Don’t Make Eye Contact
I’d only been working as a shift runner at Blockbuster Video for a few days when the incident happened, and I remember thinking that it was a perfect reflection of my luck that had it happened just a week before then none of it – none of it - would have been my responsibility. I could just have continued to do stock rotation and left the entire messy business to somebody else.
But it did happen....and, somewhat typically, it happened to me.
Scaredy Cat
It would be easy to say that I don’t like cats and cats don’t like me, but it’s just nowhere near as simple as that. The war between the cat kingdom and me began – as many things do – in a pub.
I wasfifteen. At the time, I had a much older friend called Ricky. He lived two doors down from me, and we met one afternoon when I noticed him unpacking a Commodore Amiga computer. I knew quite a bit about computers and asked him if he’d bought any games for it. We got talking, had the same sense of humour and became good friends: he got on well with my family and started having dinner at our house. Over the next few months, we played and completed an entire crop of classic RPG games and graphic adventures like Eye of the Beholder and The Secret of Monkey Island.
Then, one rainy Friday, he leaned out of the window of his apartment and called down to me as I left for school.
“There’s a guy I want you to meet!” he shouted. “He buys and sells games, and I want to know which ones we should get!”
Haunted Ramsgate (2023)
It’s hard to imagine now when you look at the sheer size and magnificence of the Granville Hotel…but for most of my childhood, half of it was quite literally a pile of old rubble. When I say rubble, I’m talking about the sort of mess you get in a Marvel movie when the Hulk goes rampaging through downtown New York. I guess there’s a good chance it was war damage, but as kids we just thought it was an awesome play area.