'The Dice Man (...) is a creature whose actions are decided from day to day by the roll of dice, the dice choosing from among options created by the man.'
It's been quite a while since I read the Dice man and almost as long since I've effectively played the dice game for a consistent amount of time. The last few times I recall was for one full week in year 9 I played and managed to effectively alienate, amuse and confuse the majority of my friends, one lesson in year 11 I managed to bait some friends in my legal studies class to play with me (resulting in one of us having to have a loud argument with the teacher, one person yelling religious propaganda out the window and I think someone ate paste. The end result was some people were converted to the magic of the game and some never forgave me for introducing them to the awful game) and finally one of the most interesting men I've ever met hosted a "dice game" night for his birthday, an idea I've always meant to steal at some point, perhaps this year (yeah, watch out friends mwahaha). So what the hell am I talking about? Well, if you've never read the book, the basic rules are: Grab a die, list 6 options (some good, some bad, some fun, some challenging and at least one that is just a little bit out of your comfort range. Start off with small things until you get the hang of the game), roll the die and follow its instructions. It's that simple. But if you agree to play the game, you agree to follow the die absolutely, you must do what has been chosen. You can also use odds/evens for split choices. The beauty is, it's your choice how deep you want to go and when and for what you chose to roll the die. So, this blog is supposed to be about my France adventure right? So why am I talking about this? Well, today I was bored and decided that in Paris, when I'm accountable to no-one, I'll play the dice game. So then I asked myself, well, if I'm bored now...why wait?
First of all, from a list of options, I was told to go for a walk. I used my ipod odd/even function to pick left, right etc until I picked from a row of shops and ended up in a pharmacy. The die chose I should dye my hair and chose a colour that's quite naturally close to my usual dark chestnut colour, though we were very close to going blonde again today! The walk continued down a weird maze of streets I've never been down here and took me to a bakery where I randomly selected from everything in the shop and bought a lemon tart with chocolate on top. 
We also ended up in a florist where I spent 10 minutes sitting on the floor playing with a tiny shy puppy and learning about the different Christmas flowers the florist was selling,
took a walk through the Noel markets which were just being set up for the evening and eventually home again to a random beverage of lemon tea and to dye my hair.
This afternoon was really just a bit of a warm up for tonight when the dice have chosen we're going out to Aix and Manue has agreed to play the dice game with me all night. I'm not sure she knows exactly what she's getting herself into, but I couldn't be more stoked with who to play with, she's definitely not scared to throw caution to the wind and be a bit weird. I'm very intrigued to see how into the game we get and what this night holds for us... See you on the other side! ;)
I invite any of you to try the dice game someday...even if you just start small, you'll soon be hooked on the chaos.
Oh and, yes, I do have some more normal stories to tell you like my weekend away in the log cabin in the mountains and going to see a hilarious French play, eating frogs legs and my recorded French conversation for Christian. I will write them when I feel like it. :)
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