Although the word CCG appears 7 times in the first paragraph, this column isn’t really about CCGs at all.  Don’t read this if you are under 21 or easily offended.
 
 

Ruling Britannia XXVI
 

I don’t know what this column is doing in this magazine, to be honest.  I haven’t been playing many CCGs this month apart from the friendly games of whatever comes to hand when we’re bored of an evening.  Don’t know where else I’m going to find a captive audience though.  Mind you I have noticed that I still know an awful lot of CCG’ers or ex-CCG’ers.  Plus of course there is the new emerging class of spiritual CCG’ers.  They’re the people who have been playing CCG’s since around 1995 when they were about 16 and, while they haven’t actually bought a card for about 3 years, still call themselves CCG’ers, consider themselves experts in every CCG they’ve ever played (contrary to what their tournament record tells you if you look it up) and are never slow to offer you deck-building advice when they see you sorting through cards even if it’s for a game they’ve never played.  You can find them hanging around the counter at gaming shops everywhere talking in a loud voice to a disinterested owner.  They probably also roleplay.  They almost certainly smell.  For some reason pest control does not consider them an infestation.

I have a bit of reader mail before I go any further.  Snap (remember him?) mailed me to correct the assertion I made in RB XXIV that no RB regular had shagged more than 2 women in the previous year.  As Snap rightly pointed out, he has shagged 3 (all stories have been covered in RB at various points so I won’t extrapolate any further).  What a stud.  He also gave exciting news of an important event.

‘Incidentally, a short story for the next RB: As you may or may not remember, I was the last person to leave 2 Arkley Road. Hence I picked up the Lower Decks from the bottom shelf of the fridge. They have been languishing in my bedroom ever since, but no longer. Today is the start of the Lower Decks UK Tour 2002. I will be taking the Lower Decks with me wherever I go, and any time I enter someone's house, they'll go on the bottom shelf of the fridge. If the ask why, they get the obvious answer (where else would you put them?). They are currently residing in my fridge, but as I'm about to go to a barbecue, they'll be making the second stop of their tour.’
 

Top idea.  I have to add that nobody has yet to come up with a coherent answer to the infamous question ‘where else would you put them?’  I assume this is because there is no answer, similar to the question ‘how does the cumulative ruling work?’  My other main reader mail this month has been from regular spammer John Corbett.  His posts have become more and more aggressive lately, possibly under the impression that we are not taking him seriously enough.  First I got an email about how England are rubbish at soccer and USA were going to walk all over Germany (chuckle).  Then I got this rather amusing piece in response to my 2 biographies last month.

’By the way, If there should be a biography on anybody it should be on me.  Not those f***ing clowns. Who's more intresting than me? Who wouldn't want to read a Bio on the most dominating force in STCCG today? When are you English ever going to learn that Americans are the most intresting people out there?
 

Never let it be said that I am unfair.  Would somebody please like to write a bio on John Corbett?  This particularly goes out to those NY players but any offers will be accepted.  The best efforts can either be sent to WNOHGB for printing or send them to me and I will publish them in RB (possibly edited for brevity).  Please make them factual (although I hardly think you need to make stuff up) although they can be as biased and insulting as you like.  A few weeks later, John wandered into the Church of Brad chatroom (http://cgi.cs.utah.edu/cgi-bin/goldberg/cobchat.py, try it, it’s actually pretty good), twatted around a bit claiming that how he was so great, managed to piss off every single person in the room and then left.  Not before I managed to get him to admit that his Internet persona was just a front though.

So anyway, you may remember that last month we were settling into our new house having carried out the important tasks of sticking a Britney Spears poster up on the wall and trying out all the local pubs.  Not long after that our landlord informed us that we were not allowed to use the downstairs living room as a bedroom any more, forcing us to move out as the spare room is too small for the stupid amount of cards, clothes and other miscellaneous shite that the three of us have accumulated over the last twenty odd years.  All was well that ended well however as the landlord had a change of heart given the glut of property to rent in London at the moment.  Other than that things have been going pretty well.  We have had to relearn how to do all the menial tasks like washing, ironing (although only when it’s unavoidable) and paying bills.  The house has been the platform for many good nights out in the last month, which I will detail later.  We have even started up a Monday night football clique in the park near our house where half a dozen faithful will turn up to play old school jumpers-for-goalposts style soccer which never seems to get dull no matter how old you get.  Well I suppose from a health point of view it’s better for you than CCGs.

