#oneaday Day 798: Home is where the heart has been, part 2

Yesterday, I left off with a lovely flat my then-wife and I lived in in a fairly shitty area; a place which I nonetheless have mixed feelings about due to how it was where I was living when I suffered a nervous breakdown and left teaching as a career behind as a result. Today, we continue.

At some point, my then-wife and I made the decision to move back to Southampton. I forget exactly what the reasons for us doing this was — it may have been the fact that I had got a job at the then-new Apple Store in the WestQuay shopping centre, or it may have been some other reason — but regardless, we found ourselves coming back to Southampton, initially in a ground-floor flat in an area on what I will always think of as "the far side" of Southampton, known as Sholing.

My enduring memory of living in this place will always be, on our day moving in, walking in to the Indian takeaway that was next door to the block we lived in — as everyone knows, British moving days are fuelled by takeaway curry — and the proprietor of said establishment bellowing "WELCOME TO THE SHOLING!" as we walked in. It was a great little takeaway, that place, and I was always grateful for the warm welcome the owner provided.

We rented that flat off a woman who had a cat. We kind of wanted a cat, but we had lived in so many rented places that didn't allow pets that we didn't think to ask if we could have a cat. When we moved out, the landlady said that not only would she have been more than happy for us to have a cat in that flat, we could have had her cat. I'm still not entirely sure how to feel about that.

Anyway, it was a nice flat with some big rooms and a lovely oversized comfy sofa in the living room. My "study" of sorts, where the computer lived, was also a utility room, so I had to share space with the tumble dryer. My Sony Vaio desktop PC, which had been a loyal companion for a number of years, died in that flat, which I was annoyed about, because it was a great system. But one day it just started inexplicably screeching at me, and that was that. I eventually ended up replacing it with an iMac, which I got for a generous discount thanks to working at the Apple store.

At some point, we moved out of that flat. Again, I don't entirely remember why, but we ended up moving into the town centre of Southampton, into what appeared to be quite a new block of apartments. It was a really nice flat with a huge living room, a massive kitchen and a generously sized bedroom. It was a very comfortable place to live, with the only real hiccup being that one day I came home to the sound of rushing water downstairs in the block. It turned out the basement was flooding from somewhere, which ultimately knocked out the power in the whole building and meant I had to spend several days staying on a friend's sofa.

However, this is also the flat where my first wife and I parted ways, so as nice as it was, it will always be the most bittersweet of past places I lived, and the subject of a number of posts from around that time.

Due to a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, including not only the end of my marriage but also being bullied out of a job that I once loved, I ended up unable to stay in that lovely flat by myself, and having to temporarily move back in with my parents. At the time, I was mortified at the prospect of having to do this; today, I am eternally grateful for the fact they supported me while I picked myself up after such a massive setback.

While living back in my childhood home — which was still familiar despite having changed a bit — I eventually ended up meeting Andie, my now-wife. Both of us had experienced a somewhat challenging period in our respective lives, and ended up finding one another at what appeared to be a good time. I was also in the process of building a new career at that time, and I was gradually getting to a point where I felt I would be able to support myself again. So Andie and I eventually agreed to move in together.

We ended up moving to Chippenham in Wiltshire, which was near to where Andie was working at the time, and since I was working from home, I could do that from anywhere with an Internet connection. We had a nice house there, and were greeted almost immediately by the two cats who lived next door, Artie and Chester. Chester was a black cat who liked sitting on suitcases, and Artie was a long-haired tabby who liked shouting at towels. The pair of them were absolutely lovely cats who paid us a visit on many occasions, and we always welcomed them in.

During our time at Chippenham, we also decided that, in the absence of being able to have our own cats, we would try keeping rats, and we discovered the joy of these little creatures — as well as their sadly short lifespans. Also the smell, which you soon get used to. During our time at Chippenham, we had a wonderful time with Willow (who sadly did not live very long as she was quite poorly), Lara and Lucy.

Our house in Chippenham is another place I have somewhat mixed feelings about, as both Andie and I were facing numerous challenges in our own lives at that point in time — among other things, I lost my job at GamePro when we all logged in one morning to find out the parent company had unceremoniously laid us all off — and also there was apparently a murder in the Sainsbury's car park that was, like, two minutes away from our house.

Our next move was, once again for me, a return to Southampton. We found ourselves a lovely flat whose only mild inconvenience was the fact it was on the third floor, which made moving everything in a bit of a pain. We ended up having to buy a whole new sofa because the one we had bought while we were at Chippenham simply wouldn't go up the staircase; it lived in the garage for a whole year, and thankfully survived, though we ended up replacing it some time later.

This flat, I have fond memories of. Both Andie and I had overcome some significant troubles in our own lives, and things started to seem like they were getting back on track. I still wasn't in what I would call a position of stable employment, but I was getting by, initially by writing about odious mobile and social games, and subsequently being a founder staff member of the now-defunct USgamer.

We also still kept rats in this flat — Lucy, Clover and Socks — though after the last survivor of the various pairs we had cared for, our dear Clover, hung in there for a lot longer than we expected she would, we decided that we should maybe take a little break from keeping pets. It was sad to eventually say goodbye to Clover, but we feel like she stuck around for us even as she got old and life clearly became a bit harder for her.

Eventually circumstances dictated that Andie and I would be in a position to actually buy a house instead of renting, and that's how we ended up where we are now — and have been here for over ten years at this point. This is officially the longest I have lived in one place for, except for my childhood home. As I said yesterday, we're not ruling out moving someplace a bit bigger some time — just not yet — and we've done a lot to make this place into our home — not least of which is having cats. The dearly departed Ruby and Meg will always be in our hearts, and Patti and Oliver bring us so much joy in the here and now I cannot imagine ever being without such wonderful companions again.

I've lived in many places over the years. All of them hold their own memories, both good and bad. All of them have helped make me into the person I am today, for better or worse, and I'm sure I will always remember them all.

