Pear Shaped with nobs on.

Beginning. April. Light. Big Red Pitch. Empty. Too Early.
Necessary Procrastination. McGhees. For shopping: - Shaving Cream. Razors. Slut tights. (I'll explain later) Miscellaneous. Sweeties. Lollipops (LOLLIPOPS!). Sorted.
Back to Pitch. Gathering. Greetings. Bleary Eyes. Busses. Loading on our luggage, clothes, alcohol, weapons (yes weapons) more alcohol, and finally, us. It was a bright day as we started up, trundled off. Leaving behind our Glasgow. Leaving behind our woes, worries, inhibitions. Leaving behind our Nationals Convenor.
Settled and content for the moment, I finally let myself wonder just what the hell I was getting myself into.
Trouble, hopefully.

God bless the cancer causing evil that is mobile phones. After 20 or so minutes, just as we were hitting the motorway, we noticed the patrons of the other bus hailing us. We gave them the obligatory finger, a couple of leers and a few other obscene hand gestures and thought nothing of it.

Somewhere on the bus, a mobile rang. Omar's?
Talking, questions, nothing resolved. Some sort of confusion, though. Garbled messages. I was at the back of the bus, near to the death-trap toilet.
What's going on? We asked, but our queries were lost in the hubbub.
Eventually, we at the back sent somebody competent forwards.
Generally, the facts got through. Someone on the other bus had sent Omar the following electronic message:
ISN'T JAMIE ON YOUR BUS?
We sent back the rather sensible answer: WE THOUGHT HE WAS ON YOURS?
They replied WE THOUGHT HE WAS ON YOURS?
Naturally, we replied:- WE THOUGHT HE WAS ON YOURS?

This tennis match of idiocy continued for a bit. Eventually we came to the consensus to stop and work out what the hell was going on. I mean, it was evident what was going on, but we wanted the facts, ma'am.
At a little service station 15 miles out of Glasgow, the full story was seeded. Apparently, Jamie had disappeared for a quick slash after making sure all were present and correct. Then, somehow, due to a rather large
CLUSTER FUCK
Of impressive proportion, each bus assumed the dapper little ginger gent was on t'other. Jamie left the toilet to observe the busses pulling away from the Boyd Orr, and had begun chasing. Bus Vs Jamie. Bus - 1- Jamie - 0 - (and brutally exhausted) as it merrily sped off without a care in the world.
With ironic fortune, however, someone had actually noticed Jamie charging after the bus with an insane OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK look in his eyes. Lady Luck may be benign, but she's also twisted, cos she made damn sure that the only person who'd noticed Jamie was also the most dull witted inbred this side of the lobotomy fence. After 20 minutes of contemplating the facts, fukko (whoever the hell it was) decided to tell some other people. Thank Christ they weren't as slow.

We formed an ad-hoc delegation tasked to get Jamie back to the fold. The delegation acquired his mobile number and commandeered Omar's phone. Finally we got through to him.
'Jamie. Hello?' said the caller. Then gave us a thumbs up.
A tiny, tinny Jamie voice could be heard from the earpiece.

'Jamie. Are we there yet??'

Fun aside, the problem got sorted and we waited. 25 minutes later Jamie arrived to an uproarious cheer and a shower of 'you daft twat' s.
Semper Fi. Back on track
And
Rolling

The miles evaporated one by one. The jokes got crasser and excitement grew. The Champagne Brothers skinned up and we recommended that the crusty confiscated the contraband. But they weren't daft enough to give up their shit to the safekeeping of Shan, much to our chagrin. At one point, I glanced out the window, seeking volcanoes, and noticed with alarm that all the signs had warped to Welsh.

Llandudno	:25
Betws-y-coed	:35
Nyarlothothep	:10

It was only then that I realised the gravity of our situation. We were being sucked into the vortex, greyroad like a mainline, plugging for Bangor. Seeking out, dragging us down to the Heart of Darkness. Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew. But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront them. There was no turning back. The horror. The horror.

