Ruling Britannia XXV

Although this is the second RB in this month's WNOHGB, it is actually a month since I wrote the first one at time of writing. Nobody told me that there was not going to be a May issue. Fortunately, they are very different in content. While RB XXIV dealt with the annual awards, XXV is pretty much back to normal (if you can call anything in here normal). For me, the last month has been extremely busy. When I look back and consider where I was last month and where I am now it's pretty amazing. The big news of course is that I have moved house. After 6 long months of living back with my parents, I have finally found some people gullible enough to live with me. Regular readers will remember the 6 months I spent living with Snap, Shanny and Tobes in Walthamstow, which were pretty mad. Will this be the same? Will it be better? Too early to tell yet although judging by the first two weeks it looks like being more of the same only without all the long hair clogging up the sink. We'll have to see.

The whole saga began when Matt got relocated from his job in Coventry to London. At this time, I was looking to move out of my parent's house again and Colm was also looking to get a place because he was tired of foreigners stealing his food (no I'm not joking). Now these are two guys who are semi-regulars in RB. Colm (aka Bowdy) got a lot of coverage last year for drunken antics and generally being one of the only people who was always up for having a beer while Matt (aka Noddy) was mentioned mainly in connection with my visits up to the University of Warwick. A lot has changed in the last year though. Matt has a decent job, is raking in quite a lot of money and has developed a special talent for pulling. His most famous effort (as detailed in RB 19) was pulling a 16-year-old girl in a club with the line:

Colm has also changed a lot. First he managed to achieve what Ringo, Snap, Shanny and Howard have all tried and failed to do and give up smoking, apparently with very little problem. In fact he now hates smoky environments altogether. In a slightly more shocking move he has now also given up drinking. Now for most people this would move them down a number of places in the league in the list of potential housemates although given Colm's previous tendency to get really drunk, do fucked up things and piss a lot of people off, this may not be a bad thing. Besides he's still up for coming down the pub and having a few drinks of orange juice.

So it came to pass that the three of us decided to get a house together. The initial problem was that we couldn't agree on a location. With Colm and Matt both working in the centre of London, they wanted to live as far in as possible although this was not good for me as I work right in the heart of suburbia. Eventually we found a few places that were mutually convenient, one of which was Walthamstow the site of my previous house with Mike, Snap and Tobes. So one Friday about a month ago, we all took a day off work and went house hunting. The first couple of houses we saw were pretty crappy. Although one of them was within spitting distance of Riley's, the pool hall that Mike and myself liked so much, we were not particularly inspired. We then saw a decent house in Walthamstow before we journeyed into London's more attractive suburbs and saw a house that was marvellous except for one of the bedrooms which was so small it would barely have contained Colm's card collection let alone essentials like a bed. After this we saw a couple more houses in Walthamstow that were quite nice and also a really cool house in Wanstead, East London. It's kind of a Victorian terraced house with a nice garden and in a nice area. We all agreed that this was the house we wanted and so all that remained was to negotiate a price and sign the paperwork.

Despite a couple of false starts we eventually managed to agree a price, which gave us plenty of cause to celebrate. As we were already only a mile up the road, we went to one of my local pubs in Enfield, which was also where everyone I work with hangs out every Friday night. Now generally, I have kept work and friends very separate based on the fact that I don't want to hinder my career on the basis of having objectionable mates. I was on slightly safer ground on this occasion as Ringo wasn't with us and Colm was staying sober leaving only Matt's one-man womanising trip to contend with. I did the only thing that made sense at the time and got the beers in. In the end it could have turned out worse and we had quite an enjoyable evening. A lot more people from work turned out than expected and Matt was a hit with a couple of the girls although, as often happens in these circumstances, by the time he was drunk enough to do anything about it he was just some drunk bloke on the pull. He managed to gloriously strike out with one of our receptionists before we hit the road. Fortunately she doesn't hold it against me.

We had to move in almost immediately. 8 days later Matt and myself moved in and Colm joined us a week later. Naturally in my mind I was making comparisons with my last house. There we had a honeymoon period of about 2 weeks where we basically went to the pub every night and didn't worry about things like money and food. I guess this house wasn't that different. What soon emerged though was that all three members of the house had a general love of gaming and CCG's in particular. Within a week, Matt had taught Colm and me Jedi Knights, Colm had taught Matt Legend of the 5 Rings and I had taught Matt Netrunner and Magic. We also managed to play a game of Heroquest for nostalgia reasons. Because my current housemates have generally more money and a healthier lifestyle than my previous housemates I also noticed a change in the contents of the Fridge. Mike's Pot Noodles had been replaced by Matt's pasta and salad while Tobes' tins of Spaghetti had been replaced by expensive pizzas and tuna. I suddenly realised that I was in a house where I was the slobby one. Matt even has a weights bench. Also we have found that we all have different things in common. Colm and I both like Snooker and other relaxing pastimes like that, Matt and Colm both like non-stop gaming and Matt and I both like going out and getting wasted. No matter who is in we have something to do.

Of course one of the first things we had to do was check out the local pubs. Although going out in central London is fine for a lot of the time, sometimes you need a local pub where you can sit down relax and put the world to rights. Given that Wanstead is generally 'nice' we were surprised by the number of good pubs on offer. Naturally in true bloke style we spent time going to each of them individually and evaluating them on such criteria such as price of beer, quantity of fit women and whether or not they have a large screen to watch the football. After eliminating a policemen's pub and one that looks suspiciously like a Wine Bar we were left with the following.

