The Dicelady Speaks

I’ve offered up my services to my mother, of all people, as a favour and a whim to write a book-related experience. I hope I don’t embarrass her too much... A series of random coincidences and pure luck on my mother’s fantastic female workings, led, not inevitably but invariably, to my conception and later, as my luck would hold out, my birth. This lucky streak continued, with a few minor glitches, to save me from my own stupidity and has thus far kept me alive. So far, so good. I should thank my lucky stars and many of the planets and neighbouring galaxies as well.

It was during the summer of 2001 that I was sent to live with an aunt in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and discovered she collected dice. It must’ve slipped my mind at the time that she would’ve been the first one to recommend Luke Rhinehart’s questionable work of coincidence to me. A year or two later, an alternative-type friend introduced me to the world of D&D role-playing and his dice collection and that was it. I now knew how to come by and appreciate these geometric gems, but I was still lacking a purpose. Another period of time elapsed and I finally heeded the constant recommendations of my colleagues and bought, read and then re-read The Dice Man. That was the proverbial moment, the ‘It’ of my existence: the reason, the philosophy behind the reason, the answer to so many questions, and the beginning of so many more opportunities that my under-developed dice-mind hadn’t even begun to conceive.

In all my travels and to all those I call friends I have recommended my slightly alternative Gospel un-truths in the hope that it will reveal to them what it has instilled in me. To sound expectedly cliché: anything is possible in a world where the only limit is your imagination. To sound unexpected: glurgle fob tea-cup woopind ter frooooossttt tandem inoculation.

Written by the Dicelady 9/9/09

Recipe for a Good Night Out

4 x thirty somethings
2 x tents
1 x campfire
1 x hamper of home cooked nosh
0 x alcohol

Take four young adults
Bus them down to Brittas Bay, County Wicklow
Erect two tents
Send them all for a swim
Light a campfire
Feed them

Now what?

We’re all used to instant entertainment so it’s hard to switch off and be still. Eoin could probably have fallen asleep early; Sam could have sat in an impossible yoga position and sucked her toes; Jessica could have read her book; but Angelo was bored. “Now what? There’s nothing to do!”

Jessica reached into her backpack, pulled out The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart and started reading aloud. She read an entire chapter as a gentle breeze flapped against the open tents. Her audience lay down, listening to this adult bed time story. She read until the sky darkened and turned to dusk, until her three listeners had almost fallen asleep, while they relived their own private memories of being read to as a child.