Matt has assumed the mantle that Snap wore so well in our last house of being the house chick magnet.  In the last month he has managed to pull 3 women and is showing no signs of slowing down.  In fact we have all been trying a lot harder lately.  I mean lets face it, we’re not getting any younger and nobody ever lays on their death bed wishing that they had slept with less women.  Matt’s finest achievement of persistence against adversity came one Thursday night where we decided to have a night out in Covent Garden.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t snare visiting Canadian player Eric Nielson into coming out with us (jetlag apparently), which is a bit of a shame as we were looking forward to getting him really drunk and leaving him outside a Police Station or something.  We did however eventually stumble across an Australian theme pub filled with real live Australian women and everything.  Matt tried working his magic on two of them who agreed to follow us to a club.  Unfortunately, the one who he had become besotted with had a boyfriend and even an hour of the Slade magic couldn’t break down the barriers.  Once they had left, he eventually managed to pull by walking into a group of girls and saying ‘will somebody please snog me’.  This ranks alongside ‘you have the eyes of ten women’ in Matt’s book of greatest chat up lines ever.

Another great night out we attempted last month was the elusive ex-tournament venues barcrawl.  You may remember that Colm, Ringo and me tried this a few months ago but got as far as one ex-tournament venue before gaining a dose of Friday night apathy and staying where we were.  This time we started early though and managed to visit a number of old tournament venues including:

The Green Man – I never played here.  Apparently this is where the London Trek scene restarted after Marcus Sheppard got a job for Decipher and stopped running tournaments.

The Old Kings Head – So many memories.  I have probably won 10-15 tournaments in this pub.  When you leave this pub you almost walk to Pages Bar on autopilot.

Weird pub near London Bridge – I never played a tournament here.  There is a weird homeless bloke outside with green trousers.  Apparently he knows Ringo.

Thames Side – Remember a few tournaments here towards the end of 2000.  Very dark and the beer is bloody expensive.  You can sit outside on the bank of the River Thames though.

The Clockhouse – Weird pub in Farringdon.  Played 2 tournaments here to my knowledge and won both I think.  Not a lot else to remember.

Purple Turtle – Okay, this has never been a tournament venue but we wanted to go there for a drink anyway.  In fact, this is the last time we went to the Turtle before that fateful day last Friday when we went back to find they had stopped selling Orange Shit.  Bastards!
 

After we had finished the barcrawl we all went back to Howard’s for a barbeque.  There we were treated to the sight of his housemate and 2 of her friends on their way to School Disco.  We looked upon the women and yay it was good.

The final big session we had this month was also the most brutal.  Twice so far I have negotiated the Victoria Line Challenge.  16 pubs in one day having a drink in each.  Could this be bettered, we wondered.  Well, in theory, yes it could.  The plan for the Monopoly Board Challenge was launched.  In 12 hours, we would go to one pub for each property on the Monopoly board excluding stations and utilities, 22 pubs in all.  An ambitious plan and one I gave us no real hope of completing given that not all participants were hardcore drinkers.  The players in this particular game were myself and Matt and also some of Matt’s friends from back at Warwick who I also vaguely knew including his two ex-housemates Neil and Martin.  All I remember about Martin is that every time we went out together he had a mare.  Something or other would go wrong for him.  Neil I only knew very superficially but it was his birthday we were celebrating.  The final companion in this motley fellowship was Rick ‘Punchline’ Bolton who I didn’t think would last the pace but as it turned out did better than expected.

