I received a call from West Midlands police on Saturday, the day after the theft. They told me that the suspect had admitted his guilt in interview, and was being held in police custody over the weekend, before being taken to court on the Monday morning. He had also asked that a message be passed on to me - he was very sorry for what he had done, and wanted to apologise for any distress he’d caused me. They couldn’t reveal whether he had any prior criminal record when I asked, but I wasn’t surprised when they told me they couldn’t say. My assumption was that as he was being kept in custody all weekend rather than being bailed or let off with a caution, he had a prior record.

This morning, I rang Birmingham Magistrates Court to ask what had happened at yesterday’s session. They told me the suspect had been given a 12 month community order and is required to do 200 hours of paperwork / community service. I’m very happy with the outcome.

I know the thief’s name, but I’m not going to announce it, even though it’s what he deserves. If the offender or anyone he knows reads this, you know what he did. He’s a thieving tosser and scum-sucking maggot - and that’s putting it politely - who committed a crime and has been suitably punished for it.

For my 34th birthday yesterday, there weren’t any big plans. The idea was generally to go down to visit my parents, get some gifts, do a bit of shopping, and then go out to Cineworld Birmingham in the evening with Dad to see District 9.

Everything went fine until we got to the cinema. Chris decided to come with us, but as he was in his car, he got there first. When Dad and I got to the desk, with no sign of Chris, we decided to get our tickets without waiting. We were slightly late, as it was 1900, but I figured we would only miss some adverts. Getting to the counter, I took my (new) purse out (which contained £130 in cash), removed the Cineworld card, and laid the purse down on counter with my left hand over it. Asking for a ticket to see the 1850 performance of District 9, the ticket clerk told us the performance had actually started at 1840. Twenty minutes late would mean the performance had already started, and I didn’t want to miss the start of it. As Dad and I were going back and forth a bit, trying to decide whether to go and see a later performance rather than rush into the earlier one, my phone rang. As my Cineworld card was in my right hand, I answered the phone with my left hand, taking the hand off my purse. It was Chris, and as I didn’t want to hold up the queue, Dad and I moved away from the counter… and I completely forgot about my purse.

Chris said, “Look behind you.”
I looked behind me, no sign of him.
“No, up here,” he said, and we spotted him at the top of the escalator. “C’mon, the film is starting,” he said.
“No, it’s too late,” I said, “We’re gonna miss it. Come down here, we’re gonna see a later showing.”

He grumbled a bit but came downstairs, and talked us round into seeing the earlier showing. We rushed back to the desk to get tickets, but it was too late; as the film had started, the showing had dropped off the computers and the ticket guy couldn’t sell them to us. Chris argued that we could be given tickets to the later showing and just go into the earlier one. I told him to shut up, he had a Cineworld card too and it wasn’t going to cost him anything to change. He muttered about complaining, which I said he could do later he if really wanted to, and we got our tickets for the later screening and moved away. I went to put my card back in my purse, and realised it was missing. Cue panic. I started emptying out my pockets and bag, looking for the purse, with no luck. I scoured the floor, swearing “Oh god, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” and went back to the counter to ask the ticket guy if I’d left it there. No sign of it.

Next stop, the security guy. He got on the radio straight away, asking other members of security to check the toilets, and he checked the floor and the street and bins directly outside. Still no sign of it. I knew I’d had it when I went up to pay, as I’d taken the card out, so said it had to have been taken. He asked security to check the CCTV footage whilst I paced around some more. Couple of minutes later, he said that CCTV had been reviewed, and that I didn’t put anything down on the counter. He said he was going to show me the footage, and we were taken upstairs. Dad and I went into the security room whilst Chris waited outside, and sure enough, the footage showed that I didn’t leave anything on the counter. Only thing was, the security guys were looking at the footage of the second time we went to the counter. I explained we’d been up there twice, and asked them to rewind it to the first time. They did, and sure enough, it showed me walking up to the counter and putting the purse down next to the chip and PIN machine, faffing around for a while, then answering my phone and walking away, leaving it there.

