I went to sleep last night so struggled to get out of bed, this was problematic because I had arranged to meet my friend in Preston at 1pm. I rolled out of bed sometime after 9am and got a shower in, I then I got around to buying my train tickets, they came to a humble £18.50, could’ve bought a fair few magic cards for that amount but I can’t buy someone to play against.
Picking my outfit for the day was moderately challenging, I went with my mom jeans, black Vans and a plain white t-shirt with a wine red check shirt on top, the pants were perhaps a size to big as they did slide down often during the day. As I was chilling, waiting for my train, I came to the sudden realization that I had booked an earlier train and I’d not missed it. I went back to the TrainLine website,partially refunded the ticket then bought another. I then came to another realization, that I didn’t have to refund the ticket, I could have gotten on any off-peak train. So, I lost £10 over nothing.
There was still time before I had to leave, I used it to do my makeup, there wasn’t much time, so all I could do were my eyebrows and put on a bit of lipgloss. I then headed out to the train station, it took 20 minutes to get to my first station, I then took a short 5 minute train to another station afterwhich I learned there had been some delays caused by track repairs, or something like that. I hopped on the first train going where I was and it was extremely overcrowded, hot too. I think the heat and my lip biting habit caused my gloss to fade, unfortunately. I arrived 20 minutes late, it didn’t matter though as my friend was having an even worse time with the trains, he had to get on a rail replacement coach service.
After hanging around the station for a while, I eventually left and located the point where his coach would be arriving. I sat on a rock and waited. While there I observed a drunk Scottish man abusing his young daughter, he later lifted her in the air so she could urinate on a public flowerbed in full view on passersby.
My friend arrived shortly after 2pm, I didn’t quite recognise him at first, well,I did,but I wasn’t 100% sure so I didn’t acknowledge him. I waited for him to get closer, his fair was shorter and he had some facial hair, he looked “tough” and a bit serious. Still a good looking guy, just different. We decided to get something to eat and drink first since the travelling had really taken it out of us. We passed a KFC but it was too busy, so we wandered around a little more until we found a Burger King, grabbed double bacon XL burger meal and I chose the halloumi burger meal, I’m watching my weight. I was surprised to learn that there was no meat, instead it was replaced with halloumi, I expected a cheese burger where the cheese used was halloumi. It was still delicious. We caught up but neither of us had gone through much since we last met, after we were done, we headed outside so my friend could have his second cigarette of the day, he loves his cigarettes and throwing them onto the street.
Our next destination was the local museum, the people around town that we’d seen so far had mostly been white, but inside the museum it became more diverse, even so someone wearing burka like clothing. We started moving up the first flight of stairs and stopped to view the name commemorating those died during one of the world wars. I tried and failed to find any Pakistani names. The first floor of the building had a mix of stuff, there was local history, pottery (both old and new), some ancient Egyptian stuff and the skeleton of an elk that was over 10,000 years old. The upper flood consisted of fine art, contemporary art, clothing, Viking stuff and some smaller crafts. Throughout the visit,my friend mocked all the exhibits, he was hilarious, as usual.His favourite articles were the old card boxes or holders that looked like they’d make good Magic the Gathering deck boxes if they were a larger. I like the contemporary art pieces as they challenged me and got me thinking, my friend was unable to understand them due to his autism.
Our next excursion was to the local card game store, it was a little further out from the town centre than I expected. We walked through the Pakistani district, the area was lined with Pakistani stores, we then moved into a side street featuring derelict buildings and a lack of infrastructural development. The were banners scattered around that helped us find the store but I was unsure that we were in the right place since it seemed like a terrible location. The card game store was located above a carpet store, we walked up a narrow staircase to reach the store itself. It was quite a disappointing sight, there was a large area setup with tables but the actual amount of merch available was limited.There were two shelves, one against a wall and another placed a little further away, out in the open. They had some board games, an extremely limited selection of playmats and miniatures. There was boosters and other actual card game products too but they were overpriced. On the plus side, there was a massive selection of card sleeves, almost every colour of Dragon Shield available and samples so you could see the actual colour. I wanted to leave ASAP, I didn’t like the atmosphere, the few guys there seemed like the type that would rape me if given the chance. My friend needed some sleeves though and didn’t care about the £2 markup, he settled on some “midnight blue” ones. After paying, the guy at the till kept taking to us so we couldn’t leave, we both have to take some blame for humouring him and it was me who unnecessarily remarking on my friend not using contactless again.
It was finally time to play some Magic, I brought up some pubs on my phone but we ended up going to the closest spoons. I kinda wanted to check out a sports bar but he wasn’t up for it. Didn’t really matter too much, I guess. At the pub, I wanted to get something different than I usually do so I got what he did, a “Wizard”, it’s a type of ale, it was disgusting. I later got a soft drink to wash it down.
We sat down at a booth, I pulled out my playmat and everything else and began by talking a little about stuff and then when we we were ready we started playing the actual game. His decks were all non-meta, casual, fun decks. He stole some wins against my meta decks though. I regret not building my chilled out fun decks, he did mention that with friends, they would play “janky” decks against each other.
Still though, we had tonnes of fun, I loved actually playing the game, the time flew by, we were there for 3-4 hours, just playing the game, yet this will be the shortest section of the blog entry despite being the most chilled out,natural and enjoyable. The talk of personal issues was quite limited. He doesn’t have a gf, he asked how my bf hunt was going and I offered to show him my kik but I never got around to actually presenting him with some of the lewd messages I’ve bee receiving. A couple of older people came over an asked what we were playing, both times I explained that it was “Magic the Gathering”, the oldest trading card game in the world, not a very good explanation in hindsight. At one point my friend told a joke that had me laughing for a minute, I was crying with laughter. I wanted to take a picture of the play area as he went out for his 5th cigarette but he remarked that would fuel speculation that he doesn’t actually exist, since it would look like I’m playing a game against myself.
We left at 8:20pm, my friend had another cigarette, we had to get back to the train station in timely manner incase the issues from earlier in the day hadn’t been resolved. They had, my train was ready first so we parted ways. We may hang out in Blackburn next time.
There was no one to greet me at home, it was around 10:30pm, I bought 99x fake or “proxy” Magic the Gathering cards, of my choice, for £20 before going to bed. I like building decks, making them from fake cards won’t detract from the fun.
Should’ve taken more pictures, a lot of them are just from the museum.
Human Garbage 