Since September, I’ve been torn between the need to recover from my heart attack and my need to not die from boredom, and I’m still not splitting the difference very well. Most of January so far — most of December, if I’m being honest — has been firmly in the “recovery” camp. This jaunt to the United Kingdom is the last of that for a bit.

I flew here for The Smoke and it’s the same as it ever was, if finally running in January the way it traditionally has.¹ I didn’t end up returning the second day, sadly — I felt vaguely ill and instead tested to make sure it wasn’t COVID, and a pending transit strike that evening made it seem more prudent to hop a train out to my friend’s near Birmingham where I was crashing for the rest of the week.

I always want to like The Smoke more than I do. It’s a great bunch of people and great for the community, but it’s expensive if you’re traveling in for it² and there’s only four slots for larps over the whole weekend. The larps are all a little hit-or-miss, and being limited to a 3-4 hour slot means it’s hard to really get deeply into them. Sometimes they’re amazing,³ but many of them feel baggy and unpolished, more works in progress than fully developed in their own right.⁴

That means I’m mostly showing up to socialize, but the space isn’t really conducive for that, either. There’s a noisy, cramped bar and the lack of obvious dining options nearby⁵ means most people either grab takeaway or gather a couple people and head somewhere for lunch or dinner. It feels less welcoming to me than the social scene at Knutepunkt, even though every year I know more and more people. This year I didn’t even bother to drop in on Friday night despite being less than a 10 minute walk away, and when I finished the second slot on Saturday I wandered around for a bit, didn’t find anyone to hang out with, and ended up grabbing a vindaloo alone on the walk back to my hotel for the night.

The rest of my week I didn’t leave the couch at my friend’s place. Partially because I caught some kind of bug,⁶ partially because the weather’s been bitter cold, partially because I knew I was getting back on the move shortly. I’ve kept busy by slowly piecing together some kind of plan for the six months.

Part of that was firming up travel arrangements through to at least mid-February. More of it was figuring out what to do about doctors and my ever-delayed Portuguese residency. Since I can legally move to Portugal before my residency comes through I’ll be able to start getting medical care if I do, and given what a massive pain in the ass dealing with US insurance is in the first place⁷ it’s likely to be easier to just start seeing a doctor here, particularly as I approach the six month mark and my risk of a recurrence drops significantly.

I fear these updates have become incredibly boring of late. “I crashed at a friend’s place” isn’t nearly as compelling a narrative as “I saw the sun rise over a 500-year-old castle” and the past couple months have featured a lot more of the former and a lot less of the latter. I’ve deliberately slowed down while I’ve been taking time to recover, but it turns out you can’t just slow down a little. It’s like a horse, you can’t gallop at half speed. I’ve changed my entire cadence. I’m going to need to find a way to survive the slower one, especially if I’m bumming around Lisbon for the forseeable future.

But first things first: in the short term I’m traveling like I used to, flying to Munich for a week mostly on my own, before a short jaunt to Vienna then heading off to Scandinavia. I’m trying to make the most of it. It’s likely to be my last hurrah for a bit.

Next: Vienna (VIE) to Oslo (OSL)
Prev: Berlin (BER) to London (LHR)

Footnotes

¹ It took a while to migrate back to the start of the year, post-pandemic.

² It’s smack in the City of London so tons of stuff is closed on weekends, and London remains just punishingly expensive if you’re renting a hotel room.

³ At the first Smoke I attended I played Sarabande, an expressionistic larp set in Paris the late 19^th century, and it remains one of the most affecting experiences I’ve had.

⁴ This year I played Heist!, a cute if slight game recreating the feel of Reservoir Dogs, and Unearthed, featuring former zombies undergoing treatment before being reintroduced into society. The latter, especially, felt like a solid start for a game that needed more thought and focus. The characters weren’t much deeper than “Pick a name and an occupation” and the actual game play was sitting in group therapy while a facilitator tossed out questions like What do you remember about your life before suffering from Partially-Deceased Syndrome? and going around the circle and answering, one at a time.

Group therapy isn’t a great premise for a larp but it’s workable. Worse, I thought, was that the game didn’t really seem to have a strong sense of itself. It was heavily based on In the Flesh, a UK TV show which used the premise to explore queer themes and issues, which gave the larp a deep lore but that lore wasn’t necessarily accessible to the players. And a group therapy setting means 90% of the time you’re listening to other people talking.

⁵ The Smoke isn’t catered.

⁶ My friend picked up something over New Year’s so whether I had something separate or caught it from them I’ll never know. It was never really bad but did have me lethargic and coughing for about four days.

⁷ I just got a $1,000 bill from the doctor I saw in the United States, and I literally cannot tell to what extent my insurance covered any part of it.