A Long, Long Time Ago ...

... in a galaxy far, far away, I used to be into live fantasy role-playing (aka LRP/LARP to those nerds in the know). In the early 1980s, LRP was really only starting out in the UK and I spent many weekends with a group of like-minded nerds - and I mean that in the most affectionate way - from Liverpool University at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, playing Treasure Trap. If you really want a laugh, click the link. I knew these people. I was one of them...

So there we were, spending weekends camping in a real live castle, with one toilet between however many people were staying. I think there was a shower put in much later, but let's just say it wasn't a health spa. Mostly in bizarre costumes, we'd eat down the local pub and drink into the small hours in the top of one of the towers. Then there were the adventures: many hours enacting various quests throughout the castle. I say enacting, but those of you who have ever played Dungeons & Dragons will understand it's more like free-form acting, with an overall end objective, but you kind of make up the rest as you go along, keeping in character of course. Anything can happen - and often does.

I was writing back then too, and if you are a fantasy writer, you really can't beat the experience of living some of this - I can give you an exact reaction to creeping along a stone corridor in the dark, rounding a corner and coming across a 6ft long-haired, bearded bloke, built like the proverbial brick shit-house, wearing studded leather and wielding a steel sword. Or watching an execution on the drawbridge by flaming torchlight. Or abseiling from a tower while a horde of mad people are firing arrows at you. I've lost touch with most of the people from this part of my life, which is a shame as they were a great bunch of guys and we had some fantastic weekends.

Fast-forward a few years and I'm supposed to have grown up as I'm married with a mortgage and a job. But I'm talking to some like-minded people on CIX and get invited to participate in a Star Wars event in South London. I get a kit list sent to me, with joining instructions and a character sheet. Bear in mind I've never met any of these people before, but I venture off to some disused warehouse that has been decked out for the day, get my laser tag equipment and we're off on a 12 hour adventure loosely set in the Star Wars universe. I had one of the best days of my life, totally immersed in an alternate reality, trying to steal a secret CD and divulge vital information to the opposition (yes, the traitor was ME, mwha ha ha...). Came back through Waterloo station in costume late at night with some of my compatriots and we did get some strange looks, although this was fortunately well before all the terrorist alerts.

So I apologise to anyone who knows me. I was a nerd. And I loved it!

Anti-Social Networking

Much as I hate to admit it, I'm middle-aged. In the 45-54 age bracket on forms (turning 40 was a breeze, but that 45-54 was a killer). I've worked in law-enforcement for all of my career and in IT for a large chunk of it. So back in the very early 1990s - if not the late 1980s - I had an email account. Back then, I don't recall the internet existing outside of academia, but there were a very few ISPs around that offered email accounts if you bought a large and clunky Amstrad dial-up modem card that you stuck in a slot in your pc and plugged your telephone line into. Then there was a choice of basically CIX and one or two others whose names I forget. Not only did I get an email address, with a nice off-line reader (necessary to avoid tying up the phone lines while reading/writing emails), but also a set of community forums where you could chat to other account holders in various groups of threads - much like a non-pictorial version of today's Facebook.

For anyone who is old enough and/or nerdy enough to remember all of this, I was jale@cix.whatever.co.uk and I mostly used to haunt the cult.tv threads where we discussed equally nerdy topics such as Star Wars. I recall a mass meet-up at somebody's house in Birmingham, where we watched lots of classic tv (this is before dvds and internet tv, remember - most of us didn't even have a video player), ate lots of food and generally had a good time. There must have been 50 or so people there (it was  a big house in Solihull), including an undercover journalist who promptly divulged the lot in the next day's national papers - claiming infringement of copyrights and public performances. 

But it shows the power of social networking 20 years ago. There were no other quick forms of communication - mobile phones had shoulder-bags to carry the battery and were strictly for the rich and businesses. Private telephones were still ruled by British Telecom and an expensive way to spend time. Stamps and letters still ruled the masses, but it's not the ideal way to communicate, especially with people you've never met in real life.

I moved on from CIX as the internet gradually grew and lost touch with a lot of the great guys (and girls) I met back then. And now we are spoiled for choice with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and now Google+ coming on line (I don't get Google - cloud computing? I mean what if it's raining?). I may be 47, but I love being able to keep in touch with old friends and make so many new ones all over the world, especially when they are people I choose to communicate and interact with, by virtue of the things we have in common - shared interests, hobbies or values.

Is it anti-social to be sat at a computer rather than talking to real people in real-time? Where are these real people? I live in a small village and have a family. I don't really have any friends who live close enough to drop in on - and these days, it's not really done, is it? These days you never call unannounced "just for a chat and a drink" like we used to. That's sad. But then I have all these people at my fingertips. They might be online and all over the world - but they are real people too and I know many of them would be there for me if I needed them. I've seen how they respond to others in crisis, whether that's financial, earthquake, fire or other disaster.

And friends like that are hard to find anywhere.