The retreat

 You didn’t really think I was going to leave it like that did you? If you don’t understand that, you’re a chapter behind, so jump there first.

Ohhh, love a good cliff hanger, me. Before I get back there though; I re-read what I posted, and I wanted to just pop in a thought. I mentioned experiencing unconditional love. Really I think that it’s the only important thing in the world. Not money, power, position, achievements, none of them come close to complete love and acceptance. There is literally nothing Jill could have done to make me love her less, nothing. And that feeling is overwhelming in its joyful power. It’s the strongest, most powerful and completely pure feeling I have ever known. And I had it for 27 years. While I’m famously anti religion I think I can see the temptation of being loved and loving a deity unconditionally. (Everything else about every religion is still crap mind you, I’ve not gone soft!) The closest most people can get to experience it is to have the love of a dog, you’d just need to multiple it a hundredfold.

Anyway! Said I liked a good cliff hanger. So I asked the question “oh, can you play games on a computer?” And that my dear friend and reader is a second tipping point/sliding door moment. The temp explained about this thing called a MUD, or s multi user dungeon. You logged on, made a character, went into a (text) world, fought monsters, mapped out lands, the whole thing. Common enough now, but back then it was revolutionary. I was transfixed. I wanted to play it so badly… so I was shown how to log on, what a modem was, all the basics of a computer. Then I wanted to save room descriptions, so had to learn word processing. Everything I know about computers I’ve taught myself. Never had a single lesson. And in 30 years I haven’t had a problem I couldn’t fix. (This feels weird to write. I had it drummed into me at an early age that this is boasting, and as such is dreadful behaviour. The idea of being proud of an achievement is almost entirely alien to me.)

Next of course I had to explain all this to Jill, who was well on board with the idea. So we bought our first computer. An Amstrad 1512 I think. The fancy one with 2 floppy drives, not the one single drive! We were both fascinated by it. Then we had to go back to the shop and buy the bloody modem. I think it was a 24/12 (would that be right Martin or Bill?) but I do know it was a good one. Then we had to go back to the shop again and buy some floppy disks.

I did log onto Essex Mud, and I loved it. Wasn’t any good at it, but I loved it. Jill, not so much; she appreciated it, but she wanted to get back to her book. Then one day, I read about a new online game called “The Zone”. It was another online game, but instead of killing other players you collaborated in various ways - very pleasant ways, to earn points and to roleplay. We were both intrigued by this, so one day I logged on. (Seriously dear reader friend what the hell are you still doing here? Oh well, thanks for the company, I’m enjoying writing). If you’re still after Jill content, it’s coming.

That was another turning point in both our lives. We both planned out our characters, then had to name them. For technical reasons we wanted names that started with J, and mine was easy - a favourite fantasy character I like called Jhary. Jill took a while choosing, then remembered a game she played as a kid, where you flipped first letters of Christian and surname. Jill’s maiden name was Canavan so she became C(k)ill Janavan. So Janavan became her name. Collectively we were known as “The 2 Js”. Even our friends thought of us as a combination, and I’ve always liked that.

And we started to play. Oh, and how we played. We met some wonderful people who have remained lifelong friends. We brought our characters to life, gave them backstories, let them have adventures and love affairs, to play and create. It was our very own soap opera. Of course, since we only had one modem our characters never met, so we gossiped and conspired and made more characters. Our nights were taken up with an obsession with the game, our characters and of course, the humans who played them. And then it was less about the game and more about the people,these glorious, mad, unconventional, geeky people. I’d also been promoted to be one of the Admin staff as well, which was time consuming.

It didn’t take long before we all wanted to meet. There would have been about 40 or 50 regular players of mostly 15 to mid twenties. Pretty much all guys, obviously. Many were, I suspect, as yet unclaimed by carnal desire. We found a pub in Central London and we were set. Then of course - what do we wear? (If you’re still here dear reader friend it’s safe to safe that players got points by bonking other players in an entirely chaste computer manner, but there was a spicy side to the game. It would literally be closed down now I’m sure.) we kind of went in fancy dress, but we were mainly in character, so it felt proper. Didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of us when we were walking through central london.

I should say at this point Jill’s character was very popular. Mainly because people worked out who we were, that we were married, and then that her character in a spicy game had to be played by a real woman. Every other player in that game wanted to give Jill points, spend time with her and so on. She loved it. She played character against character, flirted with others, was desired by more… Totally in her element. She described her character as s “loveable slut”. And of course we gossiped to each other, or peered over each others shoulders and we knew that game inside out. And because Jill was right in the middle, so was I.

Which brings us back to what should we wear? My outfit was fine, but Jill was stunning. She fully embraced the role of loveable slut. Black shiny boots, skintight leggings a relaxed pirates type shirt, strong makeup, hair in a ponytail. I would like to say that my first thought was along the lines of how amazing it was that this stunning woman loved me. However my first thought was “oh fuck… they’re the sheep and she’s the wolf”. For once, in a group of people I wasn’t cripplingly shy, but at home, and happy. But Jill, oh my darling was dazzling. She laughed, she joked, she gently flirted, she sat on friends laps, she drew shy boys out of their shells, she played the innocent to some and world weary to others. We both mingled and chatted with other people but we both always knew exactly where the other one was. We could just look at each other and by the manner of the look it would tell us all we needed to know. And then we would make our way back together to update and gossip. It was the happiest time. I wrote and published a newsletter, which meant buying more software and learning it. And at the end of the evening I’d sing the game song, and people would sing along and I’d stand on a table and sing some more. And Jill would be standing there next to me, and as I had enjoyed the way she played with the room, she adored my carefree ruffian side. We were far more than the sum of our two parts. (Ironically the chosen ones never know they are chosen.) I’m sure my friends recollections will differ, and that’s good too, these are just my memories.

So if we hadn’t been close enough, we dived into another world of lovable crazy people, and into our characters and their lives and their interactions. And we loved every second of it, because even in those worlds of our own imaginings where we could be or do anything we wanted, we always chose to be together in one way or another. We became even more entwined because it wasn’t just our conscious brains that wanted to be together, but our subconscious as well. It sounds a bit silly in some respects to make so much out of a game, but it was more than a game to us. It was our soap opera, our entertainment our social media. The game was the Facebook of its day with bulletin boards, huddles of friends in different places, gossip and news stories all of which were more important than real life news.

I’m so pleased to be able to say that so many of those people are still around and will recognise those days!

Enough already!