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#oneaday Day 797: Home is where the heart has been, part 1

I have, over the years, lived in a number of different places. This is, I'm sure, true for quite a few people — though there does come a point where you seemingly pick somewhere and just settle down. Our current place definitely falls into that category — though neither of us have completely ruled out moving somewhere a little bit bigger at some point in the future. Not any time soon, though.

Every so often, I like to think back over the various places I've lived, because they all have different memories attached to them. Some memories are good; some are bad. Most are good. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I do have good memories at every place I've lived; it's just that some happen to have more bad memories to go along with them than others.

My first house that I lived in is the only one I don't remember at all, because we moved away when I was just one year old or so. We kept a vague attachment to the area in which it was, though, because some friends of my parents still lived in that area, and one of them was also our family dentist. When we'd go to visit these friends, my parents would often point out the house in which we used to live, but while it was interesting to know, I felt no real attachment to it. I felt more attachment to the homes of these friends, as we visited them quite a few times in my youth.

The next place I lived is the house my parents still live in to this day. That house will always be "home" more than anywhere else, I think. It's a nice house with an unusual split-level design, with the living room on a "middle" floor between the ground floor and the floor with all the bedrooms on it, and a garage that is below the ground floor, but still above ground, if that makes sense. (To put it another way, you go up some steps to get to the front door, and the garage is on the level where those steps start.)

My parents have made a few changes to that house over the years, but it's mostly still the house I grew up in. A bit older, a bit dustier, but most of the things I will always remember about it are still in the same place they always have been, and looking the same as they always have done. The cupboard where the biscuits are still squeaks incredibly loudly — we used to joke it was an "alarm" for someone "biccy-nicking" — and the upstairs toilet flush mechanism still doesn't quite work properly.

The first place I moved to after leaving home for university was a halls of residence. Well, technically I spent a week staying in another halls of residence for a pre-term music course, but I consider that more of a "trip" than actually "moving in" there. The place I spent a week was a bit of a shithole, being an old tower block that has, at some point in the intervening years, been demolished. The place where I spent my first year of university, however, was really nice.

It was a brand new complex when we moved in, meaning that everything was clean and in good condition. Remarkably, it was still clean and in good condition when we moved out, as the occupants of our flat were all pretty considerate about such things. Okay, most of us occasionally let the washing up pile up a bit, but we eventually all settled into a routine of keeping things neat and tidy in the communal kitchen, then if we wanted our rooms to be a pigsty we could. But since they were pretty nice rooms, none of us did.

I have fond memories of living in that flat, even if it's unthinkable now that I once lived out of a single en-suite room that was my own, along with a communal kitchen. It was good times with good people, and I was enjoying being at university. I have a few memories from there that make me wince slightly out of embarrassment, but on the whole I have no real bad memories there whatsoever.

In my second year, we all moved out into houses and flats around the city. I had agreed to move in with a friend's girlfriend (who was also my friend; the boyfriend in question was going to university in another city) and we had a fair amount of trouble finding a decent place for an affordable amount of rent; I forget exactly why, but I do remember it being a stressful time finding it.

Eventually we found a flat that looked pretty nice, but was in fairly shabby, dirty condition when we viewed it. The landlord promised that it would be cleaned up in time for us to move in. It very much was not, which meant that our moving in day was mostly spent cleaning. We eventually got it looking presentable, though, and once we were settled, it was a nice flat with absolutely enormous rooms. There was a huge living room at one end, then down a corridor there were the two bedrooms: my friend's first, then mine at the far end.

Oddly, my most vivid memories of living in this flat are of the fact that I lived two minutes' walk away from a Blockbuster Video, and quite often went in there to buy games and DVDs. I remember plucking up the courage to buy an erotic Kathy Lloyd Playboy DVD on one occasion, but I also remember buying Baldur's Gate II and Diablo II there.

This flat was a fair distance away from both the university and the rest of my friends, so I quite often spent time "couch-surfing", staying over at various people's houses so I didn't have to walk all the way home. My flatmate was quite often away to visit her boyfriend, so during those times, rather than sit all on my own, I would tend to spend my time with friends.

In my third year of university, we again found ourselves having trouble finding a place — but this time we lucked out by finding an absolutely lovely house that was incredibly cheap rent-wise. Sure, it was in a notoriously fairly shitty area, but the house was in excellent condition, and the landlords didn't seem to be scam artists. It was also, to date, the only house I have lived in that literally looked like the drawing of a house you draw if you can't draw a house. (See illustration.) That year, I was supposed to have a second housemate along with my friend's girlfriend, but despite always paying her rent and bills on time, she never even moved in. I don't know what happened there — and I was mildly gutted, as I quite fancied her — but still, she helped keep that house nice and affordable for the two of us, so we were grateful!

Again, I have fond memories of this house. There was a nice TV cabinet in the living room, where I put my enormous CRT TV that I bought from a second-hand shop in Portswood. It was surrounded by shelves, where I put my new PS2, and I vividly remember a friend of mine, upon visiting, telling me how much he loved the blue LED on the eject button. It is pretty nice, to be fair.

We didn't mow the lawn once during our time at that house. Well, not until it was approaching time to leave, at which point we discovered why you should mow your lawn more than once a year.

My most enduring memory of that particular house is probably my friends coming down and bringing a copy of the newly released Silent Hill 2 with them. I was given the task of playing it while the others watched, but the pair of them both fell asleep after a hearty curry and some relatively heavy drinking, and only woke up as I was rolling credits on the "In Water" ending.

We also had NTL cable in that house. I remember signing up for one night of the Adult Channel and setting the VCR to record it all. I also remember being mildly disappointed in the overall quality of the smut on the resulting tape, but it served its purpose.

In my fourth year of university, my friend had moved on, so I was moving in with a new friend I'd made through the university Theatre Group, along with some other people she knew but I didn't. We found a really lovely house that, again, was very affordable. It had a weirdly narrow kitchen, though, and a strange arrangement at the back where there was a standalone toilet, then a bathroom next to it. These were both on the ground floor, behind the kitchen. It was a very odd arrangement, but we learned to live with it.