Our bus tiptoed up a narrow ledge. On either side:- certain death. Sweat beaded the driver's middle aged, furrowed forehead. Everyone stayed very still in order to maintain the bus' weight equilibrium. Jamie stood rigid in the aisle, clutching the microphone like a petrified tour guide (on your left, you can see a sheer drop of 150 feet onto some rather nasty jagged rocks, and on your right, there's the bottomless abyss of Bangor). The road snaked left and right, got narrower (I swear it must have only been 2 foot across at one point). I heard someone mention Jamie acting like an AirHostess. Like in a 70's disaster movie. Disaster.
All eyes were on the driver.
(Skill roll -20%)
(Passed)
Hooray!
We had a small moment of triumph. We'd beaten their final obstacle. We'd got to their poxy Uni. Nothing could stop us now.
The most striking thing about Bangor is how beautiful it is. Stepping off the bus, I immediately noticed the formidable horizon of the pre-Cambrian mountains; impassively guarding the place since time immemorial. In the distance, Anglesey, touched by the warm glow of the pre dusk sunset, it seemed enchanting, eerie. I imagined the ghosts of all the heroes of Welsh myth converging on this very spot:- Arthur Pendragon, Percival, Kinnock. Felt serene.
Inside the actual halls of the Uni., we were confronted with a sea of anarchy.

Maladministration had firmly set in and washing all around us were seas of unwashed roleplayers. What do you call such a grouping? A chaos of geeks? En masse, the GUGS pushed forth through this sea like an army of Mosesses. Mosi(?), determined to find out what was going on.
It transpired that they were handing out roomkeys and nametags. Each GUG saw to his own with a minimum of fuss, with Cherry Al convincing the Gophers to hand over Ashley Noth's key and nametag as well. 'He asked me to hold onto them for him.' He said, very convincingly. 'oh, by the way,' he gestured to the platoon of GUGS behind him, 'I can't control them. I'll apologise now. Sorry'

After keys and tags, we were each handed two raffle tickets and were told these were to be used for breakfast. Several of us complained that these wouldn't sustain us for a microsecond, never mind for the entire weekend (raffleticketpaper not being renowned for it's nutritional content.) Unfortunately, sense of humour is a rare commodity in Bangor, and they duly explained that they were to be exchanged for breakfast at the downstairs cafeteria. One for each morning.
Fuckers. We'd break them.
Afterwards, things were in great motion. Padre and Malcolm showed up, we laughed at Daisy's Fluffbucket. My nametag was spelt wrong but they usually are for me. After that, I broke from the crowd to sort my luggage and check my room. My cold little room, with no real furniture; a bed, a wardrobe, not enough room to hang myself in. A fine view of an ivy covered wall.
No time to be wasting watching walls, I dumped my luggage and resolved that the best way to deal with this whole situation was to get drunk ASAP.

The illuminati of Bangor Roleplaying Society had given to each stranger in their town a handout. This handout was supposed to allay all your fears by giving useful insight into the topography & geography of the place. Unfortunately, it appeared evident that not one of them knew how to design a good map. Some blatantly ignorant fucker who'd never been down a dungeon in his puff had evidently scribed the poor hand drawn piece I clutched in my fingers. Had these people never seen GURPS Mapmaking? Where were the standing stones? Where was the pub? GAH!

I met up with a party of other adventurers and decided to head off in a Random Direction to see if this would help. After 5 mins I argued that they were going in the wrong Random Direction and should go in a Random Direction of my choosing. They felt that this was not a good idea. So I broke the fourth rule of Roleplaying and bid farewell to my compatriots. Fuck em.

Alone, at the top of a hill, surrounded by hedges, with a fine view of Anglesey, I reappraised the situation and studied the 'map' once more.
It meant nothing.
There were a couple of pages on this handout, however, so I decided to glance at these. Lo and behold, it transpired that there was a 'Key' to this 'Map' and that this 'Key' advised as to what certain areas on the map corresponded to. Hurrah. Fantastic. They even had a brief description of what each thing was. Outstanding. Ingenious. They must have stolen the idea from GUGS. Yeah. Probably. No matter, I went trooping off to find the heavenly watering hole, keen to blur out the reality of my situation.

It is a little known fact that HP Lovecraft, master of the macabre, spent much of his youth in Bangor. This in turn led him to write several short stories with the intent of turning them into roleplaying scenarios 70 years down the road. Yes. Whilst walking through this quaint little town, I suddenly felt something of a pervasive dread at the stares of some of the locals. It was the sort of sly, glinting, inbred sneering stares that one might expect to get after walking through Innsmouth screaming 'Deep Ones are all cunts' and then blatantly announcing that you have no next of kin, and never told any of your friends where you were going. A shiver pushed it's way up my spine.