Next up to the counter was a tall guy and a heavily pregnant blonde girl. He noticed the purse, flipped it over, looked straight at the security camera for a brief second, then swiped it and walked away. Oh, I was FURIOUS. So furious all I could do was swear loudly, “Fucking…!” Words failed me otherwise. The footage went on to show that the man and woman wandered over to the popcorn stand, then walked right into a film.

The security guys were stars. They were able to use the computers to determine what film the guy had bought tickets for, and therefore what screen he was in. They sat us down and got me a bottle of water. My mouth was SO dry, and I swigged it whilst pacing back and forth angrily, telling Dad what I wanted to do to the scum that had taken the purse. Security went into the screen looking for the guy, and on the first attempt, couldn’t find him. They called the police and checked again, and on the second attempt spotted him and removed him and the blonde girl from the screen. Apparently, he straight away said that he knew what they wanted, and handed over the purse. He said he had planned to hand the purse back in after the movie. One of the staff members brought it over to me, and asked me to check that everything was in there. Absolutely nothing was missing. I was so relieved. Unbelievably so.

Security said they had called the police, and whilst we were waiting around, they noticed that I was circling closer to the guy, and asked me to go and sit down in a separate area. Would I have done anything to him? No, I’m pretty sure not, with all the security guys there, and knowing it would be stupid and likely classed as assault. They wanted me away from there though, which was fair enough.

Two policemen turned up shortly afterwards, and one of them took a logbook statement from me, whilst the other handcuffed the guy. I could see him from where I was sitting, and watched him after the policeman took my statement. He never looked in my direction once. I asked the policeman what would happen, would the cinema prosecute the guy? He said that was up to me, as the guy hadn’t committed a crime against the cinema, he’d committed one against me. I said, “Hell yeah, I want this guy prosecuted, he stole my fucking purse!”

A bit later, transport turned up to take the guy to the station. A very tall sergeant came over to tell me that I would need to give a longer statement if I was prosecuting. Two female police offers turned up, and one of them took me into the CCTV office to take my statement, whilst the other took a statement from Security. I developed one hell of a headache - stress induced, no doubt! Signing off the statement, I asked the police officer what happened next. She said that depending on whether the guy had any prior record, he might be let off with just a caution, or it might go as far as Crown Prosecution (i.e. court). I was given a witness/victim information sheet with a crime reference number and contact details on, and that was it for me.

The cinema gave us updated tickets for District 9, which by that point was for the 2110 showing. Film was good, although headache persisted!

Back home at midnight, I told Mum the whole story. I think if I’d not got the purse back, she would have felt even more sick than me - no doubt, given that £120 of the money in the purse was what she’d given me for my birthday, and the purse was brand new, and one she’d also bought for me.

I got very, very lucky indeed. Lucky that the security guys were so good. Lucky that the CCTV system was so good. Lucky that the guy who took the purse didn’t just walk right out of the cinema with it, which is what a lot of people would have done. Not many people get that lucky. It was a great end to a very stressful evening, one that could have gone down in history as my worst birthday ever.

Beautiful blue sky day today, which had me walking to and from the cinema to see 12 Rounds. The lack of clouds got me thinking about them, and in particular about a teacher at school.

Mr Dail was my class teacher at primary school in 1984/85. He was an American ex-pat who was a rather unconventional teacher. To me, as a 9 year old, he seemed like an older guy, but I doubt if he was any more than his late 40s. Mr Dail didn’t stick to the standard syllabus for a class of 9 year olds. Amongst other things, he taught us the names of cloud formations, introduced us to slow worms, showed us how to make butter, brought his beautiful rough collies, Ola and Tubby, into class and let us walk them on the school field (a reward for finishing work), and, perhaps most interesting of all, gave out US Air Force rank pins for academic achievement. Where he got this ready supply from, I don’t know, but I was immensely proud when I was awarded a Staff Sergeant pin with 4 stripes. Only a few students in the class had a rank this high, so I was really very pleased with myself, in the way only a nerdy little kid can be.