One unfortunate memory I have of that place is, being the first one there, thinking I had pick of the rooms and thus picking the big one at the front. I subsequently found out that my friend had bagsied that room first, but I had already moved all my stuff in by then. She didn't seem to mind getting the room next door. She laid down laminate flooring as the first thing she did when she arrived. She was… like that.

I have good memories of that house, despite the fact that I didn't really interact with any of the other residents. My friend was absolutely never there, and I didn't really know the other two guys at all. I was intimidated by the one who was growing weed in his wardrobe, and the other one just gave no indication whatsoever that he really wanted to get to know me at all. They all seemed to appreciate my big TV and surround sound system in the living room, though.

I spent a lot of time drinking wine and… enjoying the company of someone who was quite special to me at that house. We'd drink until we were giggly, watch Spaced and Black Books on repeat, and… well, other stuff, too. It was nice, though I ended up wanting more from the arrangement than she did. Still, I have no regrets.

After finally finishing university, I moved to Winchester with someone I knew from my music course, who was training to be a midwife. We were extremely fortunate in this case to find a gorgeous flat almost in the dead centre of Winchester. It was fully furnished — and well furnished — and just a beautiful, beautiful place. We absolutely loved living there, but we could only enjoy it for a year, because after that the landlord decided that they wanted it back so their kid could live in it, which I suppose is all right.

I fitted an extension phone socket in that flat, without any consideration of the fact that I probably wasn't allowed to hammer that many pins into the walls of a flat I didn't own. Still, I wouldn't have been able to access the Internet if I didn't do that, and given that I was having my first contact with Final Fantasy XI around that time, I needed that Internet connection.

Probably my fondest memory of that particular flat is one I've shared numerous times before: the time I had several friends over to play LAN party Halo, and we all got drunk and took our shirts off. My housemate came home in the middle of all this, took one look at the living room full of half-naked, drunk men and declared the game "Gaylo" which, you know, fair.

It was in this flat I was first starting to have doubts about teaching — the career I had, at that time, chosen. While I never developed a problem as such, there were numerous evenings when I would seek, shall we say, chemical comfort after a particularly hard and trying day. Mostly gin and tonic, though a friend did once leave me an "emergency joint" that I made use of on one particular evening that felt like an emergency, only to discover it was so strong that after finishing it, I immediately threw up (in the toilet) and then passed out on the couch. To be fair, after that I wasn't thinking about the day I'd just had at the chalkface.

After being turfed out of that flat, we moved into a strange little cottage that backed onto a little river, quite close to the previous flat, so we didn't have to move far. It was in a bit of an awkward location on the Winchester ring road, though, and it subsequently transpired that the place was full of damp and mould that the landlady tried to blame on us when we eventually moved out. My housemate, who doesn't take shit from anyone, took her to court and… resolved the situation. I don't know exactly what went down, but I know we did eventually get our deposits back.

It was while I was living in that house that I met my first wife online, and after she moved back to the UK after spending some time abroad, she would often come down to visit and stay. As a result, I have some bittersweet memories of that time; I think enough time has passed now that they err mostly on the side of "sweet", to be honest, but I do know that my housemate did not like my wife-to-be very much. Still, it never came to a confrontation or anything, so that's all right, I guess.

After that, my wife-to-be and I moved away from Southampton so we could both be close to the schools in which we were working, which were in Surrey. Our new flat was technically in a shitty area, but it was actually a really lovely place; some sort of huge converted single-floor house with enormously high ceilings and massive rooms.

It was while we were living at this house that I had a nervous breakdown and finally determined once and for all that teaching was not, in fact, my chosen career. (That didn't stop me trying again once more later, but I recognised the signs and escaped from that before anything bad happened.) It's a shame, because my memories of this place are otherwise nice; it was a lovely place to live, and I was sorry to have to leave it.

You know what? That's two and a half thousand words, so I think I'm going to call time there and ponder the rest tomorrow. This has been a fun exercise, though, so join me tomorrow as I remember other places I have lived! Gosh, I bet you can't wait.

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#oneaday Day 765: Role-playing

One thing I regret not really getting into when I was younger is role-playing games — of the tabletop variety. Actually, saying I didn't "get into" role-playing games isn't accurate at all; I've bought a whole bunch of sourcebooks over the years (I had a great collection of Vampire: The Masquerade books while at university!) but just, for one reason or another, never really had the chance to play them all that much.

figurines and dice on board game map — Photo by Stephen Hardy on Pexels.com

I have two particularly fond memories of times when I have been able to indulge in some role-playing, and interestingly enough, neither of them involve a well-established, rules-heavy system. In both cases, they were simple acts of collective creativity — and they were vast amounts of fun as a result.

The first time wasn't really an organised session as such. I was in my second year at university, living in a grotty old flat that had very large rooms. Some of my friends from my school days had come down to visit, and they were sleeping in the living room; rather than retiring to my own bedroom down the hall, I decided to sleep in the living room with them. And before long, rather than falling asleep, one of our number kicked off a completely improvised role-playing session where our probably drunk, definitely tired and increasingly delirious selves got our characters into increasingly ridiculous situations — inevitably with the worst possible outcomes constantly happening to one of our number, because that was the funniest way things could go.

I forget the details of the "adventure", such as it was, but I do recall that my friend Edd found himself under attack by a giant penis monster at one point. So, naturally, he decided to cast the spell he'd made up called "REMOVE COCK", and you can imagine what the actual result of that was. It was an utterly ridiculous evening that I will always remember immensely fondly — and not a single die rolled along the way.

The other occasion was when I was around at a friend's house, and one of said friend's friends with whom I had previously become casually acquainted said he was going to run a role-playing game session for us, using what he described as a "freeform system" that he'd devised himself. Said system had just three statistics: Attack, Defence and Power, and all three of those statistics fluctuated according to the things we were doing; you'd "spend" points from each on various actions, and could regain them in various ways, usually by making progress through the adventure.

