And that’s without the possibility of joining the cast of reenactors, something we were actively exploring this year until scheduling killed it off.

Easter is a big deal in its calendar and this time they were time-warping back to 1535, a year they have (to look at YouTube) done before but made more topical now by the recent TV adaptation of Wolf Hall.

So much so that we found one of Thomas Cromwell’s commissioners in the house, poking his nose into the district’s religious loyalties.

As well as him, there was a small but dedicated selection of Tudors either enjoying the warmth of the house or huddling against the cold in the artisans’ buildings – plus, of course, the alchemists out in the woods.

Here’s a video we shot and edited:

It’s a 5v5 team battle across a fantasy landscape, it’s fast-paced, and there’s always something new to learn. It’s like one of those board games that is so well-designed and nuanced that people play it for decades.

There’s a huge and flourishing community, a pro-gaming scene with big money prizes, and you can watch matches live with thrilling play-by-play commentary. It’s even free.

But I only play against bots on my own machine – never against real people. Here’s the email I just sent the game’s designers, Valve, explaining why.

Dota 2 community’s attitude to rape (and Valve’s response)

I’m a 45-year-old college lecturer and web designer in England. I’ve played computer games since the ZX Spectrum in the early 1980s. I don’t play much, and usually only strategy games such as Civ, but I came across Dota on Steam after backing the Shadowrun game on Kickstarter, and I love it. It’s a great game, live matches are thrilling to watch, and there’s so much to learn and master.

I play maybe 1-3 bot games a day when work allows, and I’m supremely useless at it. I don’t have young reflexes and I have a huge ergonomic keyboard that is dreadful for finding hot keys. This is one of the reasons why I haven’t yet played a pub game – I’d be rubbish.

I also don’t play against real people because of the community. When you’re 45, your tolerance for young foul-mouthed know-it-alls is pretty thin anyway, and I can do without endless flame wars triggered by my failure to use a Blink Dagger properly.

But I’m also not playing because I’m sickened by how the community seems to think that rape is simply an amusing way of talking about a dominant win. I don’t go on the forums, but it’s there in front of me in the recommended builds, again and again.

I use builds a lot. They help when you’re a rubbish player. So I get exposed to this sort of thing without the ability to avoid it. And I’d rather challenge it than avoid it.

Having said that, I’m not daft enough to do a forum post about it. I’d rather contact you directly and avoid having to discover just how many players think it’s just a joke.

Try these:

“Kaboom’s build to bitches be livin”, currently promoted on the builds front page and therefore – presumably – an example of the sort of thing you want to encourage, tells us that Io’s Overcharge ability is one to trigger a “hardcore gogo rape train”.

For Shadow Demon, which I randomed yesterday, there’s one that’s simply called “rape guide :)”

And the one I noticed first, and which upset me so much when I came across it in the game client, is a heavily-upvoted Leshrac build. Birrywong’s “STAND AROUND AND GET KILLS – mid Leshrac”. I did report it a few days ago when I first saw it but I don’t see anywhere I might get feedback on the report and the build is still there. It finishes with this:

“The Rapetrain is coming. No lube baby. Bite down on something.”

Think about that for a moment. Particularly think about it if you have a daughter or a sister or a wife or a mother. (I’m assuming here that this is being read by a man. If I’m wrong about that, then I probably don’t need to say another word.)

Now when you’ve thought about it, think about the gang rape / murder that happened on the bus in India. Think about the injuries to the victim. THAT’S what the ‘rape train’ really is.

And that’s what Valve seems happy to allow its community to joke about.

Why? And when are you going to stop?

Not sure how long I’ll keep this up – a week, maybe – but what the heck. In this post, a couple of big-hit viral videos, some righteous anger about the bankers, local news from north Norfolk and north Hertfordshire, music from Big Country, Mari Wilson and the Grand Ole Opry, and the incomparable Lady Chablis.

News

Tony Robinson asks if bankers are human: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18642323. A most splendid rant on BBC Question Time. Sadly, not much of a cunning plan to fix it all.

Tony Robinson asks if bankers are human

Hitchin Town FC’s Position on Top Field: http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/site/content.asp?area=122&type=0&story=225962. A sorry mess…

Hitchin Town FC’s Position on Top Field

Features

This is our planet

Point Break: stranded on a spit: http://www.northnorfolknews.co.uk/news/point_break_stranded_on_a_spit_1_1427950. My ex-colleague Steve Downes goes back to nature.

