(Ln(x))³

The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.

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6:46am on Saturday, 25th October, 2025:

Gala

Anecdote

One my duties here in Poland was to present an award at the Central and Eastern European Game Awards Gala. The award was for best design, which is the one I'd have chosen to give if asked.

I've never presented an award before, and it turns out I'm pretty good at it: I watched a showreel announcing the nominees, then opened an unsealed envelope and read what was written on the card inside. I waited for the recipient to walk onto the stage, handed them the award itself , listened to their speed and walked of the stage when they did.

I had no training, but managed to pull off this onerous task with aplomb. I think I was maybe supposed to say some uplifting words before opening the envelope, but I don't think anyone noticed that I didn't.

I wasn't expecting that 40+ team members from 11 Bit would want to go onto the stage to receive the award, but fortunately only one of them had a speech to make.

The Best Gaame award was presented by the Polish Minister of Culture, which was impressive. I don't know that Sir Chris Bryant MP would show up to an award ceremony like that in the UK.

The gala was in the afternoon. In the morning, I went on a tour of sights around Poznan with some other speakers. We missed one sight, a palace, because it was closed due to a plumbing fault. The grounds were closed, too, so I guess sewage was involved. This is what comes of exporting all your plumbers to the UK, Poland.

We visited Poznan Cathedral instead, which was worth a visit so I'm not complaining.

6:57am on Friday, 24th October, 2025:

Old Poznan

Anecdote

Because they wouldn't let me check in to the hotel for three hours yesterday, I wandered round old Poznan (which I won't be calling Poznań now because I can't be faffed adding that awkward accent on the final n any more).

The old town's square reminded me of the one in Kraków, in that it's not so much a square as a four-sided torus. Basically, it's a rectangular space with buildings in the middle.

Poznan's old town square is quite pretty:

All except for this part, which isn't pretty:

I'm sure that the people back in old-town times were of the opinion that the buidings I think are pretty now weren't pretty then, so perhaps people of the future will like this sore thumb sticking out in an otherwise historical setting.

Well, people of the future, you're wrong and I'm right.

5:56am on Thursday, 23rd October, 2025:

Luton Airport

Anecdote

The reason I bought some zloties the other day is because I'm speaking at the Games Industry Conference in Poznań on Saturday. My flight is this morning at 7:40, so I had to be at the airport by 5:40. This entailed getting up at 3am and taking a circuitous route to avoid overnight roadworks.

Not only was I driving, but so was the rain. It wasn't a pleasant experience. I followed the satnav directions to the postocde it assured me was Terminal Car Park 1. It was no such thing. It was a dead end single carriageway in an industrial site. I had to do a 7-point turn on a narrow road then drive off looking for signs. I eventually saw one for the medium-term car park, so followed that. After a while, the signage added the short-term car parks, which took me to what would have been Terminal Car Park 1 had the road not been closed off after the car park burned down a few years ago. I continued to Terminal Car Park 2, then saw a P1 painted on the road and followed that. It took me to the part of Terminal Car Park 2 that's now designated Terminal Car Park 1.

Luton is my least-favourite London airport. The security checks have trays you put your stuff in, but they work like a stack. They come in on a conveyor belt, but if you're the closest to the body scanner you won't get a tray until everyone upstream has one. If the person four slots up gets a tray and fills it, they'll get a second tray before you get your first. Fate put me nearest to the body scanner. I eventually got my trays by whisking them off the conveyor belt before they stopped and before the security officer could stop me.

I then had to wait an age for them to come through the X-ray machine, because trays are only pushed onto the scanner's conveyor belt when there's a gap, whch means everyone upstream gets their bags through before you do — including people who arrived much later than you did.

As is common for London airports, there's not enough seating. I only got the spot I'm typing this from because it's beneath a fierce air-conditioning fan that's probably going to give me COVID-19.

Only another hour to go and they'll tell me which gate my flight departs from. I bet they know which it will be already.

Maybe I should stop arriving at airports stupidly early.

8:28am on Wednesday, 22nd October, 2025:

Home Phone

Anecdote

Recently, I had cause to dig out my personal pension plan from 1988, because it turned into money in January and the pension providers, Phoenix Life, want me to prove it's mine. I don't have any documents for Phoenix Life, but found ones for Sun Alliance; it seems that Sun Alliance became part of Phoenix Life after a series of mergers and acquisitions.

Anyway, along with the document I managed to recover, I found this enticement:

If we look on the back, the wealth of features it possesses are revealed:

We did actually go with Sun Alliance, and duly received our free telephone. We used for many years; it even changed houses with us when we moved.

I must have kept the flier in case Sun Alliance reneged on the deal.

12:21pm on Tuesday, 21st October, 2025:

Brambles

Anecdote

The brambles down one of the local lanes are making a real effort this year.

There's a curtain of three-metre spars there. I don't know what their plans are, but it can't be good.

11:36am on Monday, 20th October, 2025:

Sizing Up

Weird

Next door's cat, wondering if it can take the pheasant:

Don't worry, pheasant admirers, it decided against it.

10:12am on Sunday, 19th October, 2025:

Trees

Anecdote

The trees at the university were looking at their autumn best when I visited on Friday.

They looked bettwe when I was an undergraduate, because there were more of them. The Great Storm of 1987 must have uprooted about a quarter of them. Also, many have since been chopped down because they were too close to footpaths and female students were afraid that men might be hiding behind them (which in at least one case was, I believe, true).

The trees also looked better because back in the 1970s, the Estates section didn't place unsightly green salt bins in view-spoiling locations.

9:34am on Saturday, 18th October, 2025:

4B.529

Anecdote

I was at the university yesterday for the leaving do of the former acting vice-chancellor, who was also a former student, lecturer, senior lecturer, professor and dean of our department. While there, I popped over to check out who'd got my old office.

