It was my choice in the ongoing triumvirational series of games between yours truly, Michael and Alex on BGA, and I was hankering after those older, simpler days as I sat in my hammock on the porch (not really) and glanced at the youth of today passing by glued to their phones (really). Maybe they were pondering their next moves on BGA.

I settled on Alhambra, a game that I used to own and had always found gently enjoyable but had then promptly killed by burdening it with the weight ofa massive pile of expansions, the very thought of which meant that it never came off the shelf remotely enough to justify all of the shelf space it took up. I tried a couple of solo variants a few times and they did not grab me, but it is still a game I hold in great affection, one of those things that I would happily put in front of novice gamers, and indeed have done on more than one occasion.

Its general head-downness meant that it was possible not the greatest of choices for this kind of play, as there is minimal interaction between the players, although that did not stop some discussion about who was taking whose tiles, either intentionally or not. I maintained my innocence, although so did Michael and Alex, and I was too far from my screen to see their poker faces and judge whether or not they were being ever so slightly economical with the truth.

As ever, my Alhambra was contained and compact, which has been remarked upon in the past, whereas those of Michael and especially Alex were much more expansive. I continue to believe that one’s Alhambra is effectively a gaming Rorschach test, separating those of us who are more extrovert and daring from those who are quieter and more introverted, and my feeling is that it is the former who are rewarded in this game, although I did find myself backed into a corner many times as I strove fruitlessly to remodel my city in order then to extend it. Weirdly, my city looked like a Scottish Terrier, which is one of my favourite breeds of dog. Take that, Mr. Rorschach...or maybe not.

Alex ran out the winner with Michael in second place, and I spent most of the game dutifully bringing up the rear, which is where I finished up, but it was a very relaxing and enjoyable play, despite the stress of being unable either to buy or place tiles for what seemed like large parts of the game. We already set up and running on our next game, my first try of Great Western Trail: Second Edition.

In other matters…

Our summer break draws to a close, but it has been restorative and recreational as well as putting me in a good frame of mind for what is to come over the coming year. I hope that everything will play out as I expect it to, but even if it does not at least I am starting the journey in good shape, mainly because my brief illness seems to have taking what toll it wanted and disappeared in good order.

KT and I went out for lunch yesterday to the same place we visited on Sunday, and the the standard was similarly high. As the power had been cut to our abode due to upgrade works we needed to be out and about in any case, so this seemed to be a worthwhile use of our time.

We also used the lunch to punch holes in our various diaries and dedicate them to free time over the coming twelve months. After a decent amount of discussion we have ended up with a few bookings to which we can look forward, and which will act as waypoints on the journey over the coming year. It is a small thing, but simply having those things in the diary can make a difference.

I spent the morning having a look at repertoire for my chamber choir’s summer concert, pieces that have long lain unperformed but which I think are worth resurrecting. It will be a little left-field, and I still need to find the hook that will put the proverbial bums on seats, but I genuinely do think that it will be a delightful evening of music that will bring some hidden gems to life, which is one of the things that I most enjoy doing.

I will need to take on some extra work over the coming year, which, all else aside, is more or less the opposite of what I had been hoping to do, but I really do think that this is a move that could free up a whole pile of time, odd though it might sound. From here until November it will be a case of seeing how it goes, but I hope that I will be able to generate some momentum right from the start of this new project in particular and that I will get to next summer in a very good state indeed. At the very least, I seem to have rediscovered a little bit of energy to dedicate to it, and also to the writing, of course.

In other matters…

After our forest trek of yesterday, today was a quieter affair, one of recovery and preparation given that we are planning to be out and about once again tomorrow. It will be nothing too exciting, but we would rather not do three days in a row at this time of the year.

The rumbling of distant work-related thunder continued on the horizon, so I got on with administrative tasks in the morning, tying up a few loose ends for the coming weeks as well as getting close to a final programme for my chamber choir’s concert in spring of next year. Let’s just say that it might (=will definitely) include some more Zelenka. Conductor’s prerogative, and all that.

If I can get that programme nailed down in the next week or so, which I think is definitely possible, then I can start putting together the summer concert, at which point I will be more than a year ahead, given that I already know what we will be performing in the autumn of 2027. Goodness, look at me being all organised.

I also caught up with a composer friend who has been commissioned to write a first symphony. I was keen to hear of any news as to how it was going but it turns out that they probably will not make a start on it until next year so I shall have to temper my excitement about the project until then. It was about time I dropped them a line in any case, so it was good to catch up.

In the evening, while KT got on with her Herron I dismantled and rebuilt my current decks for the Lord Of The Rings LCG. I have not played this for a while as the recommended decks for the first saga expansion just were not doing it for me so I have gone my own way and am now quite excited to see how they feel in the playing, but that is for tomorrow, I suspect.

In other matters…

We went for a walk through the forest yesterday, not the longest of jaunts by some of our previous standards, but still something that we had been hankering after doing for a while. This is precisely the kind of thing that I would like to be up to in my free time at points over the coming year, so it was also the smallest of signals to myself and a reminder of just how fine an experience it can be.

We were a little surprised at how quiet it all was, at how little bird song could be heard, but, on the brighter side, nobody was cycling around with a Bluetooth speaker playing some banging choonz at maximum volume, so there was that. In London, as you might expect, it is a regular occurrence when out and about, although my annoyance is sometimes tempered by the sheer absurdity of the sight and sound of it all. Only a little, mind.

London beckons soon, but for now there are still a few days of peace and quiet, even if the email is stirring with the rumble of distant work thunder. I keep repeating to myself that I need to stay ahead as much as possible.

As I alluded to recently, August is also a chance for me to test drive a couple of approaches that I think might work for the months ahead, and it is possible that I have struck upon some kind of happy balance, though how it will all cope once things get hectic I have no idea, but preparation is always useful. At the very least it should all hold together for a couple of weeks before all going to pot, and that time might just give enough leeway for it to become some kind of habit.

We are both ploughing on with our Herrons and enjoying them very much indeed, and there is some extremely clever writing in there that plays with your expectations as a reader. They are also fun, which is not a word I thought that I would ever use when describing a spy thriller, but the writing and the wordplay and some of the tricks really do draw you in, all impressive stuff.

The oblivious campers decided that they were going to go skinny dipping in the middle of the night. I mean, have they not seen the films and known without doubt that there would be some kind of crazed axe man out there in the woods picking them off one by one? Obviously not.

Thankfully Laurie had her wits (and her clothes) about her and began heading around the lake trying to persuade various half-naked and shivering youngster to run, run now. The lake itself was out of bounds, as one of the campers had already perished there during something Laurie referred to enigmatically as “set up”, but as long as she was fleet enough of foot and kept heading away from Hans (for that was his name) there was a chance.

Laurie picked up an energy drink at one point which definitely tipped things a little in her favour, but just as she thought that she had cleared the woods of campers a pair of curious and irretrievably stupid new visitors turned up, inconveniently close to Hans and far away from the Final Girl. There was nothing Laurie could do to save them, especially as Hans had unlocked his Sledgehammer dark power by this stage, and it meant that she would go into the final confrontation without her enhanced ability.