Because the system was so freeform, we were invited to come up with any kind of character we wanted. Being big into Japanese role-playing games at the time — not like now, obviously — my character was somewhere between a vaguely imagined half-elf character I'd mentally doodled at various points over the prior months, and basically Dante from Devil May Cry. Lots of flashy moves, big sword, pyrotechnics, all that sort of thing. His name was Rush Hurin.

Alongside Rush we had The Luggage from Discworld, a sentient suit of armour named Arryth, a cloud of amorphous pink gas and the archangel Tyrael from Diablo. It was a motley crew to be sure, but we had some grand adventures — and the skill of our dungeon master was such that he was able to devise dungeons and scenarios on the fly that meant we all had an opportunity to shine along the way.

Okay, yes, he pulled puzzles from a straight-up Big Book of Puzzles that he brought along with him — and on more than one occasion we entered a room in a dungeon with an elaborate-looking mechanism that had a big sign on it saying "COME BACK LATER" — but even using that "source material" and occasional little "cheats" to keep things flowing along, we ended up with an enormously entertaining adventure that culminated, as I recall, with us fighting a skyscraper-sized flaming demon, each using our own unique abilities to bring it down in various ways — culminating with The Luggage swallowing it and sending it to an unknown other dimension, as most of our other encounters concluded.

Both of these were great fun, yes, but I also just kind of… hunger for an opportunity to play something as basic bitch as Dungeons & Dragons, even though I know that's not fashionable any more. I always thought Vampire: The Masquerade would be fascinating to play, too — hence why I had a bunch of sourcebooks for it back in my early 20s — but that, more than almost anything else, strikes me as something you very much Need The Right Group For.

Why am I talking about all this? Well, I watched an episode of Mythical Kitchen this evening where they had the cast of Critical Role on there, and it reminded me that I've never… watched, listened to, whatever you do with Critical Role, and I was thinking I should probably correct that at some point. Sure, it's not quite the same as being part of my own campaign, but I think I might enjoy it… maybe it's time to add it to the "bedtime listening" rotation.

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#oneaday Day 754: Late '90s promise

As I absorb the news that Sony is giving up on physical releases of games — something I have had a good rant about at much more length over on MoeGamer, so please go read that — I can't help but think back to the time PlayStation hit the scene, and the incredible amount of promise that video games showed back then. This coincides with a period of time I often describe as the happiest of my life, and the video games were a big part of that, for a variety of reasons.

Photo by Simon Trappe on Pexels.com

I remember my first encounter with PlayStation vividly. My brother had come home to visit, and, as he often did, he had brought some gaming hardware with him. On previous visits — and prior to me getting my own SNES — he had brought both a Super Famicom and Mega Drive back with him on various occasions, but this new PlayStation thing was one of the most exciting things I had ever seen.

We loaded up Ridge Racer and you could play Galaxian while it was loading. Supposedly you could unlock some stuff if you could win the Galaxian game before the game finished loading, but I didn't manage that right away. (I mastered it some time later.) Then, once Ridge Racer was loaded, it was another example of something we'd previously described the SNES as being: "like having an arcade machine hooked up to your TV".

This feeling didn't go away with Tekken, which my brother had a prerelease copy of. He also had Raiden Project, which, while less obviously "impressive" than both Ridge Racer and Tekken, I found myself enjoying a lot, and still consider one of my favourite PlayStation titles to this day.

Eventually, my brother left behind this Japanese-model PlayStation at my parents' house for me to have — he had got his own British model. I was thrilled, particularly once I learned the "pen-lid trick" — a means of circumventing the console's region and copy protection by propping the disc tray open and carefully timing the swapping of discs. It was a good way to wear out your laser before long, but until I got my own UK PlayStation, it was my main means of experiencing PAL releases.

My friends got PlayStations around a similar time, and we all really enjoyed them, each cultivating our own little collection of games.

Then came Final Fantasy VII. I first heard about this from my brother, and one thing made me want to pick it up immediately: he told me that it was the first game that had made him and various other people he knew cry. This might seem like a strange reason to be excited for a game, but having been enjoying point-and-click adventures on PC for a few years at this point, I was immensely excited by the possibilities that interactive storytelling offered, and I was curious exactly what this game actually was.

I started to play it and was initially confused. Why did the screen go all swirly and then I couldn't move, but I had to select things from a menu instead? Why did the characters look different when they were walking around to when they were in battle? Why were numbers popping out of things?

I'd encountered the RPG genre in a very early form back on the Atari 8-bit, but had always found those games to be difficult to understand as a child. Some years later, I got into HeroQuest and Advanced Heroquest, and started to understand how numbers and turn-based combat worked together. And with Final Fantasy VII, I quickly learned how the computerised take on an RPG worked — and that I liked it a lot.

My friends loved it, too. We all swapped stories of our custom-named parties at school, arguing over who had given their characters the "best" names and who had recoloured the text window the most attractively garish combination of shades. We all agreed it was an incredible experience, and played it multiple times in succession — often in immediate succession. I estimate over the course of one particular summer, each of us must have played through the entirety of that game somewhere between six and ten times.

My parents went away for a few weeks and left me in charge of the house. I hosted an ill-advised party that I got into a lot of trouble for — I have to laugh in retrospect — but the best thing about that summer was having my friends over pretty much every day, and we would just play Final Fantasy VII together while eating Pot Noodles and getting steadily quite drunk. On one particularly memorable occasion, we challenged one another to play from the beginning and stay up as long as possible; we played through the night and into the next morning, hitting each other with sofa cushions to wake each other up if we looked like we were nodding off. It was a truly wonderful experience, and absolutely a treasured memory.

It all feels so far away now. I would love to have a summer like that which I just described again, but it feels like a far-off dream at this point.

Still, I mean I am still in touch with some of those friends, so perhaps, just perhaps, we could make something like that happen once again sometime. Maybe.

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#oneaday Day 749: The lost decade

At therapy today, we got talking about how I think back extremely fondly on my time at sixth form — to such a degree that I would brand that period of time as probably the happiest of my life — and how I feel a curious… "closeness" to that time period, despite it being, at this point, quite a long time ago. It still feels weirdly recent to me!

pictures hanging on strings attached to trees in a garden — Photo by Pew Nguyen on Pexels.com. Not my photos, obviously.

