I can ‘Xerox’ something with my bare hands. If I write something in a certain way, I can almost certainly replicate it – again and again. I’m not gonna forge anything with this, because the accuracy comes close, but not that close. If I create a typeface and write something, I can repeat ad nauseum. Over time the quality of the copy might degenerate a little, especially if I don’t keep the original close at hand. Also, I happily emulate the fonts in greetings cards, often with such accuracy that people have to ask me how I did it, or whether it was there to begin with.

Yes, I have to concentrate a lot – if I don’t the copy tends to be adequate rather than good. I guess that applies to anyone. If you have a talent for painting but your heart isn’t in it, you probably won’t be creating a masterpiece.

I just sat for almost two hours creating labels for my wife’s homemade jewellery and charms. In the process, I did several fonts and logo designs – all pretty rudimentary considering the timeframes involved – and I had to repeat them three, six or a dozen times. I grumbled. If I didn’t grumble, it wouldn’t be worth the effort. However, somewhere, deep down, I enjoy the whole process ‘cause I’m quite good at it.

If anyone can suggest a career path with high salary potential to which I might apply this skill, by all means leave me a comment with the details!

I’m sure it isn’t intentional, but whenever a big change occurs that is exactly how it feels. The more significant the change, the longer the earnest chat and the more time you get to spend in the netting… Despite the fact you’re ready for your Kids Meal now and all this bouncing around is making you feel a bit sick to be honest.

It’ll pass, I know; but in the meantime you’re left in a state if limbo. You don’t want to disturb the adults again and tell them you’re hungry now because they might take it the wrong way. However, you REALLY will be sick if you have to stay in the ball pit a moment longer.

So, I consider the site being back considerable progress. I now have an aching back from leaning over the computer putting the site together, but it’s a positive pain. I hand-coded the whole thing and did the images myself, so all the principles of plain, simple web design remain intact. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d used someone else’s template to put my web site online. That would have just been embarrassing.

You can find the new website at backtobasicsweb.com or b2bw.boreders.com – keeping it simple.

Can anyone suggest why this might be the case? Could I find some means to inject some of the sedate entertainment and enjoyment of the former into the stress-inducing trials of the latter?

Answers on a postcard…

Synopsis: Beggars find something of value, but need to get back to civilisation to make anything from it.

Adventure Outline: The characters go scavenging in the fields around the city, wandering the paths and lanes in search of anything valuable. In tough times, you have to be prepared to do what you can to make a few pennies. They have a small scuffle with a couple of ruffians in the morning, out to cause trouble; but by lunchtime nothing of value has come to light.

Following a short rest, they decide to head back to see what scraps they might pick up around the markets, and stumble across a corpse in a ditch at the side of the road. As luck would have it, this scene – though gruesome – is not a murdered soul, but the carcass of a dead pig.

On closer inspection, it looks like it may have died from a hunt related injury, a slow bleed. The carcass may have been there for a day or three, but the flies swarming around aren’t too bad. Back in the city, you could get a shilling or more for meat like this from a pie-maker.

Trouble with stuff like this, the authorities don’t approve of people bringing uncontrolled foodstuffs into the city. Disease runs rampant, so controls offer some measure of protection. They wouldn’t know a nice bit of seasoned meat if you slapped them around the head with it.

Complications: Guards on the city gates will not allow anyone to openly walk through with a carcass. Secondary gates or waterways may provide an alternative, but they provide their own hazards. Beggars tend to gravitate towards suspicious activities, so the characters may face nosey competition trying to claim the carcass for their own.

Adventure Preparation: The adventure provides a little entertainment for a band of beggars, so you may want to run as a one off – or perhaps engineer a situation where non-beggars fall on really hard times and need the money badly enough to consider smuggling condemned meat!

