One year on

As of the 21st of this month, I shall have been living in Birmingham for one year. It is at times like this when I feel it necessary to take stock of my achievements and how they relate to the goals I set for myself.

Overall, I’m quite happy. I made the effort to have a social life, and I have one. Not only that, I actually socialise with more than one group! Shock! As for the reason I’m here, university, it’s gone well enough. I was a mediocre philosophy student overall, though I did have a few moments of coming close to being good at it. I took up a new language and shortly afterwards a new direction in life, and along with that new language came new friends. I’ve discovered a new passion, and with it made a dozen or so new friends. FRIENDS. MMM. I need those this time. I didn’t mind not having many people at Northampton (two, in fact, except for Amy, and sadly one of them left before the end of my second year), but since we’re going to be here for more than a decade…

Had a great weekend. We went back home for Amy’s dad’s birthday. The first part of the day involved five or six hours on a boat on the Broads, which was awesome. First of all because I got to wear my Navy overcoat because I’m secretly a child, and second because on our way back to the boaty place we were literally in the middle of a massive sailing race. It was really awesome to see them up close. Unfortunately, our little electric boat had neither the speed nor manoeuvrability of the sail-boats, so we had to be very careful in staying both out of their way and out of the way of the bank. Stressful driving though it entailed, watching hundreds of sail-boats zig-zagging along the water was the highlight of that part of the day.

In the evening we went to Le Restaurant Fancie. There I was adventurous enough to have, as my starter, pigeon. Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. Apparently, game isn’t cooked properly. It’s hard enough for me to persuade myself to eat flesh of rat-bird without it being undercooked and very visibly so. Ah well, I tried it. I think I’ll stick to normal meat creatures from now on, like cows and potatoes.

I even got to go Home, and to see my new sister. She’s much like the old one, only brown.

Graeme and I are in the midst of redeveloping Life as a tabletop RPG, which certainly makes a lot of things easier (for one thing, we don’t need to contrive a death mechanic – people just DIE), but it does mean retooling some of our lore elements. For instance, the old Clique as Race idea no longer suits. While it’s perfectly legitimate to have an ethnic group called Goths, I somehow doubt that Geeks, Preps and Jocks will fit in quite so well. If we can avoid elves and trolls, I’ll be happy. If we can also avoid stupid names that just mean elf and troll, I’ll be happier still. I don’t want people asking ‘so, what are the Elves called in this game?’ Though to be fair the Hos and Goths are already basically elves, so that might be optimistic of me.

Meeting Lisa and Charlotte for lunch today. LUNCH AT THE GUILD. It sounds so posh until you realise it’s a bar in a student union. I suspect clothing is appropriate for such an engagement.

Ta.