I suppose I've nothing to cry about. It's just another hard luck story from a town with no cheer. Her name was Elanore, with an 'e' at both ends, one for entrance and one for exit.

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She wasn't good looking, a rather plump girl, with spiky hair and a fascination with egg-laying mammals but, for a while, she was mine. I remember how we met at a computer fair in London. Momma always said not to get mixed up with city girls. I was playing Atic Atac and she came up to me and said she knew of a different place where we could play a more stimulating game.

I followed her to a back street and up a long, dim flight of stairs. Her flat was on the third floor, she said, and she was sharing with a room mate who was on an AA demo in Trafalgar Square most of the time. She led me to the bedroom, to her favourite toy - a Dragon. (Jason spends all his time doing this sort of thing - Ed) The screen said Wizard's Quest and 'Press any key'.

"I'll just get the stuff," she said, and came back with a joystick. She broke me in gently, letting me flit smoothly from screen to screen on this game which seemed so familiar, so like the one I had been playing when we met. She coaxed me, teasing me, letting me fall down the holes 'til I'd learned to avoid them. Then, just when I thought it was easy, she took me to The Room, where all the objects were listed that I had to collect, with no hints on how to find them, or how to recognise them (the graphics were pretty bad!).

Well, to cut a long story short, she lied to me, that girl, she said she loved me but she always randomised the positions before my go. I still see her occasionally, when I can raise the money, when I can afford a fix of Wizard's Quest.