Laurie was beaten by Hans in the very first attack - a double helping - but she got up again. However, the power of Hans was simply too much, and the loss of those early victims came back to haunt Laurie as she was defeated near the cabins and the woods went quiet apart from the slow tread of The Butcher heading back into the darkness whence he came.

As the camera zoomed up, up and away from the scene, it was almost as if there was a guiding hand running things, letting the characters play out events and treating them as if they were part of a game while leaning into how the story would pan out. Were they all simply pieces on a board being moved around for somebody’s entertainment? It had been a feeling that they had not quite been able to get over.

In other matters…

A belated greeting to the new subscribers who have come along for the ride over the past few weeks. You are most welcome here, and I hope that you enjoy the inane chatter that these posts bring for as long as you are happy to stay. Your support is much appreciated.

We had been planning to go out and spend the afternoon in the company of The World Outside, but in the end we decided that energy conservation was the order of the day, although I did still run around and about just a little to make sure that we had enough provisions to get by. Otherwise it was a Saturday spent in relative quiet, banking the respite away because things will pick up before too long.

I received some more feedback on my proposed new project, all of which was helpful and positive, so it seems as though I might be onto something with potential, even if I am prepared for a slow start. I had hoped that I might be able to get this up and running by the middle of September, but I think that it would be better to give it a little more time to bed in. All good, as they say.

There is now a week to go until I am back at work and I expect that it will be quite busy this term but I am reasonably optimistic that I can keep a lid on it all. One of the things that I like to do over the summer break is to tinker with matters such as my daily routine, and the most recent tweak seems to have been positive.

I know that there will be bumps in the road and that this new project means that there will be a little more in terms of weight of work, but my hope is that the rewards will make all of the effort worthwhile and that the knock-on effect might be that the downtime will be of better quality. It does feel as if most things are in place.

In other matters…

In the middle of some howling storms yesterday which have already made the long and extremely hot summer seem like an age ago we headed out to indulge in our second Sunday lunch of the month. Sadly, due to my regular work commitments it will be the last for some time but as a memory to take with me into September it was very fine indeed.

Our similar lunch last week had been very impressive, but the one this time around was a cut above in every way, from the service and the venue itself to the food (naturally) and pretty much everything else. Once we were done with eating we retired to a quiet nook which KT had discovered on her explorations around the building, settled into comfy armchairs and read our respective Mick Herrons.

KT is a book ahead of me at the moment and, having set sail on this particular literary adventure, I think that it is a journey that we will be seeing through to the end and in fairly short order. We have thoroughly enjoyed the Slow Horses series thus far, Down Cemetery Road slightly less, but are already convinced that the books sparkle even more than the screen versions.

Having said that, I have found it almost impossible to read the books without seeing and hearing the respective actors saying the lines therein, which is indicative of both the casting and the acting being spot on. Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is, of course, the cream of the crop, but everyone else seems also to have absorbed the essence of Herron’s writing, some very skilfully indeed.

I also wonder whether the book of Down Cemetery Road may possibly be significantly better than the occasionally unsatisfactory (in my opinion) adaptation, so that is something we shall be investigating. In the meantime it has been fascinating after recently having finished The Remains Of The Day to have moved on almost immediately to another book whose screen version is so faithful to the original that it is near impossible to unhear it even in new material.

I am still not quite there with Final Girl, despite the various feature film boxes on my shelf and my extensive experience with Hostage Negotiator, its forerunner. For some reason I enjoy it but do not necessarily find it fun, if that makes any sense, although I am also aware that it is distinctly possible that I have been playing some small rules incorrectly up until very recently.

I have therefore decided to dive in once more and to attempt to unlock the various joys that appeal so much to other people, and I know that I am getting there step by stealthy step. My latest play defaulted to my standard set up, that of Laurie against Hans in Final Girl: The Happy Trails Horror for that minimises the variables that I have to deal with and allows me to focus instead on the game itself.

Yet again there was a small mistake at one point, though by the time I had noticed it was too late really to do anything about it so instead I ploughed on, but it did mean that Hans paid just a little more attention to my Final Girl than he might otherwise have done. Despite Laurie getting hold of an archery bow and taking a few bleeding chunks out of Hans, once his Bloodbath finale had kicked in the game was up.

Up to that point it had been quite entertaining, as Laurie had risen from the near dead with three health points gifted to her pretty much out of nowhere, and the horror level had been dealt with uncharacteristically effectively. At some point the cabins had burned down and the lake itself had become a literal death pit, so it was pretty much a normal night out in the woods for my happy campers.

I feel that once I get to the stage where I really can deal with the game without having to stop and check that I have all the mechanisms correct then I will definitely begin to let the story wash over me a great deal more, for the success of this design, I suspect, is all about the story. A couple more plays should do it, I think, and then I will be confident enough to branch out into what the other boxes I own might have to offer, and Hans can then get a little sleep without being woken up in a grumpy state by unwanted visitors.

In other matters…

We went on the postponed jaunt yesterday that had been put off by my brief flirtation with a slight fever/man flu/attention seeking (delete as appropriate). Incidentally, a friend of mine was once told by his unsympathetic partner that he had a bad dose of “man flu” so, unaware that this was clear evidence of that lack of sympathy, he actually phoned up his work to tell them that this was the reason he would be taking a couple of days off.

Anyway, we trekked to the nearest city, all very exciting given that we live in a village and tend only to head to nearby towns, and spent a good deal of the day pootling around, dropping in and out of various shops and the like, passing the time until our late afternoon lunch booking. It was all quite refreshing and delightful, especially the hour spent in a cafe reading a book (KT) or surfing BGG for potential new board games (me).

I had spied a copy of Wingspan Pocket in pride of place in the nearby bookshop, a large chain, alas, but still clearly doing its bit for board gamers (insert moral conundrum here…) and was astounded by just how pocket it is. I was very tempted, I have to say, but was instead a good boy and kept my cards in my own pocket for once, probably earning a victory point in the process.

We also managed to dodge the sudden and violent downpours. Although in general I think that we view these as part of the many ridiculous components of our Grand Days Out^TM I was quite happy to avoid getting soaked, given how wonky I had felt over the previous couple of days. My, how wise I have become in my old age.

On the way home I donned my superhero cape (Blogman?) and helped a stranded motorist push his van up to the top of the hill so that he could bump start it on the way down, the other potential helper having simply driven off in his unsurprisingly very large and brash SUV. Hiding what, I wonder? Anyway, if felt like a very good deed, even if the van died a more profound and unpushable death a few miles further on, so we bought cake on the way back as a reward/admission of no self-control whatsoever between the two of us fully grown adults and slumped on the sofa for the rest of the day.

One of the things that I really enjoy about playing a single game several times back to back is the chance to get to grips properly with what makes it tick, to understand the small details beneath the surface that can be exploited for a better result. In an ideal world this would be reflected in an ever-increasing set of scores, but, of course, luck will come into it at some stage, perhaps with some other variables. Even so, the goal is always to improve, in gaming as in so much else.

