Part Deux of Gonzo's i35 adventure

I wake up in Pete's car with a layer of frost on the inside of my sleeping bag. It feels like my back is broken and Pete is nowhere to be seen. It hurts to breathe and my head judders in time with my slow heartbeat. I leave the car and walk past the many puddles of vomit that punctuate the way to the venue... The problem with doing a diary is that it is impossible to witness everything and be writing about it at the same time... Something has to get cut loose from the coverage. Not for the first time I make the choice to ignore the games and get to the heart of the matter. I remember that my night end badly, but I'm not sure how or why. This stage is what is affectionately known as “The Valley of Knives”. Angry looks from faces you don’t know, or at least you think you don’t know. Maybe you knew them last night… For each look, paranoia rises, beer not taking the edge off the situation or helping shift the fog from your brain. It is called “The valley of Knives” because everywhere you walk you never know when and where somebody you pissed of is going to come from the crowd and twist a blade into your back, killed over something you can’t even remember doing… The last thought in your brain a protest of innocence, then a confused acceptance that you have probably done something to deserve this. If only you knew what it was…

So I'm trying to get it together, eating in the canteen... Did I just pay £7.50 for mushrooms in gravy? I did and if recollection serves me right that is probably the sanest thing I've done since I got here. Cider is an acceptable breakfast drink in many cultures... Let me just decide what tense to write this in and we can get underway.

My LAN started proper by waiting at Coventry train station waiting for Nick, Infused Manager, to come and pick me up. They do this kind of thing for me all the time and seem to like me, which is odd considering I probably presided over their least successful CS:S team since they started. I was certain those players were going to do the business, but for some reason it never worked out. What the fuck do I know about this game anyway? I should have known it wasn't going to work because it included Jack "I am cursed Callisto Jinx" Mason, a player who has been so unlucky his record of teams beggars belief. I was deeply upset that the term "Jackstabbed" never took off with the same sort of popularity as Pez being called ManBearPig but not everything I do is going to have that sort of longevity. Jack has had such a shit time in Source he has even taken to playing Crysis 2... He's at this event with a team that are favorites to win it. I hope it goes well for him... That fucker is due a break like no one else and if it keeps going ugly for him he's going to be left permanently with the withered face of a bad Chinese gambler.

As I get in the car we talk shop; old times and new developments. He alerts me to big changes on the horizon for the Source scene and I hope he's right about them working out. There's been so many false dawns and - as anyone who has spoken to me at this event can attest to - I am utterly convinced this game is dead inside of eighteen months pending a radical upheaval. There is no way to put a gloss over it... I learn that for the first i-series I can remember attendance numbers are down and you only have to look at the field in terms of competitiveness to realise that the UK scene is making a shift back to the days of community and playing for fun. Even a player like Ollie "crazycat" Netherton - a taxi player for London Mint - has become some sort of mercenary for hire, not playing seriously and doing wherever the free LAN is. So let's hope change comes, but be certain if it doesn't that we'll all find another way to feed the monkey.

I arrived at the venue about seven in the evening and the first thing I see is Boostey dressed like a Jester, ever segment of his package visible through his tights like a Terry's Chocolate Orange. It is hard to know whether he has made the decision to dress this way because it is Halloween, but he seems oblivious to it all as he tries his hand at chatting up some of the girl gamers that are here... And there are a lot of girls here, more than I've ever seen at an i-series... It's making the WoW players nervous and I immediately think of the tag-line for the event "i-35 - this time it's worth washing your nob for"... Ho ho ho. I only put that crudity in there to annoy Pete. He says I don't need that sort of rotten nonsense in my work as i brings it down. Well fuck Pete. His car was cold and he's just bitter about being the eternal bridesmaid to the UK scene.

Stoneleigh Park is an impressive venue, far more modern and spacious than Newbury, but it lacks something in terms of character. I could just be thinking that because there is no longer the Berkshire stand to break in to when you're stuck for a place to sleep... Fuck, you could live through a nuclear zombie holocaust in that place, making a fort out of the chairs and drinking that dusty beer that still comes out the pumps. I'm not like the usual Source asshole, afraid of change, but I'm like everyone that I have a fucking love of nostalgia. Anyway, it's very good here and probably a step in the right direction, although I still can't fully believe that with the amount charged per ticket and the general cost of everything at the event that it represents good value for money.

If there were any doubts in my mind about what I'm doing here they are quickly eroded by the greeting I get from my continual LAN companions, Rasta Gaming. The manager, Adam "Damage" Parkinson, is very similar to myself in that he is a fundamentally good hearted wreck-head. People might not know what to make of a man over six foot with angular features and those mad staring eyes waving his arms around as if being dive-bombed by invisible bats, but he is everything that is righteous with the scene. He's only really interested in pushing the community aspect first and foremost, the gaming an almost incidental excuse to have a good time. He's starting to get the recognition he deserves for many years hard work and that's only right. We're straight into the beers, forcing three pints in twenty minutes down my neck and this is the stuff LANs are made of.

One of my plans for the diary was to do "a drink with Blockhead" s I've been updated via text and forums to his escapades. Already there are security gathering round his desk again and rumours of another fight having broke out. Everyone is telling me he's an asshole, that he gets what he deserves, but I was never one for buying in to such pantomime. He's an 18 year old gamer, no a Bond villain... People have short memories and forget that the only thing he did wrong initially was t wish himself happy birthday on the Enemy Down forums... There followed a torrent of abuse, the utilsising of THAT picture with him sprawled out on a bed like something from Twinks Monthly... A fine publication... And yeah, he reacted ans dropped the "CU@LAN" bomb. Fuck, who wouldn't? I met up with him, not sure what to expect... He looked sheepish, probably thinking I was like all the others, just looking to provoke some cheap reaction. Instead I offered to interview him for Cadred but he declined. His head doesn't even look that much like a block and he seems a pretty safe guy.