One day in early summer, as we were heading back to class after a PE lesson, one of my classmates tripped on a slightly raised paving stone. Down she went, and it was immediately obvious that she’d broken her arm. Whilst an ambulance was called for her, the rest of us were herded into class. The following week she returned with her arm in a cast, and Mr Dail made a big show of awarding her with a 6 stripe Master Sergeant pin for bravery. I remember being immensely jealous at the time, thinking to myself that I’d studied really hard to get my Staff Sergeant pin, and all she’d done was break her arm.

I still have my Staff Sergeant pin knocking around somewhere, boxed up with a load of stuff in the loft, if I remember right. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but I’m tempted to go looking for it.

The BBC News website has published a selection of photos as a year in review that makes for depressing viewing. Of the 17 pictures posted there, 13 of them are about bad news - violence in Kenya and the DR Congo, Amazonian land disputes, natural disasters, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia, protests in the West Bank, food shortages and contamination, and the credit crunch. Three of the four remaining pictures are about the US presidential election, and the only high point is a photo from the Olympics. Even now, the front page of the BBC News website is dominated with news on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, and more doom and gloom related to the credit crunch.

I know that they say, ‘No news is good news’, which could also loosely be re-interpreted as ‘any news is bad news’, but this is ridiculous. We look back now at the 20th century and shake our heads sadly about things like the atrocities of the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Depression, AIDS, and the development of nuclear weapons, but there were also great things; like advances in science, technology and medicine, the space race and moon landings, and the development and expansion of telecommunications. What about the 21st century? Iraq. Afghanistan. SARS. MRSA. Global warming. Economy down turn. 9/11 and terrorism. Obesity. Poverty and disproportionate wealth. Multi-million divorce settlements.

When I try to think of the most memorable events in my lifespan - in my memory - the first one that springs to mind, possibly because it’s the biggest and most recent, is 9/11. Before that, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the incessant, ridiculous, ceaseless controversy and conspiracy theories. Sure, I also remember things like the Berlin Wall coming down, the development of the world wide web, and strides in medicine and genetics, but they pale in comparison to recent events. At this rate, it’s not going to be the 20th century that people look back on with head shaking and regret. It’ll be the 21st.

How good is your perception of colour? Can you easily discriminate between and order hues? Test yourself here - http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77.

The lower your score, the better, with 0 being a perfect eye for hues and shades, and around 1000 being the default (unordered) score. My best score was 12, with a few errors in the purple-blue spectrum.

Treacle

After Dorrie’s death, I was cat-less for around two weeks before I couldn’t stand the silence in the house any longer. I took myself down to the Cat Shelter to find a suitable cat. They don’t reserve cats that won’t be ready till after their vaccinations, which is why I spent three hours on Easter Sunday waiting outside the Shelter to be first in the queue for a little 1 year old brindle tortie I’d fallen in love with the week before, Treacle. She’d been really loving when I first met her, so I adopted her and took her home, telling myself that I shouldn’t expect her to be another Dorrie. Indeed, she wasn’t. For the first week, she meowed almost non-stop. The only times she stopped were when she was eating, and when she was walking over my lap, treadling her paws (and claws!) into my thighs to get comfortable. When I shut her downstairs overnight, she cried for hours, stopped for a while in the middle of the night, then started crying again around 4am. When I let her upstairs to sleep on my bed instead, she curled up into a ball and fell asleep. Success! But no - she woke me up at 3.30am for three nights running, without fail, by walking over my head. I shut her downstairs again and hoped she would lose her voice, with all the meowing.

I read up on lone cats. The general consensus on the internet seemed to be ‘get another cat’. I really didn’t want to be a two-cat household (more animals than humans is not a goer for me), but at the same time it seemed unfair to take her back to the Shelter. So, the next Saturday, I went down to the Shelter for advice. They suggested that I could either get a second cat, or wait a little while longer to see if she settled in. The cats they had that they thought would be suitable weren’t ready anyway, so I at least had a grace period. I left the Shelter and went down to the pet shop to get some more toys for Treacle and, back at home, ordered a cat tree for her. Amazingly, it seemed to work somewhat. She played with the toys, explored the cat tree disdainfully at first, and didn’t cry quite so much. Several more nights of shutting her downstairs seemed to reinforce the idea that crying would not get her middle-of-the-night sympathy. I told the Shelter that she seemed to be settling down, and relaxed a bit.