From a slowish start with For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game I have been improving little by little over my first four plays but I wanted to do much better in my fifth and finally attain a medal score. Bronze is available at sixteen points out of twenty, so that was my aim as I shuffled up the introductory layout for another try.

Four rounds in and I was already looking at a decent showing, for I had managed to get all of the leaders onside that I needed, including a four-pointer. I still needed to have a good second half of the game in order to get a medal, and I have learned already in my short experience in this game that the deck can be very cruel at times.

Still, it continued to go well, especially as I leaned in heavily to the abilities of my four helpers per round, sometimes even using them with something close to skill as I manipulated the number of cards in my hand, the trump suit for the round, and many other things besides. Eventually I sat there with a score of sixteen, but still with one round to go, and a four-pointer at that.

I went in with all guns blazing, using all of the remaining leaders I had earned in the previous rounds to tip the odds in my direction, and on the turn of the last card I held ,y breath because it has all fallen apart before, but this time the gaming gods were with me. I picked up the four points and basked in the glory of a gold medal and a perfect score - twenty out of twenty. Next time it would be the random set up, and beyond that lay the campaign, but for now I wanted to enjoy the rare feeling of a flawless game.

In other matters…

Far from feeling better in the morning I instead felt distinctly iffy, and matters were not helped by a fractured night of sleep, my thoughts constantly interrupted by Mendelssohn’s (Felix, that is) Lobgesang. My brain sometimes does this to me, plays things on repeat while I delve into the individual lines, but it is most annoying when it happens in the middle of the night.

Couple all of that imagined noisery with the thunderstorm that went over at around six in the morning and I woke extremely tired and feeling very off colour indeed. I tottered around for a bit, did what needed to be done, and then announced to KT that I was going back to bed for a while.

When I did emerge, at around midday, I felt much better, and we both agree that I had a fever or something similar, because I really was burning up for a short period. It seems odd that it should have settled in and gone within eighteen hours or so, but I also never forget my experience of Covid and just how much complete rest can allow the body to recuperate.

Seeing as I felt entirely rejuvenated in the afternoon I picked up exactly where I had left off, out in the car for various supplies and necessities, and while I was out I also picked up the second Slow Horses book for KT, as she has just finished the first and was champing at the bit to continue.

In the evening KT and I played a little Codenames, which I shall write about in due course, but generally took it easy, for I did have just the hint of a headache. Still, if that is it for illness for the time being I will be very happy indeed.

I played a couple more games of For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game last night, digging into another session in short order after the first, and I have to say that my initial impressions of it are wholly positive. I scored 11 points on my first attempt, my best result to date, but then fell back to 9 on my second, but each of those results was better than my first session of plays.

Presumably, then, For Northwood! rewards the player who gets to know its mechanisms which, in turn, means that it is something that will treat you well if you spend time with it. The bronze result of 16 points might seem as though it is still some way off, but on more than one occasion the decision of a particular ruler has come down to the turn of a single card.

In that first play there was only one card left in the deck that would lose me that particular round and on my final draw it duly turned up, turning a possible four-point result into a dispiriting zero, and I kicked myself for not using an ability that would have prevented this happening, but you live and learn. The flip side of the coin is that on some occasions I have pulled off genuinely nifty play by my admittedly lowly standards and ended up handsomely rewarded as a result. Yes, dear reader, this tiny deck of cards has made me both groan and cheer, and often in the same game.

For Northwood! also comes with whole buckets of charm, from the character on the side of the box whose eyes peek through the two o’s to the various creatures who await you inside. You can take or leave the theme about witty rejoinders and rulers joining your cause and all of that, and I tend to meet it half way, but there is no mistaking that this is a satisfying and thinky game that somehow makes trick-taking work for just the one player.

The advertised length of twenty minutes is a little on the short side, I think, especially if you are going to think properly about abilities and how they interact, so I would probably put if at closer to thirty, and it has depth that is far greater than its components would initially suggest, from my limited experience, that is. Also from my limited experience, I genuinely found myself wondering yesterday whether this could get to something around one hundred plays in relatively short order, because there is also that whole campaign thing as well which I have yet to look at. One step at a time.

In other matters…

I had a genuinely quiet day yesterday, so no trips out in the car and nothing else really of note to distract me. Maybe it was because I had finally taken my foot off the figurative and literal throttle, but I felt a little awry in the latter half of the afternoon, and I suspect that it might have been because my guard was down just a little.

My only hope is that it is not something to do with the tooth extraction, but I think that is unlikely because everything has been going swimmingly thus far and, besides, it was now two weeks ago. No, this is something that used to happen when I was in the middle of my teaching phase, so I suspect that it will pass in short order, especially as I felt a little improved by the time the evening rolled in.

I did do a little more organisational work on the new project I am planning to undertake in the autumn, and also sorted out a couple of compositional things. Admittedly, I did not put any notes onto paper, but I did make progress in a couple of other areas, so steps were made in the right direction even if by the end of the day the symphony was as it had been at the start.

It is a time of year for thinking about the months ahead, but I also need to remind myself that it should also be about relaxing and sometimes doing as little as possible. I can keep the wheels turning by making sure that I am on top of things, but really this period should also be about rest and recuperation.

KT and I are planning a jaunt out and about tomorrow, so for her as well as for me it was probably wise to have a quiet one. My hope is that by the morning I might even feel positively refreshed and that any passing ailments will have fled, but we shall see.

As a small reward for finally managing to clear my Shelf Of Opportunity I decided to do the utterly sensible thing, namely to buy some more games. Even so, I resolved to learn from the part fourteen years of excess and pressure to get unsuitable things played, did my research, and then alighted on a couple of of items that I was sure would provide value for money or, if not, at least a diverting couple of evenings.

After a good deal of Google-fu I finally found copies of For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game available that were not marked up at double the retail price, so another good deal, and duly ordered a copy from a formerly unknown-to-me games shop in the UK, and it turned up very swiftly indeed. I resolved to play it that very evening, set it up on my table before heading out for the day, cast my eye over the rules in the afternoon, and then sat down to get to grips with it last thing at night.

For some reason trick takers have never really taken off at Meepleonboard Towers, but I do love the concept and appreciate that there is a great deal of flexibility in the possibilities of the design, so the idea of a solo trick taker was always intriguing, and I have to say that I was drawn in right from the start. Just as with The Fox in the Forest, it is not about winning every trick you can, but instead about locking down only a certain number.

For Northwood throws in a few other wrinkles, such as four abilities per round, additional abilities for doing well, and a whole layer of charm on top. Admittedly the theme does require quite the suspension of disbelief, but actually it works quite well if you buy into it, and I found myself drawn in immediately, more so as the possibilities for clever play became apparent. Want fewer cards to close the round swiftly? Activate this ability. Want to weaken your hand? Activate that other one instead.