Over the course of our discussion, I described a curious phenomenon that I've been sort of passively aware of for a while, and that is the fact that I don't really remember living through my thirties. Specifically, the period between about 2009 and (I estimate) about 2016, 2017 or so is a length of time that I feel just sort of… disappeared. And the disappearance of that period — and possibly a bit more either side of it — is what leads me to feel like things which were actually Quite A Long Time Ago are still relatively "recent" or at least fresh in my memory.

I hadn't really contemplated why this had happened, but it didn't take long to figure out: I had a rough time in that period. Let's ponder, shall we?

In 2009, when I was 28, I lost a job that I had previously thought would have me set for life; it was a job that I loved, that I was good at and which even paid reasonably well for the time. Unfortunately, it was snatched away from me by some true shithead managers who were on a real power trip at the time, and that kicked off a very long period of exceedingly uncertain employment.

In 2010, my first marriage fell apart for reasons that, in retrospect, I understand, but which, at the time, had me feeling the lowest I have ever felt. Having lost my job and, now, my partner, I was left alone in a flat I couldn't afford to keep living in, with no job, facing down the prospect of having to move back home with my parents. At the time, this felt mortifying; now, of course, I am exceedingly grateful to my parents for having supported me while I was at my lowest until I was able to pick myself back up and effectively start over.

In the following years, I will keep the details vague out of respect for the individual in question's privacy, but I found myself supporting someone with an addiction problem. I had no idea how to do this, and there is not really a "how-to" guide on doing this effectively. The person in question conquered their issues pretty much by themselves (and by that I mean "without professional psychiatric or medical assistance"), and I will be eternally impressed by and proud of them for this, but the experience of acting in a supporting role at the time left me with… some emotional scars, shall we say. I am not entirely sure I have fully processed everything that happened at this time, though I should also add that I lay no blame or ill-will at the feet of the affected person, and that's all I will say on the subject.

During these years, I was working regular freelance for various websites. I had a good gig working for GamePro, but we all got given the boot just before Christmas one year. Some time later, I worked for USgamer, but got laid off from that particular gig on my birthday. These were the most "regular" jobs I'd had since 2009, and it had not gotten any easier over the years to know what I was "supposed" to be doing. Every time I felt like I was getting somewhere, it felt like the rug would get pulled out from under me.

I took a job in a completely unrelated field — updating website content at energy company SSE — but found myself fundamentally incompatible with the incredibly patronising way that company does business, and got unfairly dismissed at the end of my probationary period. Some time later, I found myself doing a similar, equally tedious but mostly inoffensive job at sports tech maker Garmin, which was stable but absolutely mind-numbingly boring. I left that one voluntarily (and on good terms, which was a nice change) to take up what would eventually become the position I hold to this day.

All along the way, I was feeling a sense of near-constant instability, like I could never settle; like I had never reached an unknown destination I felt like I was constantly on the way towards. I faced setback after setback, challenge after challenge. At times it felt like I wanted to give up. But I eventually made it to where I am today, with a stable home life, a stable working life and stable financial security. It was realising that I had those three things that made me feel like I had, at last, been able to properly "start over", and that my life was no longer a thing of shame; a string of endless difficulties and non-achievements that just didn't appear to be going anywhere.

So in retrospect, I'm not really surprised that I don't really remember my thirties all that well, because a lot of things happened, and a significant, statistically significant proportion of them were Bad Things that I'd really rather not dwell on. I know those years happened — and there are probably blog posts covering a lot of them right here on this site — but, even knowing that they probably helped shape the person I am today and helped strengthen my own resolve as a "survivor", it's hard not to feel like it would be nice to have them all back.

Still, that's not a thing you can do, unfortunately, so here I am, at 2am in the morning, aged 45, pondering a lost decade of my life. Do I have a point to all this? You'd think I would, wouldn't you. But you know what? I don't think I do. And that's probably all right.

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#oneaday Day 547: School books

I've been thinking about school again. I do that a lot for some reason. Nostalgia for happier days in the past, perhaps. A melancholy reflection on a failed career. Or an earnest desire to go back. It doesn't really matter. I do it a lot, regardless.

One of the things that my brain has decided to fixate on today is the concept of "school books" — specifically, exercise books. I don't know why, but I really liked having a book for each subject's work.

Obviously, from a practical, logistical perspective, it makes sense to have one book per subject, particularly in secondary school, because pupils tend to have different teachers for different subjects. But it also makes sense in primary school to a certain degree, as it allows the teacher to clearly demarcate different subjects' work — which is taught at different times in the week — and for the pupils to easily compartmentalise the various things they've been learning.

I don't know. There was something inherently pleasing about every subject having its own colour, and I bet a lot of schools around the country used a similar colour scheme. We had red for English Language, green for English Literature, grey for Maths, orange for Science, blue for Languages, a different green for the subjects grouped under "Humanities" at our school (Geography, History, R.E.), and your Journal would be a different colour according to what year you were in.

That Journal was a handy little thing, too. It was essentially a weekly planner where we could record any homework we got from our subjects and the date it was due; it was then, of course, up to us to check it regularly and ensure we actually did that homework. This was before any sort of handheld electronic devices with reminders on them — pre-"smart" mobile phones didn't become particularly widespread among me and my peers until we were into sixth form. It was a good and healthy thing to do, I think; it helped teach us matters of personal responsibility — and also occasional bullshitting on the inevitable occasions when we had forgotten to check it properly.

The Journal was treated like some sort of holy book, though. Every single week, we had to get it signed by our parents to prove that they had seen we had been recording our homework, and every week, our form tutor had to sign it to confirm that our parents had signed it. A space on each week's spread was also set aside for any communications between our form tutor and parents — for more serious infractions, of course, you got a Letter Home from the school office, but for minor things (and not necessarily problems!) there was this space in the Journal.

