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Hi Fay,
So I spoke to mum and dad again this morning via Skype. Their microphone wasn’t working on their laptop or something so I phoned them at the same time to fault find. I’d forgotten we still had Skype open and my microphone was fine and we were both on speaker phone so everything I said and everything mum said went bouncing down the phone line and down the Skype line and back dozens of times until a worm hole opened up in the space time continuum and we managed to high five Alexander Graham Bell in the 19th century. Well, until mum said she’d had enough of listening to her own voice coming back to her on a five second time delay and closed down Skype. It was one of those slap your own forehead moments.
So mum says you’re beginning to get back on your feet. Great. You can help me solve one my most serious and pressing problems. I’m counting on you. All it takes it for you to apply your brains and come up with some suggestions. (ummmm me? My brains are mush....... Fay)
It all started this week when I felt the need to clear out some space on the PC. We’ve got terabytes of storage but somehow we always end up filling them up with crap. Stuff like pictures and videos of Eva and Sam being super cute, y’know, irreplaceable memories and stuff. Remember when we were kids and we’d have maybe thirty, forty pictures tops of our child hood? Not anymore. Now with digital photography it’s like the Truman Show. You can make a flip book with all the pictures we’ve got of Eva and run it backwards so she eventually jumps back into the womb.
Anyway I was trying to sort through things to delete and found a folder called “Fighting Fantasy” that I’d forgotten about. In it was downloaded files from every Fighting Fantasy choose-your-own-adventure book from my childhood. I remembered downloading them so that I could print them off and give them to Eva and Sam so that they could do what I did and get into reading through these interactive books.
Fooled you! I totally downloaded them so I could do them all again myself. Of course I never did because
(a) I don’t have the time
(b) they’re crap.
There’s an applicable saying here that goes “You can never step in the same river twice”. If you’ve never heard it before I’ll let you mull that one over for while … or go and get a cup of tea if you have.
You can never step in the same river twice because of course the water in the river has moved on and it’s impossible to step into the same body of water. But also on a deeper level you’re never the same person you were either, you’ve moved on as much as the river. “You can never step in the same river twice”. So of course reading through these books that I thought were brilliant thirty years ago aren’t brilliant now. Also I’ve got more experience in some specialised areas such as lugging swords, shields and bows around and I’m reading this stuff and thinking “no way can anyone carrying a heater shield, a two-handed sword and a bow do that.”
Which brings me to my problem. In the same way that those chose-your-own-adventure heroes have too many weapons, I’ve got too many swords, axes, bows etc. Obviously I don’t need to carry them all around at once like those adventure books (I need an estate car to shift mine), my problem is that they all need names. Not just any old names like Excalibur and Sting, I need funny names, like Excalibrogue and Gordon Sumner.
It started with a bit of joke because some of the Anglo-Saxon re-enactors really do have names for their swords, spears and axes because that’s what they apparently did back then. Sometimes these ancient people named their weapons because they were so valuable and costly they earned a name, sometimes it was for mystical and magical reasons, sometimes it was because they wanted to be like the US marines in boot camp from Full Metal Jacket.
Now I didn’t have names for my stuff because I’m fourteenth century and so not like those Anglo-Saxon dudes … but for comedy reasons I started naming some of the weapons after girls’ names. I have a sword called “Kutrina” (do you see where I’m coming from?), I have a dagger called “Stabitha” and a spear called “Britney” (you may need to work that one out). And then after naming those three I’m drawing a blank. I’ve got two longbows, another dagger and an axe to name. It’s killing me now, help me out?
At a pinch I’ll take boys names too. I promise you that you’ll be spending the next half an hour going “Keith? Beith? Steith? Reith? No. Stavros? Stabros? Stab! Ross! No, that’s shit…” But you know, have fun with it. Get a white board and some magic markers, do some brain storming.
Good to hear you’re getting stronger. I hope the biopsy goes okay and if it doesn’t, you know what? We can come up with some least threatening names for your cancer or something. I’m currently thinking "Humphrey".
Love Mark,
xxx
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Well firstly dear brother, I'm a little bit hurt you don't read my blog, because if you did you'd know my cancer is called Ted, which I'm sure you'd agree is perfectly threatening enough!
However I'm stuck on names for your various battle weapons.
Over to you, dear reader. I'm sure we won't disappoint, I'm counting on you! Two longbows, a dagger and an axe to name, leave a comment so we can all share
And as always Mark........
