Gentlemen of the Forum! Ladies, please excuse us, for this is man's talk.
Gentlemen!
I have witnessed a horrible thing today. I have been to the very pits of Hell itself and peered over the edge, I have felt the hot breath of Beelzebub upon my cheek.
Imagine, if you would, a room, confined, overfilled with the middle aged, the overweight, the lame, the rancid, the social misfits. A seething cauldron of a social worker's worst nightmares brought together, all over excited by a common purpose. Common mores are discarded in a maelstrom of thrusting elbows and flying feet. Passage is impeded by knapsack wearing knots eager to declaim their views of the latest fads and fashions. The weak are trampled underfoot and their battered bodies nudged under tables and in corners. Those new to the terror, shuffle empty-eyed, caught in the streams of bodies, barely able to find respite at some table to examine the offerings held by aloft in the bony fingers of shifty merchants whose sharp eyes are only matched by their sharp practices.
Salute? Nay, gentlemen, far, far worse. Today I have been at the "Happy Stampers", a gathering of women whose joy in life is to hand craft greetings cards. I have been jostled, stamped on, rammed by an invalid carriage and side swiped by trolley bags. I have braved the foetid miasma of menopausal gussets and seen the hate of an interloper in very eye.
It is an other-world, a Hades mirror of our good wargamers gathering, a twisted nightmare that cannot be born by masculine mind. There are things I have seen with my own eyes that make me want to pluck them from their sockets! Vari-coloured butterflies; black trees with golden leaves; mystic sigils like "chocolate is for life, not just for Easter." After just a few minutes my senses were reeling and not to be trusted, yet there was no escape. Any attempt to exit was foiled by be directed into a stream that led inexorably to a far side of the room. There is talk of embossing powders and blank board and stamp plates. There is a buzz and a chatter of a million daemon-starlings that peck at the brain and feed on the worms of sanity.
Gentlemen, I have see the other side of our coin, and it is not for men such as we. I shall keep a light burning this night, and mayhap for many to come, for I fear the dark, and I fear the visions that may come with sleep.
One has to ask
"Why were you there?"
"Did you buy anything?"
"Was there anything that could be used as wargames terrain?"
Quote from: Fenton on 29 March 2014, 05:06:23 PM
"Was there anything that could be used as wargames terrain?"
;) ;) :-bd
Superb fsn.....But as Fenton asks............................Why ?
Cheers - Phil
I too have experienced that hell!
Even the amazing Mrs Lemmey decided to leave after five minutes as 'this wasn't for her' and we got an ice-cream instead!
Glad you survived FSN, the pain eases, in time.
I did look to see if there was anything of use. Some interesting cutting implements, but nothing interesting enough to risk stopping. Continued movement was the only way to survive.
Why was I there? You'd think that the woman who carried you for 9 months would care for you and not lie about "this will be interesting and fun", wouldn't you?
>:(
=O =O =O =O
Cheers - Phil
Quote from: fsn on 29 March 2014, 07:34:05 PM
You'd think that the woman who carried you for 9 months would care for you and not lie about "this will be interesting and fun", wouldn't you?
My mother will be getting flowers and a nice meal; this is my duty as a grateful son...
You sir, have stepped beyond the boundaries of mere filial duty and entered the realms of deified progeny...
you sir have taken your remit and exceeded all reasonable expectations...
you sir are a paragon amongst all offspring...
you sir are bloody bonkers! :) ;)
Quote from: fsn on 29 March 2014, 07:34:05 PM
Why was I there? You'd think that the woman who carried you for 9 months would care for you and not lie about "this will be interesting and fun", wouldn't you?
>:(
No FSN. It was in retribution - For the discomfort of 9 months of you being in her womb, the agony of your birthing journey, the subsequent sleepless nights, painful feeds, the projectile vomiting , to say nothing of a babies ability to squirt excrement up thier back and out of the neck of the babygrow. (who teaches them this? :-\)
Even now she is probably smiling to herself and planning the next "interesting and fun" trip with you. Or signing you up as a volunteer driver to ferry pensioners who smell faintly of urine to the day center or hospital, while they talk constantly about stuff you have no interest in - incontinence pants , Irritable Bowel Syndrome or their budgies dubious habbits. ;D
Quote from: fsn on 29 March 2014, 07:34:05 PM
You'd think that the woman who carried you for 9 months would care for you and not lie about "this will be interesting and fun", wouldn't you?
Surely you are of an age to have realised that when a woman (mother, wife, SO, sibling) says "this will be interesting and fun" that it is code for "this is so excruciatingly boring/ painful that even my closest female friends, who would follow me into hell if required, cannot be persuaded to join me in this activity."
To add to the fun, her bonkers friend from Shetland was present as well as the one from the Wirral who "tunes out" every now and again came too. They bicker about everything. Who sits in the back seat of the car, who pays for the tea, which witch is which, and then disagree about stories they've told each other thirty seven times already.
It was like the "Witches of Eastwick" 40 Year Reunion. :(
I was thinking of taking my mother to "Phalanx", but she'd end up chatting up Leon and get Milady's life story. :(
Quote from: fsn on 29 March 2014, 09:14:17 PM
I was thinking of taking my mother to "Phalanx", but she'd end up chatting up Leon and get Milady's life story. :(
;D
Please call the doctor....... 8)