Heaven help you if you doodled anywhere on your Journal, though. Defacing it in any way was an immediate ticket to having to buy — yes, buy — a new one. As you might expect, the end of term rolling around was an immediate signal to many of us to immediately deface the crap out of the Journal for the term just gone. These defaced Journals became companions to "The Rough Book" among me and my friends — there was something about the neatly laid out tables in the Journal that made it ripe for customising with ridiculous doodles. My favourites were ones where we absolutely covered the page with tiny stick figures, all standing on the various lines of the table, flinging themselves off the edge and getting up to no good. I kind of wish I still had some of those.

It was the same for your subject exercise books, of course. Some teachers insisted that, as our inaugural piece of homework for a new term, we should cover our exercise book as a means of discouraging and/or preventing any doodling on the cover. Most people went the "wrapping paper" route, but there was a fun degree of self-expression among us all, and there was always some posh git who would laminate the cover of their book at their Dad's office or whatever.

I realise, of course, that the relative strictness with which we were taught to treat our school equipment can be looked on, from some perspectives, as being stifling to creativity and borderline authoritarian. School in general has always been designed as a means of, among other things, socialising us into becoming "good citizens" — and part of that, at least when I was at school, involved treating things with respect — whether they were the things that had been given to you by the school, the things you had brought in from home, or the things your peers were using.

It didn't always happen, of course, but there was a certain degree of pride that pretty much everyone had in their school possessions. Outside of covering books, one of the best ways to express one's individuality was through the stationery you brought to school — and the pencil case in which you kept that stationery. Some folks had cool, branded, zippered pencil cases; others had little tins. I remember my proudest pencil case at school was a Nintendo-branded tin with Super Mario Bros. pixel art on the front; it was also one of my least practical pencil cases due to its size, but I loved it nonetheless.

Anyway, you'd think I'd have a point about all this but I really don't. Something just got me thinking about the colour of school books, so that's what I've talked about today. Hey! They can't all be winners. Or perhaps you found this absolutely fascinating, in which case I am happy to have served.

Either way, at 20 past midnight I think it's probably time to go to bed.

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#oneaday Day 541: Back to school

I often think about my time at school and, while there were certainly elements of my experiences as a teenager I am very glad to have left behind, there's a lot I miss — to such a degree that I often find myself wondering if there is any sort of way one can get oneself into a situation, as an adult, that works similarly to school. A situation that isn't, like, prison or something.

I thrived in school — particularly secondary school. For the most part, I dealt well with the inherently predictable nature of a timetable — though I have recurring quasi-nightmares about being back at school and not having a clue what my weekly schedule is — and I didn't even mind having homework all that much. I did well in lessons, though I tended to be fairly quiet rather than the sort of person who was always the first to answer teachers' questions, and I ended up with good grades. Not perfect grades, mind, but good grades, nonetheless.

I'm not really sure what it is about the school experience — as opposed to, say, university — that I find so particularly appealing. Perhaps it's the inherent variety of things that you study, at least up until you start choosing "Options" for Years 10-11 and, if you're going on to do them, Years 12 and 13. There's definitely an element of that, because when I think back on some of my fondest memories of time at school, the visual part of the memories is very much associated with my "lower school" experience — Years 7-9.

That was the time when you study all sorts of things, with multiple subjects every day, and each and every day was packed with things to do. Sure, you didn't always like every one of those things you had to do each day — for me, Maths and P.E. were my particular bugbears — but you endured them, along with the things you actually liked, and sometimes you'd even surprise yourself with how well you ended up performing. I have zero achievements of note in P.E., but I did get an "A" in Maths at GCSE, which was pleasing.

Early secondary school is a time you get exposed to a lot of things you wouldn't have thought about studying, too. I remember being surprised how much I enjoyed language lessons — particularly German, which I liked more than French — and Science, although not a subject I had any intention of pursuing beyond a passing interest, was always full of interesting and unusual situations.

As you might expect, my biggest strengths were English and Music. In English, I relished the opportunity to write a lengthy essay about something we'd been studying — whether it was on the "language" or "literature" side of the fence — while in Music, I was often quite ambitious with my compositions, and in terms of performance I was considerably ahead of anyone else in my class thanks to the years of private piano lessons I'd had by that point.

It was nice to be good at something, and to have tangible proof that I was good at it in the form of good grades, certificates and, eventually, qualifications. I think that might be one of the things I miss the most in life as an adult — the simple knowledge and confidence that you can do something, and that someone is going to acknowledge that you are good at something, even reward you for it. It didn't have to be a big reward — I was a sucker for the "Merits" and "Commendations" we had at secondary school, and those were just little signatures on a page of our Journal and occasional certificates — but that little bit of acknowledgement that yes, there was something you were good at, and that gave you value as a human being, was pleasant.

I am not, obviously, advocating for modern employers to start implementing systems of "Merits" and "Commendations" for their employees, because I feel that most people would probably find the whole thing incredibly patronising. Interestingly, back during my brief period of time working for the shithole energy company SSE, I found myself thinking that a lot of the way the company did things was like how it was back in school — but in that situation, it was a negative thing. The difference? SSE wasn't interested in celebrating the successes of people and the things they were good at — they were, instead, obsessed with making themselves, as a company, look good, and specifically going looking for things they could reprimand their employees for.

Schools have to have a solid behavioural policy in place, of course, but I always found it pretty easy not to run afoul of it — and on the few occasions when I did, I knew it was a completely fair cop. SSE, meanwhile, would bollock you if you didn't hold the handrail when going up some stairs, for going under your desk to pick up a pen you'd dropped without wearing a "bump cap", and for not reporting the fact that you'd spilled a tiny bit of water from your cup carrying it back from the cooler to your desk — and all that absurdity meant that there was no time left to actually praise anyone for doing a good job.

So you can't just transplant elements of the school structure into a corporate environment without thinking about the things that make school good for those who thrive in that environment. I don't know what the answer is, and at this point I'm not even entirely sure what the question is any more either. I'm rambling. I'm tired. I'm a bit cold. So I think I'll leave that there and go to bed!