In my first exploratory play I managed seven points, sixteen of which are needed for a bronze award, but I was already at that stage of muttering under my breath when missing the required number of tricks by a whisker on the turn of the very last card, haunted by the nagging thought that I could really have done better. It drew me back for a second play - eight points, so an improvement, at least - at which point the night was closing in, but this already seemed like a small and portable solo game that could simply keep on giving.

In other matters…

After a very late start we were out and about yesterday to visit a nearby butterfly farm in the afternoon. We have been to one of these things before when we used to live in London, and that was a more expansive affair, if temporary, but this was still a delight to be in, heat and humidity aside.

We took almost as much joy in the caterpillars as in the butterflies, for the former require a little bit of seeking out and the sheer variety of their forms is astonishing. That is not to put down the butterflies, though, one of which took a fancy to the back of my head for a while.

We grabbed a snack in the nearby cafe, which, in typically British fashion, allows you to sit outside with a lovely view either of the very busy road (front) or a large car park (rear), and then we headed to the nearby town to gather in provisions for the evening and the next couple of days. As we had been quite well behaved all day, we decided to treat ourselves to a takeaway in the evening, which was very fine indeed.

I also spent some time throwing a ball for the local dog to retrieve, which we both enjoyed. He understood my repeated “Where’s the ball?” enough to manage to find it half way up a tree, which was very impressive indeed. When he stood on his hind legs (less badly than the saying would have you believe) and hopped around the tree I could tell something odd was going on, and when I investigated further I found not one but two balls buried deep within its branches.

I must admit that I was a little taken aback that he found them at all, but I assume that he could smell them in there. Still, it was impressive stuff, so I felt that the least I could do was to reward him with a good session of play. Life can be nothing but hustle and bustle and pressure and demands for long stretches, but I very much doubt that I will go to my grave wishing that I had spent less time playing. The kind of thing that some others think of as a waste is for me core to our existence.

In other matters…

I was in and around the nearby town for a couple of hours yesterday morning, engaged on that most solemn of missions - a snack hunt. We wanted something indulgent and out of the ordinary, and sometimes it requires a little bit of effort to get past all of the sad pains au raisin wilting on the counter.

From coffee shop to coffee shop I flitted, therefore, from bakery to bakery and even to a farm shop which had a distinctly underwhelming selection before retracing my steps to a place that was advertised as (but which definitely was not) a delicatessen. Thankfully they had a selection of cakes at the front of the shop, so that was mission accomplished, although that is no reason not to continue the hunt on the sly elsewhere in the next few days.

In the afternoon I alternately dozed underneath and trees and finished reading The Remains Of The Day, which was wonderful. So powerful are the performances of Hopkins and Thompson in the film that it is very hard not to hear their respective characters’ words in their voices and with their intonations - or maybe it is just that they have understood the parts that they play so well that it seems as if there is no other way they could be delivered.

Either way, it was an enjoyable and thought-provoking read with all sorts of undercurrents pulling and pushing under the surface of the narrator’s words, one of those books that I am sure will reward rereading when the time comes. I have not quite decided what to turn to next, but I do have several books that I have started but not finished, so I suspect that my next tome will be one of those.

I kept off the emails as much as possible, but the gentle and distant hum of work is still there, even if it has subsided a great deal at this time of the year. Maybe I might treat myself to another afternoon of dozing and reading tomorrow or the day after while I have the chance, take advantage of the opportunity to do not very much. Maybe I might even dream of cake.

The marines moved into the Void Lock, the eerie ping...ping... of their motion detectors mingling with their elevated heartbeats in the sonic cocoon of their armoured suits. Was that movement? It was. Out of the dark Sergeant Gideon was attacked but managed to block it, while Noctis dodged as the enemy retreated back into the shadows. Somehow on the way out of the Void Lock Brother Claudio managed to survive an attack by four Genestealers, two in front and two behind, having adopted a defensive stance. Maybe luck would be on their side.

Moving into the Teleportarium Brother Claudio’s heroic charge took off some of the pressure, and the team managed to fight their way out of the location without taking any casualties, moving stealthily into the Hibernation Cluster. Gabriel and Claudio tried in vain to take out the spore chimney while the rest of the team faced off against the oncoming Genestealers, and Brother Deino finally fell, attacked from behind. Brother Claudio then ran in for another heroic attack but did not emerge from the forest of unearthly limbs into which he had flung himself.

Goriel was the next to fall, but at least by this stage Sergeant Lorenzo had finally managed to destroy the spore chimney, relieving just the smallest bit of pressure on the remaining marines, but it was not to last. Gideon went down after a Run & Gun, and then Noctis was killed by a Psychic Assault which took him completely by surprise.

By this point only Lorenzo was left, trapped between two groups of Genestealers. He resorted to intimidation, scaring one of the enemy away, but was grabbed from behind, his heart rate monitor swiftly resolving to silence. The team had made good progress, but not got as far as their destination, so at some point another group would have to take up the reins and go in.

Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game remains one of the gems of my collection, a game that tells a different story every single time and which places the player in a difficult position from the very first moment. Losing one marine is often the point at which the entire house of cards collapses, but somehow it still manages to play out differently every time, and I am still finding small wrinkles where I can make better decisions. I’ll get those Genestealers yet.

In other matters…

One of the great English traditions in which I rarely get to indulge is the Sunday roast. From the age of eight my Sundays have been defined by work, and at college especially I came to resent (too strong a word? Possibly not…) the way that I always, always seemed to be working when other people were having fun.

I had stepped back gently from that kind of work a few years ago, but now find myself in the driving seat organisationally (as well as organistically) so Sundays are back where they once were. However, yesterday was one of my rare days of rest that actually was a day of rest, so KT and I headed out to the local hostelry for, yes, a Sunday roast, and very fine it was too.

We also found the time to pop in to a local bookshop, because it is not as if we grabbed a haul of books earlier in the week (don’t tell!), and had a gentle wander around the local town before returning to our lair. The rest of the afternoon was spent killing off I, Claudius, which seems an appropriate phrase to use. Either we are more squeamish with age or the morals illo tempore have finally hit home but we decided that we probably do not need to watch it again. There is always Robert Graves, or Suetonius, of course.

For once I had entirely forgotten that there was a Grand Prix taking place, and I was in half a mind to ignore it entirely once I remembered that it was happening, but then instead I resolved to steer clear of the news and catch the highlights, and I am glad that I did for it was a decent show. I mean, Ferrari yet again got all tangled in what they should and shouldn’t do, but that seems like a baseline for any GP these days, and I shall miss the Zandvoort circuit when it drops off the calendar.

One day I shall write a list of all the things that my work on Sundays has caused me to miss over the years, at the top of which will be that AC/DC gig with King’s X supporting back in ‘94ish, but there is also no doubt that it has brought me many advantages and joys as well. Also, I definitely do not need a Sunday roast every week but it is good to be reminded every now and again of what they are actually like, how the other half lives.

For a while there I was playing the Turing Machine implementation at BGA rather than the physical version that I own, and that move over to the dark side flipped a switch in my brain so that whenever I looked at the box on my shelf I then thought that it was too much work to set it up and play it. Yesterday evening I rectified that particular error, running through two games with the actual components in my actual hands and I had an actual whale of a time with it. Yet again I gave myself a strong talking to. When will I ever learn?

