Creepy Crawlies, or - it’s hard making friends in your thirties.

It’s hard making friends in your thirties. The first few years of that decade are spent in covid; navigating lockdowns, restrictions, working from home. It’s supposed to be the greatest time of your life but the highlight of each day tends to be yelling to your flatmate that “tiny dog” or “dog with ball” are on their daily walk. (Yes, we named the dogs we saw. To this day I miss ‘tiny dog.’ He was TINY.)

But there’s light at the end of the literal darkness, and it reached a great moment in 2023. But all those months of solitude taught you something: you need a social life. Your friends were fine retreating a little and you still adore them in their new low-energy lives, but it turns out that you’re a bit of an extrovert. Who knew? Even the socially anxious of us like to be social.

Living in the vast metropolis that is LDN means this is possible! And what better to find friends with than that quintessential pandemic hobby: Dungeons and Dragons.

On the first day you book yourself in at the D&D tavern you walk around the block three times for courage. Two times wasn’t quite going to cut it, okay, and one is just silly. Greeted at the door by someone who clearly saw you do that but is too polite to mention it until several months later, all seems well. Roll up a character - a half orc, an artificer who loves the natural world. On a whim you create a golden stag beetle homunculus for them. And, incredibly, you make friends?

The best part of a year later you order some dice. They fit this character so perfectly; green, gold, bugs. It reminds you of your new friends and this lovely new social life. Dispel Dice are the other side of the Atlantic so it takes a bit of time for the parcel to clear customs. And in that time something happens — because a gaming group can never really run smoothly. To cut a long story short, some of the players decide that rolling dice is more important than good morals. The ones who land on the other side with you are the ones you still have in your life today.

Then the dice arrive.

You sell them! Quickly! eBay! Way under face value! It’s a gut wrenching reminder of putting your trust in people who didn’t deserve it and you do not need that!

And with the money — well, it’s lucky bag season. How about it? What’s life without a fun little surprise.

When the first set of the three is green, gold, insects — the same ones. The exact same ones. Is the world playing a cruel trick? Are you haunted? Is this just a very bad coincidence?

But these are the ones that lead you to trading for the very first time - and the people that come with it. The little dice enthusiasts in your phone.

So you might be cursed, but the positives? It is possible to make friends in your thirties, even ones who aren’t dickheads. And.. if you ever get dice that remind you of the bad times, there’ll always be a good home for them with one of the people on your phone.