(In the style of Lovecraft:-)
By the time I had got to the Main Street, the light was beginning to wane. I walked quickly and quietly through the street, feet clattering over cobbles, ignoring any looks from strangers. As I passed by a chip shop, a momentary glance made my mind recoil in horror. I stopped and peered at the window. Yes I was right. The sign on the door said 'Closed all day Sunday' What do they eat on Sunday?, I wondered.
With my staunch curiosity overcoming my latent fears, I walked in and requested from the shop keeper one Sausage Supper. He was a rustic sort of fellow, typical of the simple folks who dwell in these parts. I paid my coin and he thanked me well for my custom. Stepping outside, I continued down the street. Until now, it was only the ambience of Bangor that had unsettled me, but now the most odd sight appeared before me. A street sign, low and wrought in black iron and white paint, announced the street to be Cy Breatha. Beneath it, the English translation; Wood Street. But the translation had been marked and marred by red. Some miscreant or vandal had sprayed red paint over the English, and I could barely make it out. Clutching the hot package of my supper tighter in my left hand, I wandered closer to it. Then, with mounting dread I noticed other street signs, all with the same red line scarring the words.
Shly'd Bchwan
Woodside Street

I moved on, quickly. The map of no use now, the streets seeming twisted, twisting into one another. I came to another sign.

Cthuhlu F'tagnh
You're Fucked Now

A group of hobos were asking folk for small change, but I continued without stopping, pitying them more than they could know.
Still walking I decided to tear open my sausage supper and devour the contents. I pulled back the paper to reveal an indescribable horror. An amorphous mass of pseudopods writhing in a sea of sauce. And suddenly I realised it all. And with a great and woeful shudder I flung the thing in my hands as far as I could. And ran, ran from my supper and the poor vagrants, ran from the realisations I had made. Ran from this godless place.

For what horrors shall they know when the sun wanes from this place, and the doors are barred to strangers and the cold winds usher in those things kept out by fear of light. Those things that men speak only of in hushed and fearful tones, dread of this accursed place. And I know that had I walked to the sign, I would have found that the letters had not been blotted out with paint, but with the sticky red residues of fresh human blood!

Good job I wasn't on acid, huh?

Eventually, I got to the pub.

But that's another chapter.

Friday Night was strange. Quieter than I thought. Generally, the pub filled with random roleplayers filtering in. Eventually, all the relevant GUGS made it there. Rumours already circulating that someone had been supping champagne/vodka/redbull cocktails before things got into swing. But surely this must have been wild fabrication. No human could survive that.

The pub (who's name escapes me, some longish welsh word) was a dark affair, with all the things necessary to facilitate a good time :- tenpin bowling, couches, alcohol, and us. One immediately learns that the word 'heavy' does not exist below the hallowed borderline; it must be replaced with the word 'bitter'. Incensed at the thought of having to order a pint of bitter, I went into my first comedy huff of the weekend and decided I would only order Guinness instead. A good substitute, and the ice cold variant was particularly pleasant on my parched throat.

Lemme see. Not much happened. We got drunk and cracked jokes. People played tenpin and used Omar as a ball substitute at one point. We all rejoiced in the fact we'd actually made it 300 miles to engage in the hobby we love. Cherry Al was raised high on a plush leather chair, and we marched proudly around the pub, with him held aloft like some Gaulish regent. Drink flowed, spilled, dribbled etc etc. Eihort was the watchword, anarchy was the callsign. Anyone not with us was against us. As Doug McRae, soldier of fortune, says 'It's like being in an LA gang. Do what you like, nobody fucks with you'. He's right. I can only think of three reasons we might have been tolerated

1) Our hosts were tolerant people, and had pretty much expected this level of childish, self destructive, non violent and very loud uproarious behaviour.

Or:-
2) There were enough of us to take on the entire Bangor police force (4 cops) and trash the city if need be.

Or:-
3) Malcolm had been in touch with the right people. And Bangor were visited a few weeks earlier by a very polite English gent in a nondescript black merc, who explained the ramifications of what would happen if 'Our man in Bangor' was to suffer any interference during the course of his indulgences.