For my first game I decided to go with one of the examples in the rule book, as it had been a few months since I had played, but I did remember that many of the clue cards intertwine and that you can cut down the number of questions to ask by posing the correct ones from the start. I duly ran home to a convincing success, having asked only six or seven questions.

Buoyed up by that result I decided to give the AI opponent a go, heading to the official site in order to grab a random six-verifier challenge. This time I was up against a time limit if I wanted to discover the code and beat one of our AI overlords, so I concentrated extra hard, possibly even furrowing my brow for good measure.

Eventually I came to the conclusion, via a rather convoluted process of deduction, that only one code would fulfil all of the displayed requirements, so, with equal amounts of excitement and trepidation, I tapped it in...and it was wrong, but how could it be? It turned out that in my haste to play again I had set up with an incorrect verifier. Time for another strong bit of self-talk.

So I had been correct but also incorrect, and I marked it down as a loss, swallowing what little was left of my pride. However, Turing Machine is an ideal thing to play at the end of a day, and I have left it on the table to return to tonight and possibly also for a few days thereafter.

In other matters…

We have arrived at that time of year when things calm down to near silence as far as work is concerned, part of the regular tidal ebb and flow of the freelance musician’s year. When things are quiet I eventually get worried that there is not enough work around, and when I am buried under commitments I want it to be quiet again. There’s no pleasing some people.

Yesterday morning represented the last bit of the storm before the calm, getting things in place to bring the shutters down and keep the world outside for a while. At a certain point, though, everything - or, at least, everything that we had remembered to do - was done. I would say that we both breathed a sigh of relief, but most likely that will come later.

By the evening we were able to relax just a little and take in the peace and quiet of our environs, having said hello to a few new animal companions who will be our friends for a short while. Even on the road we had come across a crowd of pheasant who, in their usual fashion, seemed either entirely unaware of the car or utterly confused about where it was coming from. We think that we made it through without casualties.

Although I have no expectation whatsoever of being able to finish the symphony over this next quiet period, I would still be disappointed not to have made considerable progress by the time everything picks up again. Ideally I would be able to slot the writing in beside a decent amount of gaming, reading, watching and general quality of life stuff as well.

I also like to use this patch of the year to try to put my thoughts into order for when the work begins again. My intentions are always good, whether or not I manage to stick to my plans (usually not), but it is a start, and there are some exciting projects ahead, as long as I can keep everything on the straight and narrow. It is a mixture, then, of planning and relaxing, all hopefully kept in some kind of balance.

I took myself back to the dank and dripping hellhole that is the Space Hulk Sin Of Damnation to take on the Genestealer infestation and destroy the forward launch control rooms. Previous missions had been notable for their distinct lack of success, so my team boarded the ship very cautiously given the reports they had heard of those who had gone to their end trying to achieve similar aims.

They were right to be nervous about what they might face, for Brother Scipio had barely set foot on the vessel before he was taken out on the very first turn, while turn two proved to be even more dramatic, the team losing Brother Noctis, Lexicanium Calistarius and Sergeant Gideon in swift succession. In other words, just after entering the ship, and still in the Void Lock, there had already been four Genestealer attacks and four casualties.

Brother Denio and Sergeant Lorenzo managed to fend off the next set of attacks, but the former only survived until the fourth round, leaving the latter to attempt to complete the mission on his own. Those who are familiar with Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game will realise that the chances of this succeeding tend to hover at around 0%, and that on a good day.

As if to add insult to injury, Lorenzo’s gun then jammed, and this meant that he could only go for a counter attack which could best be described as going in with no guns blazing. In he non-blazed but was pursued by a group of six Genestealers, and that was the end of this short and extremely brutal mission, pretty much a failure from start to finish.

The red die in this game is famed for its harsh and unforgiving nature, but never have I had four marines go down in the first four encounters. Perhaps I should have played support cards earlier on, but, even so, once that first loss came in it was hard to keep up, and, as so often in this game, the house of cards just fell away from that point onwards. It was tough to take, but my goodness it was fun!

In other matters…

While KT was attending an appointment in Frome yesterday afternoon I took myself off to my favourite coffee house and did some more work on the second symphony. I would say that I am now around four minutes into the first movement, which does not sound like much, I’ll admit, but it is four more minutes than I had a week or so ago, so it represents some kind of progress.

I also stuck my nose into the shop where I had bought a lovely Folio edition of Virginia Woolf for KT the last time we had visited, which I had spied in the window. This time the display was devoid of Folios, but I went inside anyway, only to find two and a bit huge bookcases replete with those lovely editions. It was the literary equivalent of being in a shop full of fantastic but discounted board games, and I know whereof I speak.

I restrained myself as much as I could and was quite proud that my overall spend was still in two figures, but I also felt that I had picked up some real bargains. There was In The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani, which was the most expensive item, and I also purchased The House Of Mirth by Edith Wharton for KT for the princely sum of £10. She had asked me that very afternoon to look for a copy in another bookshop, so to discover a Folio on the same road (more or less) for around the cost of a new paperback was a real find.

My heart skipped a beat when I espied a copy of Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, one of my favourite authors, and a book I have long wanted to read. I read Tonio Kröger at school, and it has never left me, to the extent that I would say that reading it was a genuinely formative experience. This particular book was a bargain, so I clutched it to myself as I continued my exploration.

And what was the last book that I bought? I, Claudius, of course. If nothing else, the family tree on the inside of the front cover will help to keep track of all of the intertwined relationships as we continue our watching of the BBC series, which we did in the evening after we arrived home, the afternoon having been extremely well spent, in all senses of the word.

My trio of survivors for this latest game of This War of Mine: The Board Game formed a happy and alphabetically satisfying ABC group - Arica, Bruno and Cveta. That, however, was where the happiness and feeling of cups running over stopped, for right from the start they were up against it, picking locks in doors and removing rubble to best of their abilities as they tried to find whatever there might be, hidden in the debris of the house in which they were holed up.

In terms of visitors and attacks this game more or less kept itself out of trouble, though there was a moment when Arica was co-opted into making a mad run down a particularly dangerous sniper alley, just about keeping himself out of harm’s way. There were also food shortages and a rat infestation, although our unwanted visitors did little more than nibble through our remaining cigarettes. I hope they felt suitably cool and stylish as they coughed their way back to their lair.

Having survived the first three days more or less intact, with our nightly scavenging going fairly well, all things considered, and the house itself now positively luxurious by comparison with its earlier state, replete with bed and a simple heater, things then began to fall apart in spectacular fashion. On day four, consumed by misery, Cveta wandered off, never to be seen again, while Bruno - well, let’s just say that Bruno’s story did not end happily.

As the only person left in the house, it was down to Arica to guard the house, but the need to stay up all night meant that he was consumed by fatigue. Perhaps unsurprisingly, keeping unwelcome visitors out of the house was more than he could manage, and as our nocturnal guests overran what had temporarily been our domain the game was lost.