I'm pleased to see that the "Ban Everything" sticker featuring Millie Tant out of Viz resisted being scratched off.

12:11am on Friday, 17th October, 2025:

Diaries

Anecdote

Unlike modern people, who use computers and phones, I make a hard-copy note of all my appointments and meetings in a paper diary. This is so I don't have to synchronise across multiple email addresses, and I can check when I'm free without having to jump through software hoops.

For the past eight years, I've been buying a two-days-per page pocket diary from W H Smith. There's a warning in these telling you to go buy a replacement in October, so when I was in town today buying some zloties I sought one out.

Hmm. It turns out that they no longer do two-days-per-page diaries. They do one-day-per-page and one-week-per-two-pages, but not the two-days-per-page version they've sold me for the past eight years.

Oh well, with no lectures and meetings with students to record, I guess I can cope with one-week-per-two-pages. It's annoying, though.

Also, the foreign exchange desk that's in the post office operating in Colchester's W H Smith was closed, so I had to buy my zloties from a foreign exchange shop instead.

There's another irritating story behind that, but I'm too annoyed with W H Smith to anger myself further by repeating it.

8:40am on Thursday, 16th October, 2025:

Goodall Shakespeare

Anecdote

I bought some more playing cards:

They're a bit grubby, which is why they were cheap. I've been looking for this deck for some time, though, so am happy to have found it.

It's by Goodall, and it features characters from Shakespearean plays: Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Henry V and King Lear. I didn't even know that Shakespeare had written a play called Henry VIII, but apparently he did so (in collaboration with John Fletcher). Also, it turns out that the Globe Theatre was burned down when a cannon shot used for a special effect in the play set the building's thatched roof on fire.

Anyway, the deck was first manufactured in 1893. I don't know for how many years it was in print, but Goodall was taken over by De La Rue in 1921 so it can't be later than that. It could well have been made only in 1893. My pack came in what could be its own box, but it's plain and there's writing in pencil all over it so perhaps not.

As usual, I'm more pleased with this than most people would be if in receipt of a 125-year-old pack of playing cards.

8:54am on Wednesday, 15th October, 2025:

Spooky

Weird

I've just finished reading Games Authors Play by Peter Hutchinson, published in 1983 among a flurry of games-someone-plays titles. It's quite good, but that's not what this post is about.

I noticed while I was reading it that there were occasional purple, circular labels stamped into it. They seemed to be claiming that the book was the property of some institution or other, but it wasn't in English and was therefore incomprehensible to me. The text read LEABHARIANNA CATHRACH ATHNA CLIATH, so my guess was that it was some form of Gaelic.

I was looking through to find an example that was clear enough to scan, when I found this on the page inside the front cover:

OK, so it's formerly the property of Dublin Public Libraries. It was taken out over 30 times, the last one being "23 Nov 00"; clearly, the readers of Dublin Public Libraries are very interested in furthering their education. I don't know what language the

I don't know how this copy wound up on eBay, but that's not the point. The address of the Central Library is Henry Street, which translates as Sráid Annraoi.

So, the Irish lnguage version of Henry is Annraoi.

Henry is the name of my grandson. Anne was the name of my mother. Roy was the name of my brother.

That's ... spooky.

9:40am on Tuesday, 14th October, 2025:

Geese

Weird

I've no idea what a hundred Canada geese were doing in an Essex field, but I'm sure they were up to no good.

There used to be some in the grounds of the university, my encounters with which inclined me to believe the adage that they produce a quarter of their body weight in excrement every day.

I don't know what they were called before Canada was named.

9:47am on Monday, 13th October, 2025:

BIKE!

Anecdote

I was out on my bike yesterday, turning a corner at the bottom of a hill on a narrow, country lane, when I encountered a string of six Men in Lycra zooming down on bikes in the opposite direction. The lead one was acting as spotter, it being his job to warn those behind him of oncoming vehicles. This, he did:

"CAR! ...oh, bike ... BIKE!"

He was lucky I wasn't a car, because had I been one he'd have ploughed right into me. That narrow, country lane was very narrow.

I don't know why it is, but all the narrow, country lanes in our vicinity that have a hill in them curve behind trees when they get to the bottom of the hill so you can't see what's round the corner as you barrel down them at speed. We must lose many Men in Lycra to nasty accidents because of this, so I understand why the council would be reluctant to improve visibility there.

10:19am on Sunday, 12th October, 2025:

Sale Trail

Anecdote

It was the village sale trail yesterday. What happens here is that people set up stalls outside their houses and sell stuff to other people. It's like a co-ordinated yard sale. There are usually around 50 participating households, and they sell all kinds of things. Some of it is junk, some of it is commercial, some of it is hobbycraft; a lot of it is "the kids have got too old for this and it takes up too much room".

We did actually buy some of the latter, because good-quality baby toys for 50p are real bargains. I also bought two pint glasses for 10p each.

I felt sorry for some people, who live some distance from the centre of the village. Few people would walk to visit their stalls, so they won't have received many visitors. Last time there was a sale trail, such people were invited to set up their stall outside the school, and there were half a dozen of them there. It felt a bit like a small car boot sale, though, and the point of the sale trail is that you get to wander around parts of the village you wouldn't normally visit.

There were some really interesting stalls among the ones whose owners were attempting to save themselves a trip to the tip. I'd have bought two board games from one of them if my wife hadn't been there to stop me.

I quite enjoyed it. It wouldn't have been so pleasant if the weather hadn't been fine, but it was, so it was.

Favourite item for sale: this book of James Bond themes piano music:

Those are long legs you have there, James.

12:14pm on Saturday, 11th October, 2025:

Prepare

Weird

More plus ça change from the 1960s MAD magazine books I threw out:

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Copyright © 2025 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).