She still spends an inordinate amount of time sleeping next to me or treadling my thighs if I’m on the sofa. Occasionally she’ll hare around the living room like a mad thing, or try to claw up the rug. Whilst I’m a bit too nervous to let her go outside after what happened to Dorrie, she does look out the window and cry now and then. I got her a leash and harness and might try going out into the back garden with her. She escaped last night when I opened the living room door and I spent 10 worried minutes in the rain trying to coax her out from under the neighbours’ cars. I introduced her to the spare bedroom for the first time today, and she meowed for 20 minutes straight, even when I shooed her out and back downstairs. Won’t be trying that one again.

It has to be said that Treacle is an amazingly loving cat. She loves attention and never turns down some fuss, unlike Dorrie, who would only tolerate so much stroking before nipping. Her favourite sleeping spot is next to me (cute, but not always a good thing). She’s relaxed around my friends, and will happily go to them for fuss. She thinks she’s a guard dog, and will growl if someone knocks on the door. She uses the litter tray, and has done from day one, and doesn’t claw the litter liner to pieces. She’s definitely got a very different personality to Dorrie, which is understandable. It’s taking me time to adjust to her, and probably her to me, but I like to think we’re making progress. Here’s hoping we find happy common ground. buy cialisbuy cialisbuy levitrabuy levitrabuy propeciabuy propeciabuy somabuy somabuy levitrabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy levitrabuy propeciabuy soma

More game-alicious fun over the weekend at Furnace, the Sheffield based roleplaying convention. In its second year, attendance was up from approx 40 in 2006 to just under 70 this year. Even with increased number, it was a fantastic weekend. I got to meet up with people I haven’t seen in up to a year, made some new friends, and represented the RP community’s female minority fabulously, if I do say so myself.

I played in several games over the weekend. Keary and Rik (a close friend of many years) were there representing the Kult of Keepers, and I took part in Keary’s Call of Cthulhu game on the Saturday morning. As in any good Cthulhu game, we ended up mad and indentured for eternity. The game overran a bit, so by the time I’d gotten myself something to eat, I was too late to sign up for an afternoon game. Instead, I spent the time writing up an adventure to run on the Sunday.

Saturday evening saw me in Dom’s Savage World’s 2300AD game, on a bug hunt in deep space. Station Arcturus had been taken over by aliens, so it was down to the US Marine Corps and French/Australian liaisons to get it back! Cue bad accents, blazing guns, and none too subtle references to Aliens. Lots of fun.

Saturday night I ended up lending my spare bedroom and living room to Steff and Keary, who needed somewhere to sleep for the night. Good guys, both of ‘em.

Sunday morning I was a bit nervous - after a couple of months of GMing on Thursday nights down at the Old Queen’s Head, I decided to try running a game of Scion: Hero. It’s one of the newer White Wolf releases, and I’d never run it before, save for a quick intro last Thursday night. I didn’t think I was going to get enough players to run it at first, but after a last minute round up, I got 5 people round the table - Tim, Matt, Graham, Ric and Russell - and ran a game heavily lifted from the book. Happily, it went very well indeed, and I’ll be running some more Scion from now on at the Thursday night sessions. Of course, as Graham told me, that means I’m now obliged to run more at Furnace 2008. At least I have a year’s practice ahead of me!

Sunday afternoon was Graham’s Fading Suns game - sci-fi and sneakiness as we tried to hunt down a jump key without the many other quick fingered villains getting their hands on it first. Might have helped if we’d been a bit more discreet about who we were talking to!

Great atmosphere all weekend - couldn’t have asked for a better time.