So cue Saturday morning, July 6th when we headed off to Old Kent Road (for the slower among you we were obviously playing with a London Monopoly board).  We had a sketchy Internet printout that told us all the pubs we should be going to and also how to get to each one.  Old Kent Road listed the trendy sounding Café 106 as the destination.  Unfortunately when we got there we found that it was indeed a café.  I guess we were supposed to have breakfast there or something.  Pissed off at wasting a lot of drinking time and facing a long journey to Whitechapel Road we got back on the train.  Eventually we found ourselves at the blind Beggar.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you a low down of every pub (my memory was too hazy after a while) but it’s worth mentioning this one, as it was the base camp for the Kray twins, London’s most famous gangsters, in the 60’s.  No particular reason I am telling you this, just thought you might like a history lesson.  Easy to see why the Krays liked it though if the barmaids back then were as nice as they are now.  Wow!

The light blue set passed relatively without a hitch before we headed up to Pall Mall.  However, somewhere on the train in between I managed to lose my travel card.  Now being a complete dickhead, rather than just go up to the guard, explain what had happened and pay for another one I decided to try to sneak through the barrier and then buy one from the machine.  Big mistake!  A copper saw me and gave me a stern telling off before I managed to convince him not to caution me.  Ironic really as between Pentonville Road and Pall Mall on the monopoly board lies a famous square called Jail.  Obviously this led to me having the piss taken out of me for the rest of the day but was toppled as the strangest event of the day when 5 minutes later we saw a woman run over by a bus.  Strangely there were both paramedics and policemen within 20 yards of her at the time.  Some people have all the luck.  After working our way through the pink and orange sets we realised that we were making reasonable time.  The feeling started to creep in that we might actually manage to complete the bar crawl.

After doing a poll on who was the fittest member of S-Club 7 (4 Rachels, 2 Hannahs, a Jo and a Tina in case you’re interested) we found ourselves at the Wellington in The Strand.  I remember this pub from when we used to go here after tournaments was back in 96/97.  Hasn’t changed much.  Matt is starting to show major signs of struggling as he is still carrying his beer from the previous pub.  A few other people are starting to skip the odd round here and there.  By Trafalgar Square everyone is feeling a little full and Matt has developed a fetish for cows (don’t ask).  Undeterred we head towards the West End and stagger around Leicester Square and Oxford Street.  Martin is looking decidedly the worse for wear and chunders on Oxford Street.  Matt is looking a lot better and Punchline is still holding up okay.  By Bond Street we don’t have much coherence left and we chat to a traffic warden for a while not really sure whether we are in the right pub or not.  At this point, Punchline and me manage to lose most of the rest of our party on the way to Park Lane.  Just about on schedule I buy the most expensive round ever before trying to get to the last stop, Mayfair.  Staggering between Rolls Royces, Aston Martins and the occasional scummy Mercedes, we ask several posh doormen the way to the pub and eventually find it with about 15 minutes to spare.  We had done it and we even found a few more of the party who had also managed to get there.  Matt, who was left with the unenviable task of looking after the by now wasted Martin, apparently also did Park Lane and Mayfair.  Completely the wrong pubs but still pretty good under the circumstances.

Song of the month this month is another Ringo special.  After playing Trek for a number of years, being an Ambassador for a few years and having now given up, he feels it is his birthright to slag off his former hobby as much as possible.  This is his latest effort.
 

Name:   The Yortle Beer Liberation (His name not mine)
Based on:  ‘I Can See Clearly Now (The Rain Has Gone)’ by Johnny Nash
Revised lyrics by: Ringo Greenwich
 

I can see clearly now that Trek has gone
I have the time to do what I hold dear
Gone are the dark days of building decks
It's gonna be a great (great), great (great)
Time to drink beer

I think I can do more stuff now, the game is gone
All the Current Rulings will disappear
Sad, but a moment I've been waitin' for
It'll give us more time (time), time (time)
Time to drink beer

Look all around, there's nothin' but beer to drink
Look straight ahead, nothin' but beer to drink

I can see clearly now that Trek has gone
I have the time to do what I hold dear
Gone are the dark days of building decks
It's gonna be a great (great), great (great)
Time to drink beer
 

Next month we will be back on topic with a big discussion of Trek, why it was good, what has gone wrong and what Type II might bring to the table.  That’s it; I’m off to Glasgow for James’ stag party.

Ian
iptaylor@dialstart.net

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