Burble

Not enough time to say all that I've done in the last couple of weeks, without boring so... impressionistic summary coming up - realists duck n' cover!

New game in London town - trying to spot plainclothes officers. Personally, I tend to go for any largish man or chubby woman either walking in circles or standing still. Symbols of a burgeoning police state - how do you spot yours?
Meanwhile, the game called Planescape Torment has filled my life. I hunger for it, for the outlandish discoveries in it; the street that gives birth, the angel trapped in a seven-circled pit, the insane and immortals wandering through marketplaces. I keep seeing stuff in the big city that reminds me totally of it - hawkers on street corners screaming apocalyptic shite, weirdly attired groups of small people (Chinese, admittedly), and just a whole collection of seemingly innocuous outsiders - you want to grab the nearest plainclothes and shout "look, them, they're aliens, demons!" but they'd probably turn out to be a clinical health worker or something.
Despite Ealing's reputation as a nice place, I had cause to ring the police. Fighting in the street. Two middle-aged men, one fat, shaven-headed, black-clad like a snooker-player, trying to do kung-fu on a fleeing drunken offender. Like all of London, the streets here switch from posh to rundown at a metronome beat.
Met old childlike uni friend Priya et pals at Regent's park festival sponsored by expensive fruit mush. Was "token white guy". Lovely buncha people, terribly expensive overmarketed drink for kids.
Sometime's everythings new for me. I regard the world as a staring child, fascinated by all things, slow to grow, quick to communicate. Every book I read has emotional annotations - was reading Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story collection "Seance", and there's a character in there, a slovenly man (all Singer's characters are jewish, before you take note) whose only love is his pet parrot and who murders his wife when she lets it go; the blank-eyed equanimity with which he relays that reminds me of certain clinical psychopaths I know. I ring them, but they're out...
Went to Jeff Minter's place in Wales (Pengawr, near Camrthen I think). He keeps llamas, pygmy goats, mountain sheep and Jacob's sheep. There is no record of Jacob loaning him said sheep. He lives on vindaloo and said farm with Giles, his Italian partner (in work and love, I think) both of whom sport manly hair, beards. We played Neon, went for curry, played Robotron, I went home. I never mentioned my extreme allergy to hairy animals (not sure if Jeff and Giles included) so almost died of coughing, sneezing and wheezing on way back.

More to come...