After the 11 o'clock mark, things got even more confused, fractal, and disjointed. That's what alcohol does to you, I suppose. We were riding on the crest of the 'we finally made it here' wave, and nothing could stop us. Everything here gets a bit muddy. I think a bunch of us went looking for the standing stones and met a fat pagan who told us to keep the noise down. Yes. And then at another point, my mate broke up with his bird and we were sitting in my room, just quietly talking about, well, nothing. The conversation was broken by a single piercing call from somewhere in the dark distance. A morale boosting sound:- Someone shouting 'EI-HORT!'
Like two stereotypes in an Ealing comedy, we stuck our heads out the window and brayed in unison.
'EI-HORT'
They responded with style, panache, and originality:- they also shouted 'EIHORT!'

The conversation continued much in this vein for a couple of minutes, till we were all too hoarse to scream any longer. Fuck knows who those mad denizens of the night were.
This done, I went to see Ashley Noth and left my friend to his own devices. These were callous times, after all. In Ash's room, I was introduced to the aftermath of the RedBull, Champagne and Vodka cocktail. (Voted the 'crack cocaine of alcohol by readers of What Drink? Magazine) The aftermath was called Shan, Al and Al. One third of them did not look pretty.

Thereafter, the room became rather foggy, as does my memory.

We return to this daring tale of intrepid adventure on Saturday, just late enough to have missed breakfast, but not late enough to have missed game registration. The best of times, and the worst of times, said Dickens. Arse, said me.

I awoke at 8.57am to the bright sunshine, champagne supernova pushing through my eyelids like some malicious inquisitor with a spotlight 'Vee haf vays uf maiking yoo tok'. Outside my door I could hear a….milling sound. Yes, that was the noise of people milling around. Wandering aimlessly down thin bleak corridors, towards something. I lay still for a few seconds and tried to move my arms. Check. Legs. Check. Hooray. I was alive. My brain disagreed.
I sat up and wondered where I was. Memory slowly wandered back:- recollections gaily tripping up the yellow brick road of my mind:- I was in Wales, I was here to Roleplay. Breakfast was at 8.30am.
Fuck.
Having given up on breakfast notions, I followed standard operational early morning routines and got washed and dressed. For a change I decided to wear black.

The journey from my room to the main hall in Bangor was uneventful, so I shall not bother to describe it.

The situation in the main hall was so familiar, I feel it is in no way lazy of me to copy/paste great chunks of text from earlier in the story, as follows:-

Maladministration had firmly set in and washing all around us were seas of unwashed roleplayers. What do you call such a grouping? A chaos of geeks? En masse, the GUGS pushed forth through this sea like an army of Mosesses. Mosi(?), determined to find out what was going on.
It transpired that they were allocating games to gamers to GM's. Each GUG saw to his own with a minimum of fuss, with Cherry Al convincing the Gophers that Ashley Noth would not be joining the fray as he was seriously ill. 'He asked me to pass on the message for him.' He said, very convincingly. 'oh, by the way,' he gestured to the platoon of GUGS behind him, 'I can't control them. I'll apologise now. Sorry'

Repetition is a very important art, you see. The first time was an ice-breaker, the second time is to protect from incrimination. Understand?

My shabby little group of motherfuckers were finally brought together under the tutelage of its GM. The GM was a fair and honest soul, who suggested a trip to Tesco's before playing, so as to gather any amenities that would be needed. This was a Godsend to those of no breakfast and high metabolism. We trooped off to the supermarket with a joy and fervour. Well, I did, at the very least. And I don't give a fuck if the rest walked with as much optimism as the Belsen Holidaymakers Tourist Club (1944). This is my tale. As far as I'm concerned, joy and fervour were our maxims.