So, this has been a journey of rediscovery, of getting back to grips with a game which I knew briefly and intensely a few years ago, but which I am appreciating in a slightly different light this time around, a light in which I can lean in a little more to the story itself and a little less about the frustrating events that undo everything I have done and more. Were there not other demands on the gaming table then I would definitely play it more, but it has already proven itself to be a welcome reacquisition, and I doubt that I will be getting rid of it again.

In other matters…

Don’t tell anybody, but we do definitely have a guilty viewing pleasure in our house, notably films with Jason Statham. These are normally utter doggerel, with Jason Statham playing somebody who looks and sounds like Jason Statham who has retired from whatever sneaky stuff they have been doing only to be dragged back to find naughty people and fight them.

KT lured me in a couple of afternoons ago by starting a film without telling me what it was only for The Stath to turn up around five minutes in, at which point I was fully strapped in for the ride. Cue a great deal of fighting, shooting, running and blowing things up until at the end Stath emerged victorious. Again.

I have seen him fight tech overlords, weapons smugglers, terrorists, and a megalodon - twice! - and, if nothing else, it always leaves me with a smile on my face. I imagine him turning up for a casting, impressing upon the director, much as Sean Connery seemed to do, that he would basically be playing himself, and then walking off with a suitcase full of cash and a script full of witticisms.

Talking of witticisms, we do take some delight in announcing what the next line will be, especially when it is as clearly signposted as in a Jason Statham film. I imagine that these put-downs are in there to make impressionable teenagers chuckle, and I would normally find them extremely tiresome, but knowing that they are coming, waiting for that moment, and then - boom! - hearing the line delivered is hugely entertaining.

Credit where credit is due, though. Statham has clearly found his furrow and is ploughing it immensely successfully, and he has provided us with many extremely entertaining afternoons when we simply cannot muster the mental energy for Melancholia or Ran, instead offering us the proverbial chewing gum for the eyes. Now, about a third Meg film…

There is a decent proportion of my collection that is made up of games that I owned, jettisoned, and then repurchased, many of which have gone on to great success when given that second chance, such as The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game – Revised Core Set, Core Worlds and Forbidden Island, while others simply offer an experience that I would be unlikely to find elsewhere, like Leaving Earth, which I was very lucky to find complete and with the expansions at a decent price after trading my own full-fat copy away a couple of years earlier. The characteristic that these games have is that, once gone, I cannot quite get them out of my head, and often that process of ejection has happened after only a few plays, meaning that there might just have been a couple of rules errors in there as well.

The latest ejectee to make its way back into the collection, and a box that kept nagging at me after I had got rid of it, was This War of Mine: The Board Game, played four times in three weeks back in 2021 and then sold for whatever reason. My records tell me that I had eighteen games come into the collection the following month, so it may well be that this was a panic purge, but, just as with the other boxes I had repurchased, this one would not leave my thoughts alone, and I became convinced not only that I had given it short shrift but that in such a limited space of time I had probably only played it very badly indeed.

I duly set it up for a first play in over five years, lured back in by the promise of what it offered that I had probably completely missed first time around...and promptly played it very badly indeed. My characters all succumbed to various ailments within two or three days of the beginning of the game, a swift and sharp reminder of what was on offer.

In my defence, not all of the fault was completely mine, for I decided to do what the game wanted me to do, namely to follow the learn-to-play booklet that effectively drops you right into playing. While this is decent enough at telling you what you are allowed to do, at no point does it tell you what you should do, so it was with some surprise that I turned over to the Dusk phase to find that, really, I should have been gathering water and food from the start rather than rattling around the house and stocking up on electrical and parts and the like.

Admittedly, I will know better the next time I play, and my characters will therefore have a slightly better chance of living a little longer, even if I suspect that the odds are well against their surviving until the end of the narrative. Even so, and despite this brutal reintroduction to this brutal game, I felt completely drawn in and knew already that this was a repurchase well worth the making. Now to get to grips with playing it properly.

In other matters…

The gentle pitter-patter of rain greeted us yesterday morning and continued on and off through the whole of the day, even if we are still waiting for a full-on downpour to arrive. The forecast is for cooler and more changeable weather through to the end of the week, so there is still a chance that we might get some proper precipitation at some point.

With the information that I needed finally at hand, I put together the music programme for next term at the church, which is a little later than I might have liked but at least is done. Much of it, especially later in the term, is contingent upon the replacement organ being up and running, but I have built in enough wiggle room for things to work out, I hope.

I need to select a couple of programmes for some carol services in December, but once those are done then pretty much everything for next term is already in place, which is a really good feeling given that we are still in the middle of August. If I can push on just a little and get the term beyond sorted perhaps even by the end of the month then I will be very happy indeed.

The bulk of the afternoon was spent looking at a couple of new games to buy, a small reward to myself for the final clearing of the Shelf Of Opportunity, so what better way to celebrate than by adding some new games to that shelf? I ran various filters to get to a suitable list of targets and then placed orders for For Northwood and Bullet Heart. Much as the heart always draws me to massive and sprawling Euros, the head keeps telling me that shorter and sharper games are the ones most likely to realise their value.

This thought was in my mind already, because I had been offered a damaged but significantly discounted copy of one of those massive and sprawling Euros, very highly rated, earlier in the week. For once I managed to override my instinct to say yes because (a) the expansion is apparently needed for a properly satisfying solo variant, (b) it covers ground already covered by another new arrival in my collection, and (c) I had never really thought about that game before. Perhaps I am learning, at last.

So the final game - for now - off my Shelf Of Opportunity turned out to be Cyclades, a copy which is missing the figurines for the mythological creatures but which makes up for it by having some nice promos included. It was also given to me by somebody who has upgraded to the newer edition, so, even though I assumed that it would be slightly rickety for solo play, I decided to give it a go anyway, as it would be unlikely ever to see a table of three or more for the full experience.

The solo variant that I found on the Geek is pretty easy to run, and essentially runs decisions for the AI without really taking much notice of what the player is doing and, as such, it offers a shadow of the multiplayer experience but loses a fair bit in translation. However, that is far from a criticism, as I still found myself obstructed on the bidding tracks and, in my second game, the AI somehow snaffled two creature cards, one of which was the one I wanted and the other of which enabled it to dodge what I wanted to do that turn.

In the first game I won without too much trouble, even if the 3-2 score suggested something closer, but then I realised that I had made an error during setup which had left the AI at a significant disadvantage. As the first session had played out relatively quickly I decided to go again immediately, rectifying the error of my first play and then taking things from there.

It was in this play that the randomness of the AI came to grief, for it did not build a single port in all of the game, which allowed me to build one metropolis early on and then go all-in on philosophers to cruise to victory by three points to zero. I had expected a little more, and in neither of these games was any fighting forthcoming, which was a little disappointing. The AI never chose to do it and I was therefore happy to sit back on my islands and harvest the resources I built up there.

