bike brakes   /----------------------------------------\   and my front
are bust again /|    XXX        XXXXXXXXX    XXXXXXXXXXX |\  tyre's flat
/-------------/ |   XXXXX       XXXXXXXXX    XXXXXXXXXXX | \-------------\
| Volume No.: 1 |  XX   XX         XXX           XXX     |Chris M DICKSON|
| Issue No.: 05 | XX               XXX           XXX     | Arco Room 007 |
| Next Deadline | XX   XXXX        XXX including XXX     | Keble College |
| as for OMR 19 | XX    XX         XXX   train   XXX     |  O X F O R D  |
| don't be late |  XX   XX         XXX           XXX     | O X 1   3 P G |
\-------------\ |   XXXXX  XX   XXXXXXXXX XX     XXX  XX | /-------------/
	       \|    XXX   XX   XXXXXXXXX XX     XXX  XX |/
		\- E-mail to chris.dickson@keb.ox.ac.uk -/

	Latest news on the Girlie Show front is: keep watching. Hanbury's
bit is scheduled to appear either this Friday (ie, 7th March, when this
won't have got to you yet) or the Friday after. Better still - arguably -
is that I may have a cameo role towards the start of the film.
	OxCon happened on the 1st of February (thanks very much to those of
you who made the trip for it!) but former DipSoc president and charmer Hanbury
Hampden-Turner wasn't there, becase he had been summoned by Rapido TV to
Cambridge that day. In a long, arduous filming session they set up a game of
Warhammer 40K between the president of the Cambridge University War Gaming
Society and him (representing Diplomacy in Oxford, being the next closest
alternative) for the denigration of war games in general in the "Men
Behaving Sadly" section of The Girlie Show.
	Possibly because war gaming doesn't actually make desperately gripping
TV they decided to focus at least as much on the personalities of the two men
they had picked for the segment. Fortunately they had quite a nice contrast in
the Cambridge man being an introverted lead-miniature painter and Hanbury being
(to be frank) a Top Loon with an excess of personality. So to further venture
into the depths of Hanbury's psyche, brave folk, they came up to Oxford on the
Wednesday to get footage of Hanbury's other passions in life. And this is where
I come in. (No, not as one of Hanbury's passions.)
	Hanbury and I (and about half of the DipSoc committee at one time or
another) are keen members of the university's RPG society, and regularly take        
part in the live-action role-playing campaign that has run for nigh on 10 years.
For those who know not, live action means that instead of players dictating what
the characters they portray are doing through the medium of speech, they act it
out. Combats are resolved using harmless fake weaponry, frequently the eponymous
rubber swords, and a large dose of suspension of disbelief. When there are 20 or
more players co-operating in the middle of the night to make the game emotionally
charged and just plain outrageous fun, it works marvellously well. When you're
down to 8 in the middle of the afternoon, without costume, in a very second-
class copse as compared to our usual atmospheric, eerie forest - and half of
those eight are ringers anyway - well, you can tune in yourself to assess
the damage. All in the cause of shameless self-publicity; good clean fun. I'm
the goblin on the right who goes down in the heat of battle at once, wearing
a white jumper and dark jeans. There may also be a bit with just me and Hanbury...
	After that, we retired to a friend's room out of town (no way would the
University let us sully its good name on their premises) to explain to the masses
the joys of Diplomacy. A board was set up and we somewhat uncertainly started to
diplome. There only being one, tripod-bound, camera, and not a lot of space, the
results are not terribly realistic. For a start, only six players surround the
board (look out for an "everybody ganged up on Germany" gag here). As the game's
telegenicity was found to be slightly suspect they decided to concentrate more on
the pieces moving about the board than the actual diplomacy as such, and with just
three minutes for the whole film, that's probably a good call. Look out for the
march of the Turks as they conquer the board and centre in on Germany, all other
powers miraculously forced to retreat off the board. There are some irresistible
tiny deliberate mistakes for Dipnerd trainspotters to look out for, for instance
my English fleet's manful retreat to Ireland. My idea of putting a Turkish fleet
in Switzerland, was, however, alas, vetoed. For getting a Diplomacy board on TV
and then proceeding to make a mockery of the game I do believe that the Oxford
University Diplomacy Society now lead the running for this year's yemliP award.
	However, those who where there at the time know that the real hilarity
of the day was caused by the ongoing chase between me and our tame vampire trying        
to bite me on the neck. Luckily I'm close enough to the page's end not to explain.