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#oneaday Day 436: RIP my sixth form

When I originally went to secondary school, my school was known for having a good sixth form. For those unfamiliar (i.e. not British, I suspect), a sixth form is where you go for "further education" (as opposed to "higher education", which is university) after your compulsory 11 years of school in the UK. It's called sixth form as a hangover from the old method of numbering school years, where primary education didn't really have a fixed method of distinguishing year groups beyond "infants" and "juniors", and then secondary education from 11 onwards started at "first form" all the way up to "fifth form". Today, primary education starts at Reception, then goes from Y1 to Y11 as one continuous run from primary to secondary, with most secondary schools starting with Y7. While some people do refer to sixth form as "Y12 and Y13", the term "sixth form" has, for one reason or another, stuck.

Anyway, none of that is the point. The point is, my school used to be known for having good sixth form provision. It's one of the reasons I went there, as I was a bright child and it was probably a given that I was always going to stay on into post-compulsory education, and indeed I did — two years of sixth form, then four years at university. I was fortunate enough to be in a year group that was the first to take advantage of a brand new sixth form centre built (well, adapted from the former upper school dining hall) on the premises, and it was a really lovely facility. I had a wonderful time there; I enjoyed my studies, I made and solidified a number of friendships, and, as I've remarked a number of times in this blog, I think I count those two years as possibly the happiest, most content of my life.

Every so often, I like to check in on my old school. No real reason, I'm always just curious how it's doing. It never was an amazing school, outside of the sixth form provision, and it's certainly had its challenges over the years. What I was rather surprised to see when I took a Google Street View down to the premises was this:

(Pixelations are mine; I just don't want randos looking up my old school for whatever reason.)

I saw those doors and thought, hang on. That doesn't look right. That building used to be the pride and joy of the school campus, so why haven't they painted the doors for what looks like several decades at this point?

It's because, it seems, the sixth form that was once one of the best things about that school is no more — and, in fact, it has not been a thing since 2015. (The photo above was taken in 2016, which just goes to show how frighteningly quickly a building can start looking dilapidated and shitty.) I found this out from looking at the school's Wikipedia page — I was surprised to discover it even had a Wikipedia page — but there it was, the cold, hard facts. I followed the links to see the news and yes, it seems it's true; the "Post-16 Centre" where I had such amazing, wonderful memories, is no more.

Now, I suspect the school today has made use of this building rather than just leaving it there; there's no way for me to know short of actually going to visit it, and I haven't been there in person for probably more than 30 years at this point. I see from its prospectus and willingness to book out its various large "venues" to the community — something the school had always done, making it a true "community school" — that it has a "performing arts space" that may or may not make use of that old space. Hard to tell, really.

Regardless, I feel a bit sad about this. That sixth form centre opened with such positivity and excitement for the future, and it was genuinely exciting to be part of it. The facilities were good, there were comfortable common areas to relax and socialise, and we felt proud to be part of something new and wonderful. I was surprised and saddened to see that the dream for that space apparently hadn't lasted; the school now has no sixth form provision of its own at all, instead collaborating with another local school (a longstanding "rival" back when I was there, but now part of the same "educational partnership", whatever that means) to provide sixth form provision for both schools' students.

I don't know if all this is because sixth form numbers were on the decline, or the building wasn't cost-effective, or whatever. All I do know is that it's a shame, and I feel a bit sad. You really can't go back, but at least you always have those precious memories, I guess.

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#oneaday Day 313: Memories of Me: the curious intimacy of school concerts

As a Kid Who Could Do Music, I was involved in performances of various kinds from a pretty early age. I have fairly vivid memories of, as a primary school-age kid, participating in the Bedford Music Festival, at which I would play piano duets and trios with other equally young pianists from my local area who were studying under the same teacher. I remember taking the Yamaha YS-200 keyboard to my Nan and Grandad's house to put on "concerts" for them, complete with synthesised applause when I finished a piece. And, of course, when we had visitors, I was often asked to play for them on my piano at home.

It wasn't until secondary school that I really started doing a lot of public performance, though. I joined a number of the musical groups at my school, including the concert band, jazz band (known as Dance Band), orchestra and choir, and through being a member of those groups (as well as my solo performance abilities), I participated in, I think, pretty much every school concert that happened between me joining the school in Year 7 and my leaving it after Year 13.

I absolutely loved school concert night, for a whole host of reasons. Firstly, it was simply fun to perform: to take all the hard work we'd done in each group's weekly rehearsals and finally show off what we'd accomplished. I don't remember any major disasters happening at any time, either; the leaders of the various groups (also the school's main music teachers) were all pretty fastidious about ensuring we could perform things to the best of our ability, and they also seemed to make good choices of pieces that were appropriate to the overall ability level of the group as a whole.

For those who have never performed as part of a large ensemble, it's quite something. Your part might not stand out as the most important or recognisable, but every instrument playing something plays an important role in the overall texture and timbre of the piece being played. If you're playing it right, people might not notice you as an individual performer — though this does, of course, have the side effect that if you play it wrong, people will definitely notice.

For me, it was satisfying to be part of something bigger than myself. It was fascinating to see a rather tedious 3rd Clarinet part actually having some importance to a greater whole. And it was wonderful to feel a connection with the people around you, all of whom were there for a common purpose: to make music, to entertain people, and to express themselves.

I think this is a big part of the reason that I always found school concerts to be immensely romantic occasions. I've talked before about how, throughout secondary school, I fell in love with a lot of girls, and many of these flights of what were ultimately passing fancy started on the evening of a school concert. There was something curiously intimate about sitting next to someone in the middle of a large ensemble, performing with them, supporting one another. That feeling of connection was even stronger with the other members of your section, and particularly with your partner on your specific part.

And so it was that I inevitably came away from each school concert feeling like I was on cloud nine, not just for a satisfying performance that had gone down well with the supportive audience of parents and teachers; not just for the feeling that there was something in this world that I was good at, that gave me value; not just for the praise I got from my teachers, my peers and other parents, particularly when I performed solo; but because I had, through the music, enjoyed what I felt was an incredibly intimate moment of connection with another person.