Now, I don't claim in the least to be overtly patriotic or fanatical about being from Albion. In point of fact, it's kinda sucky. However, when I am away holidaying, or in a country that one might deem as foreign, I have always regarded it at my noblesse oblige to act with a certain decorum.
Getting pissed and chaotic might be high on the agenda, but if we at least try to make it look like we're intelligent, courteous, gracious and following the basic precepts of gentlemanly decorum, then I'm getting closer to being less miserable.
With this in mind, I was happily chatting away to the Gm as we were walking down the road. As we had nothing in common, we defaulted to roleplaying; specifically the game we were due to be playing. I was being courteous, knowledgeable and all that shite. Y'know, trying to make a good impression on my host, and the other strangers who were my fellow players. And I was doing it well, too, until trouble staggered onto the scene.
So picture the image that I'm trying to sell to these people. The PR friendly face of Scotland. And this is all hanging in balance on the invisible spiderthin threads of goodwill, tact, and timed humour.
Then Chrispy White appears, half empty can of Caffreys in one hand, bottle of JD in the other. And she's shrieking something about a tree attacking her last night, and some Welsh cocksucker she rugby tackled. And then she tips the remainder of the can into her gullet in a feat of inebriated dexterity that would leave a junky wino fuck bowing down in servitude.
A distasteful look appeared on my face. To picture this look, try to imagine a cocktail of tequila and vinegar sitting on your tongue right now. Now look in the mirror. Distasteful look. Ok?
I delicately reached into the pocket of my trenchcoat and withdrew a handkerchief. Handed it to her. She snatched at it. Thought about what to do with it for a second, then wiped the beer off her face and chin. Grinned.
Ironically, and somewhat annoyingly, I'm not entirely sure if this display hadn't actually endeared the other strangers to her more than my own efforts had.
Damning everyone on the planet, I went to get breakfast. I bought some blue plastic cups, cos I thought they'd be useful for drinking from, and they appeared to be retailing at three for £1.00. Upon reaching the checkout, I found that they cost £1.00 each. I couldn't be arsed arguing the point. I spent £3.00 on plastic cups that were barely voluminous enough to hold a leaky gonorrhoea infected hamster's excess discharge. Feck it.

Roleplaying's the boring bit, so I'll skim over it briefly to illustrate what happened on Saturday. Basically, the GM did two things which dicked me off. And I shall illustrate them as follows:-
1/ He gave us character sheets with stats and shit, and a second page with lots of personalised equipment. Then we started the game in a pit and he made us scrub all the equipment off. Now, I wouldn't have minded that much if the whole equipment thing had just been an effortless 'fuck you' to all of our roleplayer aspirations in a sort of post modern ironic gesture. But it wasn't. It was just a crap start to a game. In a pit.

2/ The NPC's acted without the benefits of the divinely bestowed virtue of 'common sense'. Just one example will suffice. Again the pit thing. Here is a logic puzzle:-

You have 4 prisoners in a pit. They are unarmed but armoured. You and your 4 mates have to make sure they don't get out of the pit. They will undoubtedly attempt to escape once they awaked. Your job is to stop them. You have spears.

Now. This is easy, right. Even the most stupid person in the world (i.e. the asshole who actually noticed Jamie charging after the bus with an insane OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK look in his eyes. The same person who was also the most dull witted inbred this side of the lobotomy fence.) even THEY could stop people getting out of this frikkin' pit. It is not difficult. Why are NPC's stupid, damnit. They have rights too! Gah.
Point is, we got out of the pit, when we shouldn't have.

Despite that, the game went ok; substandard for my usual tastes regards Pendragon, but the GM was a good guy and I've played worse scenarios. Wandering around the campus, I was thoroughly impressed by the wargaming section. Rumour platoon stated that Ewan had somehow managed a farmyard coup-d'etat; in a tabletop game involving shepherding he'd managed to pen them all in after 2 turns. A feat unsurpassed in the history of humanity. As I was wandering through the main hall, I bumped into Paul Hanlon. Asked him how his game went.
'Got creamed every game' he stated.
I tried to formulate words of consolation. My statement ended up as:-
'Hey no sweat. It's not the winning that counts, it's the taking part, right?'
He nodded.
'No, hang on' I said, 'It is the winning that counts. That's what gets us the fucking points at the end of the day, damnit.'
Sincerity sucks.

The stuff and events between this and the next bit pale into insecurity and irrelevance, as I Hellride to the next chapter.

There are few situations in the world that can justifiably be described as precarious, and most of them involve Indiana Jones in one way or another. I personally feel that the next bit can feasibly rank itself up there with the best of Dr Jones escapades. Bet he never did this:-
For reasons best known to me, at approximately 6.08.52 on Saturday 10th April 1999, I was balanced awkwardly at the tiny sink in my student hall:-
standing very very still and very very naked, with one leg at a perfect 100 degree angle, resting on the sink, and the other one supporting my body weight. My 100 degree leg was lathered with cheap shaving foam purchased one day hence in Byres road. In my hand is one of those evil motherfucker orange bic disposable razors; the ones with no guard on them, just a wicked edge of splintersteel. And I'm gingerly removing the yeti-like fur which nature has endowed upon my shanks. While this is going on, there is a build up of the acids in my standy leg, as the muscles tighten and seize up, so it's like a race against time to get this cunt of a leg (odd expression, huh?) shorn and smooth before I am unable to walk. Cos of the tension on my standy leg, the fucker starts precariously jiggling of it's own accord, making the whole process so much more difficult. This whole shaving business would be so much easier if it were not for the advent of that bony obstacle known as the kneecap. As it stands, my razor glanced ineffectually off it once or twice whilst coming up the tibia & fibula at high velocity:- doing no damage, but causing a few spine tingling moments.

