(Hinde House School, upper half, taken from where would be built two mobile classrooms, where I would spend a LOT of time in 83 and 84) In 1981, totally against my will and without prior parental consultation, I had started the final four years of my compulsory education at Hinde House a sprawling comprehensive school. It had, I openly confess, being a dreamer, come as quite a shock to the system, not only because Hinde House was such a large establishment, divided into a lower and upper wing with nearly 1100 pupils, but because back in the early 1980s it still retained a ‘house’ system. The pupils across all four years were divided into four houses named Chantrey, Brearley, Hunter and Sorby after great local industrial tycoons who helped build Sheffield up to be the urban sprawl that it was before the nation’s beloved Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and her inner cabal allegedly decided to destroy the industrial wealth of the North of England. Personally, I ...

 1982 was a pivotal point for me in many ways.  Alan and I had rapidly made ground into discovering the hobby, and we'd also introduced a few friends who had tried out D&D but not really had that 'Eureka!' moment that we'd had. We were buying and painting miniatures wherever we could get them, having three or four places to buy them in Sheffield, and also, on a day trip to the coast, found Q.T Models where I met and formed a friendship with the great Dave Hoyles, who was one of those 'O.Gs' who don't get the recognition they deserve, and who brought some fantastic models and inspirational painted displays in the store cabinets. Anyone of a certain age, will get rather excited when 'Q.T Hoplites' come up in conversation or indeed 'Q.T Samurai'. Sadly, Dave sold the Q.T ranges and they changed hands a couple of times. Indeed, I offered well above the asking price earlier this year when the ranges came up for sale, but the seller decided to ...

 Brutalist architecture is not the first thing which you may associate with gaming... I would guess that none (well maybe two) of my friends are aware that since my early teens I have had a love of ‘true’ Brutalist architecture? Not the modern ‘fuck you’ school, but the proper full on 'Exposition Du Cement style. Growing up in the 1970 and 80s, Shefield was full of the stuff. It was grim, gritty and drab, but it spoke of the future. Where we now have the Winter Gardens in the heart of the city, there stood the truly futuristiv modern extension to the town hall, known with love and loathing by local folk as 'the Egg Box'. Built in 1977, it sort of collided with punk so that in 1978, aged just 10, I was already being drawn into the grotesque sci-fi beauty of it. You see, that was the year that I started to take an interest in things... Music and popular culture  was starting to slowly become something I was interested in, with the awful but still rather exciting to a ten y...