I'm almost certain that my fellow 3rd Clarinet partners at various points didn't feel the same way, which is why I never attempted to "make a move" on anyone — not that I had the confidence to do that, anyway. But for that evening, that wonderful, romantic, evening when the school concert took place, I felt genuine happiness and closeness with other people, quite unlike at any other time in my life.

I kind of miss it. I haven't been a member of a musical ensemble for a very long time and my clarinets and saxophones haven't been out of their cases for many years, either. But I still have those pleasant memories; the recollection of the feelings that I felt at the time. It didn't matter that they were one-way or unrequited; to have just been there in the moment was enough, and that's what makes those memories intensely, deeply precious to me.

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#oneaday Day 312: Memories of Me: the teachers who inspired me

I've talked before about how I think my schooldays, and particularly my time in Sixth Form (which was at the same school) were among the happiest times of my life. Once I'd got over an initial bout of bullying in Year 7, of course, which was resolved by me punching my tormentor firmly in the face just as the headmaster was coming around the corner.

One of the reasons I think back so fondly on my time at school — particularly secondary school, which is what I'm going to focus on today — is because I had a lot of great teachers who inspired me, encouraged me, recognised the things I was good at and generally did a great job of making me feel like I wasn't a completely worthless human being with terrible hair, atrocious dress sense and a complete inability to socialise normally. (Retrospectively, of course, I recognise that the latter aspect — and perhaps some of the others too — stem from my autism, but I didn't know that back then.)

I thought I'd describe a few of them today. I don't know what happened to any of them after I left school, as I didn't stay in touch with any of them — something I kind of regret a bit, now — but I can say, with confidence, that they made a positive impact on my life in some way, and the memories I have of the time I spent learning with them are some of my most treasured.

Let's think through subject by subject.

In the English department, I had a run of excellent teachers over the course of the years of both compulsory and post-compulsory education. There was Ms Derbyshire, who reminded everyone of Victoria Wood with her general demeanour and tone, and who had a delightful sense of humour. There was Mr Bowie, who was probably the "coolest" teacher in school, who knew his stuff and managed to be knowledgeable without being a nerd. He taught me about Jeff Buckley. There was Miss Idziacysyk (I think that's how you spell it — it's been a very long time since I wrote it and Google is no help!), who took no shit but was also a really knowledgeable teacher of both English Language and English Literature. And there was Mr Lack, who was a kind and gentle soul unless you pissed him off.

In Maths, I should give particular praise to Mr Wilbraham, who had a… strange reputation to anyone who had never taken classes with him — a reputation I shan't repeat out of respect for him… and the fact we never really knew if it was true or not — but who turned out to be an excellent, friendly, supportive and good-natured teacher. I disliked Maths intensely, but I put up with it and somehow managed to remain in the top group for it throughout the entire time I was forced to take it, and the lessons with Mr Wilbraham in Year 10 and 11 were probably the closest I had to "favourite Maths lessons".

In Science, I had a lot of great teachers, too. There was Miss Bartlett, who everyone fancied because she had long blonde hair and wore quite short skirts, but who also got us involved in doing practical experiments pretty much from our first lesson in Year 7. There was Mr Allured, who had a booming voice you could hear a mile off, and a personality (and moustache) that made him feel like everyone's dad. And there was Mr Maskell, who looked like Harry Secombe and was a cheerful soul, always keen to show us his "volcano" experiments in the fume cupboard.

Music was a focus of my time at secondary school, and I had a wonderful time studying with, at various times Mrs Choy-Winters, Mr Murrall, Mr Wrigley and Miss Garrick. Each had their own specialisms, but all were incredibly supportive of me, and keen to make use of the fact that my musical skills, particularly on the piano, were significantly ahead of pretty much all of the rest of the school. I ended up doing a lot of accompanying various musical groups during my time at school; school concert nights were some of my favourite times of the year. There's probably a whole post in me just on school concerts, so I'll save any further discussion of that for then. I will just add that I have recurring mild nightmares about disappointing my Music teachers and no-one else from this list.

I managed to wangle things at GCSE so I could do Theatre Studies alongside Music instead of having to do an Art or Technology class I really didn't want to do. There was only one drama teacher at our school, known as Miss Unsworth — although the headteacher Mr Cragg occasionally taught drama lower down the school — and she was quite the character. She was definitely a "theatre person", and she taught us a lot both through our lessons and in the productions of The Wizard of Oz and Twelfth Night I took part in during my time at school.

In Modern Languages, we had the good fortune to have a native German speaker known as Herr Haubert. We used to take the piss a bit because of his somewhat stern attitude, his rather severe moustache and the fact he perpetually smelled of spearmint — for some reason, our teenage selves became convinced that this was because he was always chewing mint flavoured condoms, not actual mints or gum, which would have made more sense — but I can't deny that he was a good teacher. Immersing us in the target language right from the first lesson, I can still remember a decent amount of German that I learned in those classes. Not enough to be confident or fluent, but definitely enough to get by in an absolute emergency.

In the Humanities, or "Hums", we had several great teachers. There was Mr Watts, who was our formidable head of Sixth Form, an excellent history teacher and someone who didn't believe anyone under the age of 15 had any right to exist in his line of sight; Mr Mason, an ageing hippie who taught Geography and could bring an entire class to silence by lowering the volume of his voice rather than raising it; and Mrs Lloyd, who helped make my A-Level Sociology studies entertaining and fascinating.

I had a look back at my school's website, knowing full well that I was there a very long time ago at this point and thus was unlikely to see any familiar names, and I was proven correct. I suspect many of the people I've just mentioned have retired or perhaps even passed on by this point, which is somewhat humbling to think about. Wherever they are and whatever they're doing, though, I hope they know that they had an impact on me, and that I still think about them very fondly. It's true that your school days play a crucial role in defining who you are — and the teachers who guide you through those school days are an incredibly important part of that.

So thanks to all of the teachers of my youth, both the ones I've mentioned and the ones I've inevitably forgotten. My life may not have gone exactly as planned in numerous ways, but I always felt I had a solid foundation to build from, and it was all thanks to them.

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