Now ladies and gentlemen, bad as it all sounds, this was nothing compared to the troubles I had when I attempted to go on to the underside of my leg. Allow me to return, therefore, to the crackwhore of anatomy that is known as the kneecap. Gingerly moving up the underside of my 100 degree leg:- while my standy leg is causing my body horrendous DT's, my snicky snicky razor suddenly stopped at the chicane just below the kneecap. Being an inexperienced leg-shaver, I had continued on towards the bend without slowing down, and snicky snick only stopped when my nerve endings screamed 'visceral agony!'
Now, to my credit, I whimpered like a baby, but did not move a muscle. The razor was lodged at the underside of my kneecap, and I could feel acidic pain as shaving foam mixed with raw flesh. Warm liquid coursed down the razor, onto my hand. Onto my arm. Leg blood. My leg blood. I rationalised that if I died here, I'd have the piss ripped out of me for the rest of my days. I wouldn't be able to take the embarrassment. With my standy leg gyrating more violently than your mother's best vibrator, I made a swift prayer to lady luck and pulled the blade out of my flesh slowly. Missing the femoral artery with only inches to spare, I withdrew the steel, staunched the blood, and thanked the gods for my lucky escape.
Then I started on the second leg.

As this entire scenario is possibly somewhat hard to visualise, I have prepared a stick diagram for your visual aid:-

Special thanks to Pix for the excellent artwork.

The situation is resolved 25 minutes later. I stand proudly admiring my smooth, scarred legs and inoffensive little genitalia. Then I get dressed up in a red crush velvet dress, leather trenchcoat, 15 denier slut tights and German armyboots. I don't recall what I did for underwear, but I probably went Scottish. As I was getting dressed, I couldn't help thinking about Silence of the Lambs, and the strange trans-vestite/sexual serial killer.
Sometimes I worry about what strangers must think of me. If you're reading this and you don't know me. I'm actually really Nice. No really. We must go for a nature walk sometime………

I thought back to an old adage If looks could kill………..Homophobic rugby players'd probably butcher me tonight.

At this juncture, sequence goes right out of the window. All of these events occurred, are occurring, or will occur at some point, they are merely not in any discernible order.
Shock Value has a lot to answer for. Two counts I can attest to. The second was standard, the first was surreal.

I stepped out of my room at one point to find the water pistol re-creation of the Battle of El Alamein going on around me. Fair enough. Wandering down the stairs, I met President Mcgowan engaging in some Hot-Two-Gun-Action with some mindless plebeian in the corridor. The plebeian was pissed and getting pissed off. And wet. I was watching, amused, leather trenchcoat amply covering my deviant frame while Al liberally applied the H20. The fucker suddenly grabbed our beloved president by the head and engaged in some sort of choke hold. Unnecessary and belligerent. I wandered over as Al got visibly more angry. Things were going to get messy in about 7 seconds.
What to do? The guy was an asshole. No sense of humour. Violence is nasty. It escalates and gets out of hand. But there was maybe no other way round the situation. Maybe…….
I walked up to the cunt and swung back the coat, my left hand resting on my hip, my right hand in my pocket (where, I am ashamed to admit, it grasped the cold comfort of my lock knife…….. We win either way). Standing at a slight angle to him, I did the most improbable militarily offensive thing that I could think of.
I pouted.
I pouted and said in a low husky tone 'Hey, big boy, wanna chill?'
His countenance fell into a state of stupefied incredulity. Pure perplexed astonishment. If his face had been painted on canvas and stuck in a display, the title of the piece would have been 'What……The……Fuck……' It seemed that his whole world had collapsed, and he was now in a place where teenage boys wear red dresses and think nothing of it. Where water pistol shenanigans were de rigueur. Where reality had gone mindless, and he was the only strange creature because he was so….normal.
I smiled. Winked.
His choke hold slackened as much as his jaw. Al, seeing the humour of the situation, decided not to kill him.
He wandered away dumbfounded, hopefully mentally traumatised for the rest of his days.
I folded the lock knife up, and continued on my adventures.