For all that the solo experience was a little lacking in grit it did still allow me to see the game in action, and I can easily understand how thrilling it could be with the right group of players around the table getting in each other’s way and outbidding each other out of spite. My current gaming life is in a different space, however, so I think that I might keep it around for a bit and see how I feel about it in a month or so, but I do need to accept that even very good games might be very good games that are not right for me, and there is no shame in that, I hope, either for me or for the game.

In other matters…

I was in town early on Tuesday to pick up some bits and pieces of food, for I planned to spend the entire afternoon putting together and then tending to a ragù alla bolognese as it reduced. I find that the magic ingredient with this particular recipe is time, which is why I like to spend half a day getting it ready.

It is one of those dishes that takes distinctly less time to eat than it does to prepare, but I must admit that I made it for KT rather than for me, and she dealt with it appropriately. If I have the time up in the burrow then I can throw this together and freeze batches for future visits, but in Meepleonboard Towers it travels straight from kitchen to table.

Even though I had decided to make it at fairly short notice, we still had some proper egg pasta left in the cupboard, which gives it that extra level of indulgence. Semolina pasta is practical and cheap, of course, but egg is always my preference.

In the morning I did a little more work on the Lobgesang edition and sorted out one or two administrative matters, but then I took my foot off the accelerator and did a little fiddling with my game boxes instead. I might also have spent a little time online wondering what my next purchase might be, given that my Shelf Of Opportunity is now all shelf and no opportunity.

In the evening we continued onwards with I, Claudius, trying desperately to keep up with who is whose son or daughter by which marriage. No wonder the line of succession was so complicated.

My final play for now of Pandemic saw a team of Archivist, Containment Specialist, Generalist and Scientist turn up to all of the COBRA meetings that the Prime Minister thought were beneath him, taking matters into their own hands in an attempt to avert disaster. I had had two decent plays of this prior to setting sail on my latest session, but was only very cautiously optimistic of doing similarly here.

Things did start off well, and, just as in the previous game, I managed to eradicate one disease entirely from the board quite early on. So many of the actions that one takes in this have an unequal and opposite reaction, so I needed to ask myself whether the turn I spent doing this would be worth it in the long run. As it had happened in the first few turns, I reckoned that the advantage would play out substantially for the rest of the adventure.

Before too long I was also in a position where it looked as though I might be able to cure another couple of diseases, as long as I could get my characters to various research stations, but it was at this point that the game decided that it would fight back in a completely unforgiving manner. The fourth and fifth epidemics happened nearly back to back, the first one putting me into a difficult position and the second tipping me right over the edge. Outbreaks triggered more outbreaks and the game came to a swift and unequivocal close.

I am not sure that I could have done much better on this play, and I cling to the consolatory idea that the single eradicated disease underplays just how close I had come to putting in another strong showing. Sometimes, though, you really do need the deck to go with you, and I would be just as aware of that had I won as I was in this loss.

When the next set of plays comes around for Pandemic, I wonder if I will stick at Heroic level, drop down a notch, or instead add in some of the bits and pieces from Pandemic: On the Brink. Whatever ends up happening, I am reasonably sure that it will not be another three years before I play it again.

In other matters…

At the start of the year, when most of Somerset spent around six weeks or more under water, there was a remark doing the rounds from time to time about the grim inevitability of a hosepipe ban being only a few months away. Well, as of midnight last night it kicked in. Way to go on the infrastructure, guys!

In preparation for the move to watering cans and buckets I spent a valedictory hour or so in the garden before putting the hose away, paying attention to those corners that needed the most attention. As of tomorrow it will all be a little more labour intensive, and then we shall sit back and wait for the floods to hit again later in the year, no doubt.

Earlier in the day I had continued with a few errands around the house and also did another stint on the sketches for the second symphony. I have reached the moment in the first movement where the ideas that were swimming around my head for so long have come to a halt, so progress is a little more like squeezing a toothpaste tube than before, but it is still progress.

I can tell even as I write which bits are good and which will need to be changed, but the important task at the moment is to get something substantial down onto paper, no matter how much it will need to be ripped apart later on. I always think of it as hacking away at a large piece of rock when beginning a sculpture - at the start the big chunks come off and leave a rough shape, and from that point the refinements become more and more particular until suddenly the work is done.

Talking of work being done, I did a little more on the Lobgesang edition as well, and now think that it is more or less ready to go to print. I will not be doing that for a while, though, which will give me a fair amount of time to keep scanning it for small errors, at this stage more a matter of pride than anything else. Really, though, it is good to go, another task complete.

In March 2012 I had my first full scale binge while in this hobby, buying a large selection of used games from somebody who was lightening their collection substantially. It was simultaneously a lesson that not all games are good and also that my gaming eyes were possibly just a little bigger than my stomach. I think that it was also the last time that the number of unplayed games on my shelf was zero...

...until a couple of days ago, that is, when I dug out the solo variant of Cyclades that lives here on BGG, set it up on my table and ran through it, at which point, for the first time in nearly fifteen years, my Shelf Of Opportunity was officially empty (if you do not count expansions, that is). Yes, I have one game that officially has no plays, but it did have a partial play, and, while I could log it as such on the Geek, I tend not to do that.

I have kept a private Geeklist for around six years now that tells me things about my collection, and a brief glance through it shows that while I had got down to around ten unplayed games at one point I was up to thirty two at another, and this against a collection of just over one hundred. That proportion was way too large to be sensible for a player rather than a collector, although it does also represent the generosity of a nearby friend who is very happy to send unwanted boxes my way.

I have become both more rigorous in playing these boxes and more ruthless in letting them go of late, which means that in the not too distant future I should have a collection of no more than one hundred games, all of which have been played. This, in turn, will hopefully represent the long-awaited assertion of my own gaming desires against the remorseless and unremitting exhortations to buy, buy, buy that are everywhere on this site. For clarity, yes, I will still be buying, but hopefully with much more care and, to repeat myself, being more ruthless in letting unsuitable designs go.

So, more of Cyclades anon, itself a gift from my generous nearby gamer, but I am taking a little time today just to bask in the satisfaction of a goal reached, one which at many times looked completely unattainable. In the end all I had to do was to exert some control over myself, my acquisitions, playing and my collection, so not much at all. Actually, now that I think about it maybe it is not surprising that it took so long to get here.

In other matters…

When singers get in touch with me and ask if they can be auditioned to go onto the list at the church where I direct the music I tend instead to offer them a cantor service. That way I can get a decent fix on their ability, how they work, what their voice is like and, in return, they get a bit of job experience and get paid for it as well, far preferable to traipsing across the capital to be listened to for ten minutes under pressure.

Yesterday we had a new singer who had dropped me a line asking to audition, but it was somebody with whom I had worked before at a concert last year, so this was more a case of a long thread finally being picked up. It still meant that I was able to have a proper listen to things, but it all went swimmingly and ended in another name being firmly added to my list of singers.

Once I was done I wandered down the hill to sell on a game that had lived out its useful life on my shelves, wandered a little further down the hill to pick up a book that KT had ordered online a couple of hours earlier, and then wandered all the way back up the hill again. Once at the summit I got into the car and pointed it home.