To build a tad of context for this doubt, I got a 2.2 degree in History and Political Studies at university. I have no regrets in this regard. Well, no – that isn’t true. I do have regrets, because a 1st Class degree would look far more impressive framed and hung from my wall. When I explained what a 2.2 was to my wife, she questioned why I would ever want to reveal such a qualification to anyone, never mind have it framed and hung on any visible wall within the house. Perhaps this certificate might better be displayed next to the planning permission for the demolition of Arthur Dent’s house.

Anyway, I have a recurring dream about not attending History lessons at school. In these dreams, I do all sorts of other things, but end up looking at a timetable and realising whatever it is I’ve been doing it has meant I’ve utterly failed to attend a History lesson. In most instances, I have missed history lessons at school rather than university.

However, I also have a recurring dream that I have failed to pay the rent on my digs at university – and left one or more personal items behind. Last night, this fact managed to slip into a dream that didn’t even seem to have anything to do with school or university – and involved all manner of other people and places ranging from my wife through current work colleagues to rooms in old places of work.

Anyone with theories about why either of these doubts should haunt me so can freely comment!

Yes, iPad doesn’t sound quite as impressive as the iSlate (the pre-launch guess at a name); but, iSlate sounds heavy, and Apple clearly have this aimed at a ‘lighter’ market, a casual device that provides the gliding, easy functionality of the iPhone with the size and convenience of a small laptop. Really, it looks like the base of a MacBook with the monitor embedded where the keyboard should be. I love the prospect of a ’slide-out’ keyboard, as featured on the iPhone. A keyboard can be so damned redundant, at times you only need to shift the cursor or slide the page… so, why not have the option to make the keys vanish.

I enjoy reading on a laptop, a page rotated sideways on the screen and zoomed to the max so I can sit it on my lap, or lie back, bend my knees and lean it against my legs. I perceive no barrier in possessing books purely in digital form, as my wife would certainly appreciate the opportunity to reclaim some of the space in the house currently occupied by bookshelves.

So, well done to Apple. Congratulations, Steve, on presenting such a thing of beauty to the world. Please bring it to the UK as soon as possible, so that I might venture forth to the Apple Store and stroke it in silent, awe-struck wonder. I promise I will save my pennies – and one day I might own it myself. Pretty thing. Pretty shiny-shiny iPad.

There’s “Ahistory” by Lance Parkin, which attempts to make some sense of the timeline of the Doctor Who universe. Also Who-related, I’m reading “The Face of the Enemy” by David McIntee, a Doctor Who novel without the Doctor, featuring instead those excellent chaps from UNIT and the Delgado Master.

Aside from Who, there’s the time hopping play “Arcadia” by Tom Stoppard, the various booklets of the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game, and also “The Night Watch“, the first of the vampire triology by Sergei Lukyanenko.

Quite why I need to book hop so much, I’m uncertain. I’m not sure whether it detracts from my reading experience or somehow heightens it. Possibly, if left with only one book to read I would grow bored too quickly. On the other hand, perhaps I dilute the experience by trying to digest so diverse a set of materials.

Whatever the impact, I remain frustrated by my own inability to read at greater pace. I feel like a runner aiming for a goal, and yet I constantly fall short despite my best efforts. I try to speed read by take in only the first sentence of each paragraph and at best glancing at the rest, but almost certainly this has it’s own downside that I don’t actually read evrything. I could so easily miss something using that method that it only seems worthwhile where I read casually and the material involved is just a set of game rules.   

Despite the fact Slumdog Millionaire has an uplifting conclusion, I don’t think I could stomach two movies with such a weight of woe in one evening. My fragile personality already sits on a grey and depressing precipice at the moment.

I’ll record ‘Slumdog’ and watch it later in the week or something. Instead, I shall retire and get some much needed rest. I have a copy of Arcadia waiting for me to finish it. My wife considers reading plays before bedtime a little odd, but I have to read it somewhere and somehow the lavatory doesn’t seem to be appropriate. Are there certain works unsuitable for toilet reading? Do some books warrant more respect? Or more refinement, at least?