As I walked past the chip shop, I saw several of my fellow GUGS. They knew all about the red dress thing. So I flashed them at the window. I was told later that one of the chip shop attendants screamed at this. I don't know if that's a compliment or a condemnation.
The DJ at the disco was crap. In lieu of DJ Toast, Original Al mugged the fat biker fuck and took over in the booth. The night suddenly got a lot better.

Padre shot a spud gun up my dress. Compared to the terror of the snicky razor, a high velocity starchy tuber of a widely cultivated plant of the nightshade family smacking into my spermatozoa secreting oval sex glands was a bit of a disappointment.

Word got around that Ewan had aced the sheep game. Three score GUGS follow SCR President around a dancefloor, screaming BAA!.

Evil Shan caught me full on in the face with a pressurised jet of water from his Squad Support Weapon:- the Super Soaker. Not a particularly interesting occurrence, but another incident of implied hatred towards the invert. Cheers.

Cherry Al receives evil looks from parents of a toddler he reintroduces himself to, having met the infant one year previously. Brian verbally scolds parental units for bringing kiddie with tissue-paper thin eardrums into noisy bar.

Without need for further embellishment, there was fun, merriment, drink, dancing, confabs, rumours, gossip, and all the usual shite.

The place closed at about 1am, I think. We headed back to our student halls. And that's when shit really started to get silly.

We seem to have a problem with authority. The problem is that select elements of the Student Administratum seem to think they had some authority over us, and could make us go to bed quietly.
MWWWUUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

I ditched the dress and threw on some black stuff. I think I may have had mascara and eyeliner on. Attempting to wash this off turned my eye areas into charred pits of darkened hell. I looked as good as I felt. Grabbing my bottle of Vladivar I headed downstairs. The latest rumour was that we were going to convene there, but had been told to 'keep quiet or clear off' by these authority Nazis. Slightly disgruntled, someone mentioned that we could all strip starkers for the hell of it. Whincup's theorem kicks in, next thing we know Doug's in his underpants, reading the paper. Scarily enough, word of this gets round some of the other Gaming soc's, and they send delegates down to the common room to confirm this. So, we have GUGS in various states of undress, Doug in his smalls, and a bunch of strange blokes watching us while we mind our own business. What's that all about, eh??
Eventually, Al has words with the crotchety old janitorial fuck that reckons he runs the show. He says we gotta split, sartorially inconvenienced or not. Murmurs of disapproval but we got to fall in line. As a small token of revenge, Al pockets the cocksucker's cubit calendar, which still resides to this very day upon the McGowan Mantelpiece.

We then decide it is time to start electioneering. In a strange game of cat and mouse, we sneakily go from floor to floor, dodging janitors, putting up 'Will Vote Pickering' posters on all the walls in all the halls. Where janitors pull them down, we sneakily follow, replacing the ones that have been torn down. What ensues is a maddening Sisyphean task for the poor idiots, as a never ending stream of posters magically appear in corridors that they have just purged. Petty, but fun.

I am duly informed that a brave pot plant attempted to subjugate our anarchy by superhumanly (superarborealy?) hoisting itself in a lift and heading down to warn the janitors. Unfortunately, the base human percentage for the Speak Additional Language:- Plant is 00%. Its efforts were wasted on the janitor bloke. Mind you, even if he had been able to understand it, the communication relay would have taken about two days (janitors being notoriously slow at everything they do.)

Spin Doctoring over, I made my way to Ashley's room, to meet with all the usual suspects and sit, drink, chat. Padre told horror stories of medical science, when he exploded an intestine and showered his colleagues with rotting stuff. Brian admitted he'd played baseball with a femur and gall-bladder. Omar's shanhat was vehemently attacked with beer, cigarette embers, crisps and waterpistols until it finally leapt from the window with suicidal pathos. We talked about what had happened previously in the evening. Laughed at our own jokes and made so much noise we managed to once again get someone to bang on the door with a pseudo 'we're roleplaying in the morning' rant. I gave up at about 3ish, determined to get some breakfast on the Sunday. I had paid for it after all.