This selection is giving us plenty to work with. Someone keen to get in on the action in Ringo who was, in Walthamstow, our honourary fifth housemate. Here he is already becoming our honourary fourth. We have already had a few memorable nights, probably the best being our first visit to the Purple Turtle for a few months. It was the day before Her Majesty the Queen's Golden Jubilee and so, despite the fact it was a Monday, we had the day off the following day. Matt, Ringo and I decided that we would honour our glorious way in the only way we knew how, by getting really pissed at the Turtle. To be honest we had never been to the Turtle on a Monday before so we were not really sure what to expect. Would it be the mainstream dance venue full of fit easy women like on Friday nights or would it be the loud techno shite full of Goths and drug addicts like on a Saturday? What we didn't expect was a very quiet bar with a brand new gay barman ('Oh my God, you want HOW many Vodkas?') with pretty inoffensive music in the background. I guess Monday nights is 'Have a quiet drink with your girlfriend' night.

However, not to be deterred we hit the Vodkas, 5 at a time as usual through Happy Hour. Although the bar was not crowded enough to play the 'Applaud the fit women going into the ladies toilet' game, we nevertheless found the famous drinking game of 'Twenty One' to be of some amusement. Ringo contributed to our general inebriation by changing a number of innocuous integers to phrases such as

This is hard enough to remember when sober and we had soon drunk our way through about 30 Vodka before we decided it was time to move onto the Orange Shit. After a couple of jugs we managed to lose Matt. This was a bit worrying until we found him happily chatting to a few girls that he just randomly decided to approach at the bar. After 5 minutes obligatory pointing and laughing, Matt decided to share his new found friends with us. For the first time in history, one of them actually liked me better than Matt. I had got as far as getting her phone number when the unthinkable happened and the bar shut. I was left with a phone number for a girl I can't really remember what she looked like, not really remembering what I said to her because I was too pissed. We'll just have to see what happens. The journey home was not entirely uneventful. Ringo and Matt provided entertainment to the other passengers on the train by having a wrestle and Ringo stripped naked on an underpass of the A12. Looks like life is slowly getting back to normal.

Just 4 days after, Matt, DT and myself decided to wander back to the good old University of Warwick to play in the Lord of the Rings territorial open. Well, in reality, I just wanted to have a good night out in Coventry with Neil but the territorial was as good an excuse as any. Pretty much as soon as we arrived, we got on the beers and after an all you can eat Chinese, we headed for the Coliseum. This club is kind of strange. It is, when all's said and done, a student club being within easy staggering distance of both Warwick and Coventry University. However, the last few times we've been there it has come to our attention that a lot of the clientele are a little bit young to be students. Young enough in fact to make the Nas line 'Do always check for ID before chilling VIP with fly shorty PYT' very sound advice indeed. Still, if ID checking is what it would take then that is what we would have to do. Matt and Neil have too good a pulling record to let such thing as age stand in their way. Matt got off to a very good start with a girl who seemed like she was on a mission to see how many men she would pull in one night. What followed however was a lot of strikeouts and women trying to nick my England flag (following the defeat of Argentina earlier the same day). DT then disappeared for a while and returned with news of a conquest. Now Mr jack of all card games, bane of Decipher's life doesn't come out too often. When he does, he is a whore! By the end of the night he asked us to leave him behind because he was going to get sex. Well he thought he was. What he actually got was cast off by the girl in question for some other bloke and told that, in an amazing coincidence, it was the same girl who Matt had pulled earlier. Sloppy seconds ahoy!

Laughing at DT was a theme that continued well into the next day when we had the small matter of the Lord of the Rings territorial to contend with. My deck was a bit rubbish to be honest. It was just some twilight Nazgul thing I knocked together to play against Matt a few days previous. There were a few players taking this seriously, DT at the top of the list with several rules questions on how he was allowed to shuffle his cards. I won my first game without too many problems and in the second round I managed to draw Matt playing with Neil's deck. Matt had only played a few times before and despite having a good deck made a few errors, which allowed me to sneak another win. After getting a third win in a very lucky manner I was tested for steroids by the tournament organisers and was found to be clean except for the leftover beer from the night before that was ruled not to be enhancing my performance. In the fourth round I played Rob Bowles, the Star Wars player who had also managed to rise to the top of the heap against the odds. At this point things got a little funny because DT seemed distracted by the fact that the 2 players on the top table (us) kept breaking down into fits of laughter seemingly about nothing. We spent the best part of the 45 minutes hacking and slashing at each other's fellowships and making stupid unforced errors before I eventually killed his Frodo at site 9. My only companion left was an exhausted Legolas. Nazgul cause a lot of carnage.

I had now won all 4 games and my claims of being a really rubbish LOTR player were starting to be reviewed with suspicion. I had to laugh. Looking at the top 4 tables, it was all Star Trek and Star Wars rejects. Rob, Pete DiBiaggio and Derek from Wars and myself, DT and a guy called John from Trek. Same old suspects, different game. I didn't want anyone to think I was a ringer so I lost my last 2 games to be on the safe side. Actually that's not quite true. Pete beat me comprehensively and then I lost to another ex Wars player whose name I can't recall. This was enough to ensure that I would be making no appearance in the final confrontation. Who would was a matter of some controversy. Pete, DT and John had all finished on the same points and same count-back scores. There really seemed to be no way of separating them. Fortunately Neil managed to get through to Marcus who used his cast iron grip of authority (okay I think that's enough crappy metaphors for this episode) to give a ruling. Good job really because Neil's best idea was a pissing up a wall contest. Probably would have been fairer! While DT set about losing the final, Matt and me went for one last pint before heading home. It wasn't all bad news though. In the car, we got to have an in depth analysis of why DT lost the final and also found out my deck was illegal. Hurrah!

That's all this month except for Song of the Month. This month it is dedicated to one of my new housemates, the man who has just beat me 20-17 in a 9-ball pool marathon, Colm McFadden.