No sooner had I posted the last blog than I had a stream of communications asking the simple but appropriate question “But What happened during the weekend ?”.
I totally understand your frustration and dilemma dear reader, but I had so much background to describe in regard to what went wrong I had scant opportunity or space to give expression to the running order of in game events.
So let me suckle your desires in the fullness of my eloquent prose.
A weekender like no other as I’m sure you now appreciate, but we are nought if not adaptable creatures and there were a number of firsts across the 5 days worthy of note.
I gave inference to Mrs Preet’s cooking last blog which may have pointed you towards her presence.
To clarify and update you historically.
On the numerous previous weekender events in this parish they would be carefully scheduled for times when Mrs Preet would be working long weekends and to accommodate the intrusion in her domain that sweaty gamers bestow, she would oft sleep elsewhere, the location of which I paid scant attention to, just not here, was all I needed to know.
A year or two back she did stay around as did others, but this is never an ideal dynamic as your dearly beloved Preet needs certain freedoms from the yoke that her absence offers in order to fully engage myself in the total immersion of abusing in a caring way those who I hold fraternally dear to me.
The plan this year being the first since she stopped bringing a wage into the house and became totally reliant on Preets hunter gatherer skills was to spend the weekend no more than a half mile away with family members.
Conversations were had as to whether Derek would go or stay and despite my estimable love for our faithful hound I felt he would be best tended to at her side rather than mine.
Clearly the constant ebb and flow of changes in the attendees here meant that this afforded her more “interpretation” on whether to be in the house or not. Having given her ticket for Thursday nights gig away and only having Tholdan here who she adores incomprehensively, she stayed the night leaving early next morning with dog. She had left us a huge Cottage Pie for tea seeing as how Frenchy was going to be eating and socialising elsewhere on the Friday (have I mentioned that previously?) so unavailable for galley bitch duties.
Her staying away extended to just the one night and having ascertained that nobody much was going to be here she was back in situ on Saturday night although Frenchy was firmly in place for sustenance fulfilment roles as usual and required. A constant “I’m not intruding am I?” the rhetorical question that knows no negative response, left me duplicitous in her belief that she wasn’t. We coped, even through the embarrassment of trying to play constant background porn on the laptop while we gamed. I had a vast and not totally eclectic dvd stack to amuse and distract and was desperately trying to keep feeding the minds of Twisty and Frenchy with a broad variety of delights. One of them had brought a couple of bizarre specialist type movies but the problem with mine is they are all so vaguely titled it can be a bit like a Tombola of surprises to see what animal vegetable mineral combination the title may allude to and then provide. So we gamed gamefully around the dining room table with a silent backdrop of imagery to occasionally draw the eye. I should point out that on the occasions we retired to the drawing room to watch widescreen DVDs they were only of comedic persuasion, the porn was strictly backdrop.
I always find it useful to have combi collections as even if what is showing is not to your taste, like trains in more developed countries than ours, there’ll be another one along in a minute. As such you can have interesting juxtapositions of the infamous Jordan and Dane porn movie followed by a Twink masturbating himself in a shower. It was this latter clip that confusingly drew a certain francophiles attention, to the extent that much later when amateur milf porn strayed firmly (wrong word to use in this context) into gilf territory, our dear Frenchy pleaded with us to put the gay porn back on, despite the rampant enthusiasm being displayed by the pensionable pleasure seeker.
All of this as I said, had to be toned down whenever we heard the approach of Mrs Preet. Interestingly after the weekend she made comment that alluded to her firm belief that all said porn had been delivered to this abode by the esteemed if wrongly maligned in this instance Twisty. Once again, in my house as in Floppy’s the man takes a bullet. He is our very welcomed human shield.
While just Tholdan and myself, we rattled our way through numerous card games including LOTR of course, Magic (within the limitations of my decks) and even AGOT which we played without alluding to where commas were in the card text thus proving it can be played without rancour. Having started our weekend with live comedy we went on to watch DVD shows of Jim Jefferies –amazing brilliant hard edged etcs, and then Billy Connolly – old tired grumpy meandering (I can’t imagine anyone being like this can you reader?).
Once Twisty and Frenchy joined us it was a mad squeeze to play a couple of games of Fluxx before he left. As with the seemingly infinite variety of Munchkin themes Fluxx is developing a broad and wide expansion set. It is my considered opinion that on first play of each new variety e.g. Monty Python Fluxx, Zombie, Pirate or whatever, they provide much added humour, but having played it a few times it is, as indeed it should be, just about the game, the theme becomes secondary and in some cases – quote three lines of dialogue, or, talk in an outrageous french accent, Tedious in the extreme. Having said all that, I must give Stoner Fluxx a try.
When reduced to three, clearly RPG’s were out of the question. Not to say there aren’t scenarios out there, but there just weren’t the game players at the table who could have had the wherewithal to source and run them. Likewise Board Games weren’t going to work, although had we got our shit together, Settlers of Catan could’ve happened, but a general malaise had set in.
Twisty had brought Infernal Contraption – not quite as frustrating when drunk as robo-rally but equally brain testing and fun to play, 4 stars, and Army of Darkness which, despite the number of times we played it, still left my head fried but more to do with my intoxication than the game itself which I will give 3 stars. We also had Frenchy’s Cutthroat Dungeons game which was a marvel on a number of levels, firstly that he remembered to bring it, and secondly that it was bought in his usual stick a pin in Amazon way which has previously brought us such delights as Dancing With Dragons. A fun and simple game to play CD feeds our Machiavellian traits well even though we did have to remind ourselves that we should really work together, at least until the end game, or there likely wont be one, 4 stars.
Being a team more used to multi playing the games never reached the infamous 8 hour LOTR in Amsterdam marathon. This meant we rattled through them in a manner that while repetitive did afford some variety. The Twisted one’s skill in Magic the Gathering deck building is commendable and I was able to show him in intricate detail exactly how some of his decks should be played when in the hands of a true expert.
We also required comfy chair breaks which led me to introduce them to what was my second viewing in 2 days of Jim Jefferies Alcoholocaust, it gets better every time, go listen to the Jim’n’Eddie Talkin Shit podcast. We then had to seriously do something about Frenchy’s continued insistence that Stewart Lee was a self indulgent bore.
So we tied him to the sofa, we didn’t want to but he insisted, and made him watch If You Prefer a Milder Comedian Please Ask For One. I resisted going for the “joke that Joe Pasquale couldn’t steal” routine but he will get to see that next time. Despite his determined resistance, the human loofah soon fell into our trap and was chortling and guffawing at the commanding comedic talent before us. We reached the end of the show and he turned to us and proclaimed “I was wrong, but can we watch that shower scene again now”. I smiled knowingly at Twisty and our epiphany completed declared “our work here is done”.
The company if restricted was as excellent and welcomed as ever, we brave resilient few held firm the flag of weekender freedom, the abuse was spread in profligate manner amongst each other and non attendees. So let this be a warning to those who failed, Not Mark, Mr Floppy, Sweepie, Kit, the Milfslayer, Next Doors Puppy, the Cyclist without a cycle, Caffrey the always a student, Thumper and or Scriitch, and all other pretenders to be attenders, I won’t even dream that Tomx will ever be unshackled by Jess. Sort it all out brothers!
The announcement that the aforementioned Lee will be performing at a comedy festival not 14 miles from my abode next May is a most pleasant bonus. Bed spaces are running out please book early.
Have A Week
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