Point Break: stranded on a spit

The story of the o w l sweater: http://katedaviesdesigns.com/2012/07/08/the-o-w-l-sweater-a-design-story/. A tale of big business ripping off small enterprise.

The story of the o w l sweater

Cool stuff

A Conversation With My 12 Year Old Self: 20th Anniversary Edition

Words of Wisdom: Feynman to the Rescue! http://school.failblog.org/2012/07/04/homework-class-test-words-of-wisdom-feynman-to-the-rescue/. The great iconoclast with advice that is excellent in all respects – except its implications for classroom management.

Words of Wisdom: Feynman to the Rescue!

100 Riffs (A Brief History of Rock N’ Roll)

Online

July 9th: Internet Doomsday – How To Prevent And Save Your System: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/preventing-dnschanger-malware/. If this was going to affect you, you’d know it already.

July 9th: Internet Doomsday – How To Prevent And Save Your System

Fury after Facebook messes up smartphone users’ address books: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/07/03/facebook-address-book-smartphone/. Facebook does it again.

Fury after Facebook messes up smartphone users’ address books

Music

Charlie Daniels Band “Devil Went Down to Georgia” – Grand Ole Opry: A master at work.

BIG COUNTRY LIVE – FIELDS OF FIRE 1995: RIP Stuart Adamson.

Mari Wilson awesome Live version of “Cry Me A River”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muJkEjUXMDE. The Neasden Queen of Soul at her spine-tingling best.

Mari Wilson awesome Live version of “Cry Me A River”

Retweets

Right, now how long until someone starts selling boxes of Higgs Bosons on eBay.

— Chris Warren (@Ixalon) July 4, 2012

.@alanbaldwinf1 It’s the only way the kids will get excited about it… “CERN confirms discovery of the OMG WTF particle.”

— Will Buxton (@willbuxton) July 4, 2012

Life is always a test, when things go wrong TWO TEARS IN A BUCKET MUTHA FU*K IT! Cry and solve it.Move on, it will happen again. CRAVE IT!

— theladychablis (@theladychablis) September 24, 2009

Hemsby beach

A part of the county where they factory farm tourists in endless caravan and chalet parks, where grey-haired rockers play the Byrds and the Monkees in clubs full of appreciative grandparents, where endless piles of twopenny pieces balance on the edge of the drop in endless arcade machines, never quite cascading down.

I loved it.

I’d begged a long weekend in my parents’ caravan, just me and my laptop and my plans for a novel (oh – and a box of college marking, but let’s not mention that). Just as on a previous day trip to Hunny, I wanted the seaside at a time when it wasn’t swamped by tourists.

I love to see what’s in the cracks between the places the people go, what’s left behind in the busy places when they’ve stopped being busy.

From the sand cliffs

And I certainly picked the right weekend. Although the sun shone at the end, which was not unpleasant, for most of it there was driving wind and horizontal rain. On Saturday night the TV weather map, showing the whole of East Anglia, had a big arrow indicating gale-force wind that pointed exactly at the caravan.

Couldn’t have been better.

So, I did get the project moving again. It’s an idea I floated 18 months ago in a Faber Academy writing workshop with the authors MJ Hyland and Trevor Byrne, and it’s a good idea. But time and, you know, life and stuff, mean I haven’t done anything more than poked at it since.

And this weekend I moved it on enormously. I have characters now, and a milieu, and a narrative (though not yet the right way of translating that into a non-linear plot with multiple voices… this isn’t going to be easy). I’m happy.

Caravans at sunset

But it’s a funny ole place, that Hemsby. There’s a village a little inland, a proper little Norfolk village. Then there’s a thick layer of caravan parks, most with their own club or bar, and a sliver of arcades. And out from these are the sand cliffs that hide the sea, and which are being steadily eroded. Sheltering behind – and sometimes embedded in – the dunes are rows of wooden chalets, a silent secret community sandwiched between the noise of humanity and the power of the sea.

Which is the real Hembsy? I don’t know. Perhaps they all are.

They were all interesting in their way. The village got on with life as if there wasn’t a tourist magnet nearby. The chalets, too, seemed to have little connection to anything else – if it wasn’t for the cars parked with them, they could have been from another decade. But it was the tourist ecosystem that fascinated me most.

Appearing live...

