Collateral Damage

It's "all change", here in Gormenghast, at the moment.

The pikelets have demanded new sleeping quarters, as part of the overall "Year of the Castle" (which seems to have slipped into 2012), and so there has been much room swapping and a week of decorating.

I'm exhausted.

The upshot, of all this, is that there is suddenly less lebensraum for my games.
My hand has, finally, been forced and I am going to have to enact my New Years Resolution sooner rather than later.
Ah, but I am ahead of the curve, for once. Forty odd games have been identified and moved to a warehouse on the fringes of the salt marshes. Work has progressed around getting these loaded into eBay and, hopefully, the Great Gormenghast Game Sale will be underway before moss can gather on the new stonework in Steerpike Jr's room.

As this is part of a wider business deal with the former Poodle estate, there will likely be around eighty games hitting the market. Watch this space for further details should you be interested in something shiny and new for your own personal nest.

In related news, I have also continued pulling dusty tomes down from the ancient shelves of the Great Library and passing them on to more worthy causes. Yes, work continues, apace, to shift my collection into digital format - but spare a thought for the innocent refugees thrown up in this maelstrom.

I speak of none other than the kitchen bookmarks.

Over the years I have given shelter to an ever growing number of these quirky little place holders. They came to me as holiday mementos, birthday gifts from the pikelets and random curios discovered along the literary way. Now they have become orphans. No longer gainfully employed to keep my page.
Not required on voyage.
Redundant.

It's a sad day but what can a kitchen boy do?
These are digital times and bookmarks need to move on. Adapt to the changing market and find new ways to add value in these difficult days of double dip recessions.

Perhaps I will keep a few as wards and use them to mark important passages in my (still hardcopy) rule books. They can then be useful in Rules Clarifications when debates on War of the Ring nuances reach fever pitch.

And, in the distant future, I will show them to a  generation of grand-pikes and tell them of the golden ages of pagination (and opponents who bend the rules).