the gaming is better than it has ever been to some extent. Let me explain.

To the uninitiated, role playing games are an exercise in group storytelling. There is a huge range of potential types, though the majority fall into the high fantasy genre (the most famous commercial game is ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ which is a glorious celebration of every fantasy cliché you care to come up with), but there are science fiction games, horror games, superhero games – anything you like really. My personal favourite for a game idea – although I never have gotten round to playing as yet – is ‘Bunnies and Burrows’ where the players get to role play, well, rabbits, a-la Watership Down. Anyone who knows that particularly wonderful book will know that it’s a dangerous world out there if you are a bunny.

Beyond the commercial games of course you can just make it up if you are prepared to put the work in to design it. Mostly these days we take a commercial game set up and adapt it; all the existing games are deeply flawed in some respect or other but provide a good starting point.

A game normally works well with a group of 4-6. One person is effectively god; he or she runs the game and has to represent the world in its complexity, including all the other people (or things) that live in the world, and have worked out what the overall plot of the story is. As you can guess, to do this well is a massive amount of work and when you find a good Games Master (GM) then you tend to stick with them (poor things). For everyone else it is a bit of doddle really; they just have to manage one solitary imaginary character within the story world the GM has created, and do their best to mess up the story as much as possible.

You see this is where it gets fun. The GM controls everything but the characters devised and run by the players. Those characters get to interact with the plot and the GM has to keep up by working out what the implications of these multiple interactions will be; like having to constantly rewrite the novel as most of your major characters have (literally) taken on a life of their own and refuse to do what they are told. What happens when your protagonist decides not to go to bar you have arranged him to be kidnapped at and stay in bed and watch TV instead? Or he accidentally gets killed in the kidnap attempt (when being alive is crucial in events yet to happen)? Or actually turns the tables on the kidnappers and finds out who is the real bad guy far too early in the plot?

Well… You make it up of course. That’s the whole point and the bit that is the most satisfying about a game – the stuff that happens when a group of creative people get together and improvise. When it works (and with a group who have been playing for decades, it usually does) it can be hilarious and memorable, usually so when a player does something utterly unexpected and the GM ripostes with something nefariously clever.

Unfortunately there are drawbacks. More on that next week.