Hand Me The Defending Dice

Yesterday was the first day of my last year at the Atrium.

That means that I've got a year - less, in fact - until I have to become a real person. Job, non-student accommodation, etc. etc.

And standing between me and that point are, among other things, a 10,000-word dissertation and some sort of major group project, the specifics of which remain to be seen.

But let's not worry about that yet. Last night we played Risk, although we had our share of real-life obstacles to conquer before we could think about conquering the world.

1. I had been suffering from a migraine for much of the afternoon, which culminated in a bizarre episode during which the entire right side of my body fell asleep. Fortunately, I managed to sleep it off in time to go with Cliffey to pick Sarah up from Penarth...
2. ...but we got there rather late due to a combination of traffic and errands that Cliffey had to run in Lisvane, including stops at his dad's house, the Griffin, and Sainsbury's, where we picked up JR.
3. Once we had collected Sarah, we decided to pop to Tesco's to buy some Risk snacks. Sarah and I got a pizza each, and I spent the rest of the evening being mocked for spending four pounds on Sarah's when she had (allegedly) told me to get a cheaper one. 
4. Tewkesbury Place is no place for a game of Risk, and so we opted to play in what used to be JR's mum's house. The house is currently unoccupied, but JR had the key and there were enough facilities still about to...facilitate a game of Risk. A table, four chairs, an oven in which we could cook overpriced pizzas. Plus, unexpectedly, a mammoth spider that forced us all to evacuate the house in terror. We stood outside for a while, wondering how to get our board game and pizzas back from the monster that was holding them hostage, when JR decided to step up and deal with it. The spider, you'll be pleased to know, was neutralised (read squished) by a speaker that JR dropped on it. 

So after all of that, we sat down and did some wars. We had decided beforehand that we weren't bothering with the mission cards; our only goal was complete world domination, and we expected to get a good few hours from it.

I had terrible luck with the dice, rolling mostly twos and ones, and while I did manage to hold on to South America for a good few turns I was very quickly put in my place (which, as it turned out, was a few territories in central Asia). Cliffey found himself in a similar position, with JR and Sarah the only ones who looked at all likely to win, so he and I formed an alliance. At first it was just a handshake agreement not to attack each other, but eventually we went the whole hog. Up until then, I had been the green troops, Cliffey the blue, but our merger saw us trade in both of those colours for a nice, Communist red*. JR and Sarah weren't best pleased, and they formed a similar alliance in protest (although it wasn't so much a coming together of military minds as it was Sarah signing over her troops and territories to her ginger overlord). Cliffey and I made a valiant push for victory, capturing most of Asia and North America in the process, but eventually the JR-Saz coalition brought the proverbial speaker down on top of us.

And so JR has gone, victorious, back to work. Uni for me kicks off on Monday, when I'll be dragging the ol' baritone in for its first 'improvisational approaches' session. What that will entail I'm not sure. Hopefully just two hours of unadulterated jammin'.

Joel.

*In an ideal world we'd have chosen the colour that would have resulted from mixing blue and green together, but seeing as bluey-green wasn't an option, we went with red. I like it because it's Liverpool's colour; Cliffey went with it because it's also Wales's.