Sunday came and we all mucked in to get Ashley Noth's room barely fit for human habitation (the scent of stale tobacco was incapacitating) For simplicity, the fag ends, ash, spliff bits, stale beer, half eaten bits of food and all other biodegradable stuff went out the window. All other solids went into black bags.
On Saturday night my mate Bill, in an inspired moment of drunken fervour, had neatly arranged all the fire extinguishers outside his door, with the intent of causing a blockage in the corridor on Sunday morn, so that perturbed roleplayers would bang on his door to complain to him:- therefore getting him up in time for the games.
Unfortunately, Cherry Al was the first to notice this. Unaware that it was the doings of Bill, he complained to the Halls staff about the situation, demanded that they find out who did it, and pointed out the dangers such a fire hazard presented to one of the members of GUGS; as they had been stacked at Bill's door. Ironically, they apologised. It was funny afterwards when we found out the truth.

Because we felt a bit shitty about the whole scenario last night, Classic and I decided to retrieve Omar's Shanhat from outside. It is with unfortunate realisation and post-modern irony that the festering thing had not only been out in the rain all night, it was also now covered in the fag ends, ash, spliff bits, stale beer, half eaten bits of food and all other biodegradable stuff that went out the window 12 minutes previously. Our quest of reparation was thus met with the most fiendish, repugnant, Nurgle-esque, filth ridden, Eihort shagging, Ebola ridden, syphilis addled, mangled piece of dog eared kaleidoscopic cloth we had ever set eyes on. I picked it up with my knife, and flipped it into a plastic bag. The bag started melting. We looped another poly bag round it, suffocating the abomination. It lay brooding in the main hall for the rest of the day.

My game on the second day really got me simmering with hate at the apparent ineptitude of the Gamesmaster. I will highlight two points and two points only. If I go into any detail I may lose my mind.

1/ The GM fell victim to 'the noisy player' syndrome, and cowtowed to the fat-cripple-goth-Yorkshire-bitch-from-hell.

2/ He didn't run a RPG. He had a flowing narrative of 5 hours worth of a story I wasn't really interested in. No matter what we did, the show went on and character interaction only served to get in the way of it all. My sole purpose in the game was to roll dice. It didn't even matter what the dice said. If he didn't like the result, he'd tell us to roll again. I SHIT YOU NOT TM . Perhaps I am unnecessarily biased. Perhaps the others enjoyed it. I quaffed a red bull to stay awake, but to no avail.

At lunchtime, I was so depressed by the game thing that I bought ten Marlboro and decided to start killing myself softly. I'm only just beginning to get over that kick. I wheeze a lot now.

My maudlin state continued until the game finished. In the giant, empty canteen, I found Shan and Cherry, quietly skinning up. We sat like zombies, comfortably enjoying the silence, like an island of calm amidst the madness of the weekend. Cherry had given up on his game and managed to get his money back. Shan had played a game based around pre-pubescent toilet humour. For their sins, I swilled away at the bottle of Vladivar, a look of distaste upon my face as I swallowed the aqua vitae neat. Suddenly angry about the whole façade of the event, I huffily refused to attend the awards ceremony. Me and Vlad sat outside, smoking cigarettes and wallowing in apathy (it's what I do best). I am led to believe that fat-cripple-goth-Yorkshire-bitch-from-hell won first prize in our category.
They tell me I got third. I never picked up the certificate. We won so many things that year anyway, what do we need with another piece of paper accolade. Childish, I know, but I was drunk. I shoulda felt sorry for Bangor. I mean, at the end of the day; we got to go home. They had to stay. I guess it was stupid of me to assume that a bunch of aspiring academics and basically intelligent folk could work together to sort out a convention. But it transpires that they couldn't organise a cluster fuck. Of course, we won the overall event. What the hell else were we gonna do? Which meant hosting the thing in 2000Ad. And as we started up on the bus back to planet earth, I couldn't help but wonder if we were ever out of line, if we had perhaps contributed to the chaos in some way. If it was our antics that had creased the foreheads of the organisers and indented worry lines below the eyes. And, as I write this in retrospect, I wonder if it was due to us that Bangor did not attend in 2000, and their society is broken and fragmented as a mirror on rocks.
Nah.
As I looked back towards Bangor, a black bank of clouds barred the horizon, and the tranquil tarmac leading to the uttermost ends of the earth lay sombre under an overcast sky- seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

© Dax 2000Ad. This story contains a sample from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, reproduced with kind permission from Mr Conrad. This story also takes the piss out of HP Lovecraft. Ha Ha. The characters and events portrayed herein are fictitious, though any relation that they bear to real or living persons is entirely probable. Thanx.