I was up at a horrendously early hour yesterday, in order to meet up with Graham, one of the Thursday night roleplayers. Tom and Matt were picking us up from Meadowhall to drive down to Milton Keynes for a small roleplaying conference called Concrete Cow. [If you know nothing about roleplaying, or think it’s sad or boring, you might want to skip down to the very end, because I’m about to unleash my inner geek and most of it will probably be indecipherable to a non-roleplayer!]

I was really excited about going down there, because there were several games on I was hoping to play in. The Call of Cthulhu team, Kult of Keepers, of which my friend Rik is a member, would be there to run some games. In addition, there would be two writers for White Wolf (Stew Wilson and Wood Ingham) running Werewolf and Vampire games respectively. As game signups were on the day, I was keeping my fingers crossed that I’d get there before the game slots were fully booked. Despite Tom’s satnav initially leading us astray by several miles, we made it to Wolveton just before the official start of 10am. I made a beeline for the signup table, and to my delight managed to get a place in all three of the games I wanted to play in – Cthulhu in the morning slot, Werewolf in the afternoon, and Vampire in the evening.

The Cthulhu game was run by Paul Fricker, and was loosely based on Reservoir Dogs, although of course with a creeping horror twist. When we were handed the pre-generated character sheets and info on our characters, the first thing that jumped out at me was ‘You are an undercover cop’. That’s me dead, I told myself. Amazingly, no-one in the party figured out I was a cop. Instead, the poor guy who had been shot in the arm by a pursing police officer at the start of the adventure was strongly suspected of being the plant. I survived the game, if you can call dwelling as a torn soul for all eternity in Carcosa surviving. Honestly, that’s got to be some kind of win in Cthulhu, given the normal win is a descent into irreversible gibbering insanity!

Stew’s Werewolf game was my first experience of White Wolf’s World of Darkness since they’d reworked the whole game world after the Time of Gehenna stuff. I have to admit that the new system is very smooth – a lot more so than the old system could often be, which of course is the idea. I’d originally turned my nose up at what I’d thought was a cop-out reset, but I’ve definitely since revised my opinion. We played an adventure in which we were pitted against cultists and their ‘dirty work’ arsonists who wanted to raise the spirit of the Great Fire of London. Stew had pre-generated starter characters, but we either got really lucky, or he needs to revise the stats, because come the end game we completely ploughed through the bad guys, and then took down the great spirit in 2 rounds. Some great moments in the game, with my personal favourites being the roll that enabled me to catch and immediately defuse a Molotov cocktail as it was thrown through a window, and the rule of re-rolling 10s that, in a hideously lucky rolling of the dice, got me a 33 on initiative when the average is more like 10. Cue dropped jaws from the other players.

Wood’s Vampire game was actually a playtest. He’s writing for a new supplement called Requiem for Rome, based (unsurprisingly) in the time of the Roman Empire. He’s a very energetic storyteller, and it’s obvious he’s done a load of research in prep for the book. The game was set at the time of Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312AD, and dealt with the aftermath and a supernatural twist. There are some new introductions in the supplement that I think the Vampire fans are going to like a lot, with a new sub-system, a new clan, and, I’m fairly sure, a lot of history on the Roman Empire, including lifestyle and beliefs and culture.
All but one of the players of the Vampire game had also played in the Werewolf game – a good group of guys. As playtesters, we’ll be credited when the adventure is published, although I don’t know whether that’ll be in the Requiem for Rome book or in the adventure as a standalone download from White Wolf.

I got chatting briefly to Wood after the game – he said he lived down in Swansea, and I mentioned I’d lived in South Wales for a time – Cardiff and Pontypridd. One of the players from the Vampire game, Alex, said, “University of Glamorgan?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I replied, a little surprised.
“I thought I recognised you,” he said. “I was there when you were.”

I was flabbergasted. I’d thought during the game that he vaguely reminded me of someone, but I was thinking of a guy I’d known in Cardiff, not someone who’d gone to Glamorgan.

“Yeah,” Alex went on to say, “I remember a short lived Vampire game.”
Well, colour me amazed. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t remember him, so I don’t know if we had much interaction, but it’s one hell of a small world.