Well, not quite home, for I stopped off on the way back to see my mother and stepfather, ostensibly to offer them some tech support in the way that people of my age tend to do for people of their age, but, more importantly, also to say hello and to catch up. Eventually, catching up done and tech support accomplished, I pointed the car definitively home and rolled in at around seven o’clock.

After I had sorted us out with some food and settled in KT suggested that we begin rewatching I, Claudius, which has lost absolutely none of its quality over the years, making up for whatever rough edges may have become apparent as the screens on which it is watched have gained resolution through the sheer force of its actors and script. Even though I have seen it twice, maybe three times before, I am already excited to watch it again and to pick up on little things that I might previously have missed. Best of all, as of lunchtime yesterday I am now off work for three weeks so will have the opportunity to spend a little time on it.

After the first non-gaming day of the month, but with a decent showing thus far in August, I got back to another game of Heroic level Pandemic last night, taking my Archivist, Containment Specialist. Dispatcher and Scientist out for a run against the spread of disease. Seeing the Scientist in my line up, who only needs four cards for a cure, is always a good sign, and having the Commercial Flight Ban turn up in the first round was also good news.

In fact, I managed to eliminate the yellow disease entirely in the first couple of round of the game, which was a very positive result indeed, and I wondered whether that along with the reduced number of infection cards pulled at the start of the session might just put me in line for a win. Things continued to go well when I also managed to cure another disease and came within a whisker of eliminating it, a risk I had felt worth taking because of the position in which it would then have put me for the second half of the play.

From that point, though, I simply could not manage to juggle all of the requirements as well as getting the right cards to the right character. I did manage to cure a third disease, but by then the board was getting crowded, even without any yellow cubes, and I was within one outbreak of losing the game. I would need to be both lucky and skilful, never a combination I have particularly demonstrated in my gaming.

With only five turns to go until the player deck ran out, I sat down for a long time and pondered how best to cure the final disease - indeed, whether it was possible at all, but it actually did not matter because the first infection card drawn caused an immediate outbreak which lost me the game. For some reason I cannot quite fathom, a large group of people had got together in a confined space in Essen - at a convention, perhaps? - and caused this final disaster. The irony was not lost on me.

I shall give Pandemic one more try at this level to see if I can possibly get over the line to a victory, as the last two plays have been very positive indeed. Even if I do not succeed, it has been well worth getting back to this after nearly three years away, and any doubts I had about its worth in my collection have been truly put to bed.

In other matters…

I continued getting on with smaller errands yesterday, those mundane things that are part of everyday life, so I put together a wheelbarrow that has been sitting unassembled in the shed for months, dealt with a few housey things, and then deadheaded the roses, which have been waiting for me to get round to them for a while. Apparently the wheelbarrow had been on my list of things to do but I had not looked at it for months. Anyway, behold us now with said item all good to go!

As far as the tooth or, rather, the lack of it is concerned, everything still seems to be progressing nicely. My face was a little swollen and bruised on one side, which I had expected, but I have come off the painkillers and am now just looking after things until a couple of weeks have passed. I was expecting much worse, I must admit, so I feel that I have dodged something that could have been pretty horrendous.

My mouth still does know that there is something missing, though, and it will take a while before I am confident enough to treat that side as I used to, so for now I am following the official advice and avoiding anything hot, spicy, granular or hard, which takes out a great deal of my favourite stuff. Still, I do like Greek yoghurt, so things could be worse.

KT also skedaddled up the road at one point to get in some garden supplies for slightly later in the year so hopefully we will be ready to get going on that as soon as the weather changes. If it changes.

In the evening I got ready for my last trip up the A303 of the summer, my Sunday morning work taking me to the burrow for an overnight stay for the last time until September rolls around. I am very tempted indeed to ignore the emails entirely for the next three weeks or so, even if I know that would do very little but store up trouble for when I return. Still, I did once hear of somebody who would return to work after a holiday and immediately delete any and all emails that had come in, reasoning that anything urgent would eventually be resent. Worth considering, I think.

A Commercial Travel Ban really helped me at the start of my latest game of Pandemic. My Archivist, Containment Specialist, Operations Expert and Researcher had begun the session with several event cards in their hands, and this one seemed like the obvious one to play on the very first turn, meaning that the infection rate remained at 1 for the whole of that initial round.

My logic, if we can call it that, was that the earlier I could play this card then the greater its effect would be on the remainder of the game, essentially meaning that only four cubes had been added to the board in the first round rather than eight, and it seemed to work. I was also helped by the fact that the first epidemic did not occur until moderately late, although the flip side to this was that the second one turned up very swiftly thereafter.

After a game in which I had managed to effect no cures at all, this one felt very different, aided when I swapped out my Researcher for a Scientist who only needed four cards to deal with a particular disease rather than five. Before too long I had found a way to treat a first virus, then a second, and eventually a third.

At this point the draw deck was thinning out, and I realised that I would not be able to find a treatment for the last disease unless I managed to pull some kind of event card, so there was definitely hope, even if the odds were stacked against me. In the end, however, it did not matter, as a final epidemic triggered outbreaks in San Francisco and Baghdad to end the game.

It turned out that there had been an event card still in the deck waiting to be drawn, so that might have made things pan out differently, but in the end it seemed that a defeat was heading my way no matter what happened in that final round. Up to that point, though, I felt that I had played well, and managing to find three cures at Heroic level was easily my best solo performance to date at this game.

In other matters…

I was along to Glastonbury yesterday afternoon to play for a very happy wedding indeed, the church packed with an enthusiastic congregation who cheerily sang what the celebrant described as “primary school bangers” while I channelled my misspent years in various bands to make the organ accompaniment as funky as possible. In all it was very Glastonbury indeed.

I had done a couple of errands along the way, little tasks that had been put off in the time of normal work but which could now be squeezed in around other things, so by the time I headed back to Meepleonboard Towers the rest of the day was more or less clear. I did another pass over the Lobgesang edition, which is now close to printable, and spent a further session on the new symphony.

The sketches for this are still pretty rudimentary, but I am about two and a half minutes into material for the opening movement, and I reckon that the whole of that initial span will run to around eleven minutes or so, given the proportions thus far. Extrapolate from there and we are looking at a piece around half an hour in length, possibly a little more, depending on how things develop.

Unlike with the first symphony, which had been planned for many years and whose proportions were laid out more or less prior to putting pencil to paper, I am going a little more with the flow on this one and seeing where the ideas lead me. I keep telling myself that I have done this once and it all worked out more or less okay, so there must be something that has gone in along the way - instinct, perhaps.

Overall, though, this work will be significantly lighter in tone and expression than the very serious first, and will form part of an overall scheme which will eventually encompass four symphonies, if I get that far in terms of longevity, ambition and desire. Strangely, I already know how the fourth symphony will end, even if the moment of writing it could be as much as a decade away, so I can see the destination in the distance, out there on the horizon. Now I need to work out how to get there.