watervole | My daughter got a new job

Hobbies can sometimes lead to useful transferable skills.

Decades ago, I ran a commercial postal RPG called 'Delenda est Carthago' It even won an award.

I employed several people over the years - one interview was with a Dr Who fan, the kind who knew every detail of pretty much every episode.

That was what got him the job - it demon stated his ability to get involved with a fantasy world and to learn all the relevant details. And he turned out to be a very good GM.

My daughter hs a volunteer at Little Woodham - the 17th century replica village. She's become a dab hand at entertaining the visitors with leather-working demonstrations, all sorts of interesting historical facts and also by organising groups of children into being the crew of a canon! (I gather the kids absolutely love it, even the ones who get 'killed' by standing in front of the barrel when loading it, etc.)

Turns out that this is a transferable skill also. It was her time at LIttle Woodham that got her an interview with a company doing coach tours (she has a bus-drivers licence, but that wasn't the critical element). They were looking for someone could entertain the passengers as well as drive them safely.

Monday Passenger: "You're very knowledgeable. How long have you been doing this? It must be a couple of decades."

Lindsey: It's my first day...

She'd done a lot of research and stacked up anecdotes about all the places they would pass en route. A bridge Winston Churchill fell off as a boy; another bridge that had a Civil War fight where a dozen cavalry held off around 200 infantry, stuff about Lulworth Castle, etc.

So, if you ever take a coach tour from Bournemouth rail/coach station to the Jurassic Coast, maybe you'll meet her!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Congrats to Lindsey!

And mind blown here. I played a lot of PBM postal games from my teenage years in the 1980s through to the early 2000s. I was also a long-term subscriber to Flagship magazine, and still have my back issues. I have tried playing PBM games more recently too, including a few years ago an estate position in Madhouse’s DungeonWorld. But I got too ill to keep up. Afraid I never played your game, but I heard good things about it a lot!

Oh wow! I used to write articles for Flagship!

Did you know that Nikki Palmer 'accidentally' became an MP? He stood for Labour in a constituency they expected to lose. And won.

And nice that you'd heard of Delenda!