The sessions ended around 10.45pm, and Tom, Matt, Graham and I left by 11pm to drive back to Sheffield. Tom dropped me off at around 1am, and I flaked pretty soon after that.

If the forthcoming Furnace roleplaying conference up here in Sheffield goes as well, it’ll be a fantastic weekend.

Travelling the same tram route at the same time every Monday-Friday, you get to know many faces. There’s the conductors, of course, several of whom recognise me well enough to comment if they see me on the tram late at night, when I ’should be at home’! There’s the people who work at HSBC, lots of them with their name tags clipped to their waistbands - the short, dark haired one who reminds me of a primary school teacher I had, the younger girl with her hair always tied back impeccably, the tall, thin and freckled girl, the lad who looks five years too young for a suit and tie, and so on. I don’t know any of their names, and they don’t know mine, but we take the same journey every day, and have done for years.

I rarely get an insight into their personality. They’ll often chatter amongst themselves, but not about anything of significance. They could be married, single, with kids or without, still living at home, interested in football or tennis, secret alcoholics, party animals, dog lovers… you never know. Just occasionally, though, once in a while, I’ll pick something up. Sarah’s wedding is next weekend, Tom and Cath’s baby is a boy, Deb’s lost 10lbs on her diet. Little day to day things. And sometimes, very, very rarely, I see or hear something that really stands out.

Last night, one of the HSBC women took a seat next to me. She doesn’t tend to chat with the main group. Perhaps she doesn’t work in the same department as them. She’s always impeccably dressed, and wears the kind of high heels that would have me crippled within ten steps of the front door. She favours skirts rather than trousers, and her hair is never out of place. She also comes across as rather serious; straight faced, perhaps even a little aloof.

As we passed out of the city centre, her mobile phone bleeped. Incoming text message. The screen lit up as she opened the message, and out of the corner of my eye I saw, ‘I want to peel your clothes off‘. I immediately looked out of the window, fascinated by something, anything else. I managed to keep my eyes away until she’d stopped reading the message - only to find when I looked back that she’d started typing one of her own in reply, ‘You’re really getting me going‘. Oh yeah. Fascinating thing outside again. I wish I could have seen her face, but given she was sitting next to me, I couldn’t tell. I watched her carefully as she got off the tram. She has a fantastic poker face, but I bet she couldn’t wait to get home.

Enough of the posts about rodents. Much more going on recently.

A couple of weeks ago, disillusioned by my PC laptop (which I have to admit had never been the same after it contracted a virus, even though I cleaned it off), I took advantage of an offer to buy myself a MacBook. I’d always kind of shunned Macs, for no real reason other than that I was coloured by preconceptions about incompatibility and memories of my Grandad’s boxy looking monochrome Mac from years ago. Having seen the new Macs in the Apple store recently though, I was sorely tempted.

I got the MacBook just over a week ago, and I’ve been enjoying it ever since. I never would have thought I’d say this about a Mac, but I really, really like it. It’s good looking, glossy and white. The keyboard is perfectly sized, which was one of the complaints I had with the PC laptop; it was too small for me, and my typing speed suffered as a result. No such flaw with the Mac – excellent.

I’ve installed everything I needed so far – Photoshop, Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype – with no problems at all. In fact, installation is a piece of cake. I like it a lot. I don’t have MS Office on the laptop, but what I have installed on the advice of a friend who uses Macs is Neo Office. It does all the things Excel, Word and Powerpoint do, which makes me very happy indeed.

The battery life is excellent compared to my PC laptop – around twice the amount of time between recharging.

The best thing so far I’ve found is the internet connection. Using my wireless broadband in the house (which it detected immediately), I got download speeds around 10 times faster than I ever did on the PC laptop. I could have drooled all over the keyboard if it wouldn’t have ruined the gloss and pristineness.

Start up time is much faster than the PC. I can also open applications immediately on startup, instead of waiting for the AV software and MSN and many other things to crank into gear as I do with the PC.

I wouldn’t say I’m a total Mac convert now – but after a week of getting used to it, I’m not going to shun Macs. The big question, of course, is whether my next desktop computer will be a Mac when the PC gives out…