Entry for 25th January, 2008

Welcome to the Blog of the Kindly Cuppa
40 Cups of Tea With 40 Friends
is my goal in life.
And it must be done before 10th July.
Click here to find out why.
If you would like to be my friend and earn a QCT (Qualifying Cup of Tea) then let me know.
No. of QCTs to date: 4
As part of the preparations for the great Dungeons and Dragons revival, I thought I'd pop into a shop in Glasgow that sells stuff for role playing games. I used to love these places when I was a teenager. To my younger self it seened that the salesmen had hit the jackpot in life - getting to spend their whole lives amidst the arcane paraphenalia of role playing games. This really was the stuff that dreams were made of.
Nothing has changed in the twenty five years or so since I've been into one of these shops (Yes. Really. Twenty five years. I know it scarcely seems possible, given my boyish good looks and athletic physique.) The shelves are still stuffed with rule books and adventures packed pristine in plastic bags. There's still a back room where long-haired, spotty boys cluster round a table arguing over some obscure rule about hobgoblins' ability to see in the dark.
I say nothing has changed. That is not strictly true. I fear that I have. I felt odd, and old, and out of place. The boys in the back room looked - well - nerdy. And the salesman didn't look heroic any more. He looked a bit fat and pasty, and as if he did not have a girlfriend. (Girlfriends do not understand Dungeons and Dragons. God knows why, but I think they are embarrased by it. Can you imagine?) It was all I could do from taking him by the scruff of his faded Iron Maiden T shirt and yelling "Grow up. Get a proper job. You are wasting away your precious life. You can never recover the lost years."
I still spent £12.99 on Dungeons and Dragons books. Well - they looked so tempting in their shrink wrap. And I don't have to impress a girlfriend any more. And when I bought them, I did so with a sense of irony, ok?