On two of the nights I was there, the caravan park club had live acts. One was a Buddy Holly tribute, the other a band with thick local accents, thinning grey hair and an inexhaustible supply of banter. Each was well-known to and well-loved by the club audience, filling the dance floor with retirement-age couples for short bursts of careful but comfortable twirling and twisting.

The holiday resort live music scene isn’t one that gets much attention – it isn’t glamorous, and the serious music journos and the X-Factor starlets would each likely sneer at it. But that would be unfair, as the people in it are seasoned professionals, deserving of respect for their unheralded pursuit of a craft and for the pleasure they give.

Viva Hemsby

I was less sure what to make of the nearest thing Hemsby has to a strip – a road lined with arcades that borrow their names and facades from Las Vegas, like the Mirage or the Palace Casino, or which try to bask in reflected light from Hollywood, Formula One and any part of the world that can guarantee sunshine, glamour, wealth or class.

“London – New York – Paris – Rome – Hemsby” declared one ice cream and shakes parlour, in deliberate and happy irony. Not every place seemed quite so clear on the joke.

Down the coast, another caravan park settlement is called California. Here, there’s a Bermuda park – or was it Bahamas? Get swept up in the illusion and it’s fine – take a step back and see the fields outside the village, or look up at the grey skies, and it all starts to look hallucinatory – even psychotic.

Make. It. Go. AWAY!

Although, not so psychotic as the statues – human-sized hot dogs and cartons of fries with faces to give you nightmares, solitary centurions, the many children’s rides.

And in the road outside my caravan park, a painting on the Tarmac designed to promote Hemsby and its caravan-and-sand-chalet suburb Newport. A grinning Viking in horned helmet, with the caption “1200 years of seaside fun”.

Seaside fun? The Vikings?

Storming ashore from their longboats with bucket and spade in hand perhaps, ready to find a comely English maiden to buy a punnet of chips from, before spending a jolly afternoon on the fruit machines, the F1 karts and the Lost World crazy golf.

Like I say, funny place, Hemsby.

Couldn’t have been better, as far as I was concerned.

Photo gallery

Click thumbnails to enlarge.

And when one appears over the back garden it’s impossible to resist running outside with a camera.

As ever, click for the full-sized version.

Further along the road, after I’d switched the camera off, he had a mate who was having a fine old time, waving at the cars and mugging for the drivers who were taking photos of him.

This chap, though, looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole…

Worst job ever?

The taste of summer...

It’s been a long time since I lived in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, after all, and even longer since visiting family in Lincolnshire occasionally included a jaunt to Skegness. Nor did I get to see many of the sights as an observer at NUS conference in Blackpool as a student.

So, back in March, we loaded up our metaphorical bucket and spade and headed off to the seaside.

While what I really wanted was somewhere seedy and run down, the need for an enjoyable day trip meant that instead we went to Hunstanton and Cromer on the north Norfolk coast.

The season hadn’t started yet – not by a long chalk – but it was starting to heave into view on the horizon.

There’s nothing bleaker than a seaside resort in the depths of winter, with howling rainstorms lashing boarded-up seasonal attractions, and that atmosphere was missing in both towns.

But the few visitors that had ignored the calendar to make the journey to Hunny had the air of endurance athletes, not holidaymakers, while barbed wire, barriers and boards were much in evidence along the front.

By the time we reached Cromer it was dark, and the heaving waves around the pier – though nothing particularly special – were a reminder why the town is as famous for its lifeboat as for its bucket-and-spade brigade.

Photo gallery

Click each thumbnail to see larger version.

The full tale of why we were there is on our walking blog, where Beloved Other Half wrote up the visit as our contribution to the Celebrate Our Forests Day activities.

But for me it wasn’t just about activism, or a return visit to a location that the hobby of geocaching has pulled us into several times over the last few years.

It was also a trip back into a time long-gone when I camped there in the Scouts – memories of cooking dough strips and sausages over an open fire, sleeping in fern-covered bivouacs or brand-new two-person tents, tears and crippling homesickness, brittle oak twigs and papery dry leaves, wood smoke, and a sense of adventure and possibility that couldn’t even see the boundaries of the wood, let alone of life.

The place seems smaller now, and I noticed the roads and fields and houses beyond the edge of the wood as I never had before. But in the heart of it, I could still see the past staring back at me.

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Hacked By Sxtz