On Friday I finally got to play a former colleague’s drug-dealing boardgame: XON. The name comes from an acronym for data-flow control but the game has nothing to do with data. Instead, you move around the board, buying drugs on credit provided by a loanshark, aiming to sell them later at 3, 4 or 5 times the cost. You can then pay back your debts and buy property: the first one to own £5 million in property wins.
Of course there are pitfalls:

• you can end up in crack-house hell (TM)
• you can be ripped off by a thieving whore (TM)
• you can end up in HMP Broadshaft (TM) and undergo all kinds of nasty things (or escape via the lavvies if you get the right Stretch (TM) card)
• you can pay a visit to the Bill Burroughs Memorial Hospital (TM), where even nastier treatment awaits you
• if you’re quite unlucky you can be mugged for either your cash or your drugs, forcing you to crawl back to the loanshark
• if you’re really unlucky, the loanshark will call in your debt. If you can’t pay him in full, he’ll take your money and your drugs anyway, increase your debt by 50% and necessitate a long stay with Uncle Bill.

I really enjoyed it, even being catapulted from an almost-winning position to destitution by being mugged for my drugs, then my money on two successive rolls – I’d just not had the chance to buy property or sell the drugs because I kept on landing on XON squares and hence being abducted by mutant aliens, rogered by rabid dogs and generally having a cool time!

The player who had been losing until then very quickly gathered a fortune (mostly formerly belonging to ME) and went on to win the game. I think that’s the best part of the game: all players have a chance of winning until the end and no-one is forced out of the game and left to twiddle their thumbs while their friends keep on having fun.

On Saturday, I bought a few necessary bits at the Stirling branch of Graham Tiso, then met up with other friends who live in Stirling to go around Stirling Castle. It has fantastic views of the Forth valley and a workshop where weavers are recreating seven beautiful tapestries. They only have 20 years’ work left!

I spent Sunday with Elly, who was making sure her dad was settled into Glasgow Infirmary or an operation, then taking her mum to her flat in Edinburgh so her mum was ready to go into a hospital in Edinburgh for her own operation. Elly’s sure going through some trying times!