It's the last day of work before Christmas! It has been a long time since I've been in education, but it's still a nice feeling to know that "we break up, we break up, we don't care if school blows up".

I'm looking forward to some time off. For the first time in several years, I've actually got a reasonably substantial break — I'm taking all the time from the end of today onwards until the second of January as holiday, so I can enjoy the whole festive season without having to stress about work. Not that my day job is especially stressful in itself, but it's going to be nice not having to get up early and sit on conference calls I probably don't need to be on. It will also give me time to get some MoeGamer stuff done and go visit both our respective groups of parents.

I'm sure I'll revisit the idea of the year just gone by towards New Year's Eve/Day, but it feels like an appropriate enough time to ponder what has transpired this year right now. 2018 has been a year of ups and downs to be sure, but I feel like I'm leaving the year on a pretty good note.

I remain in gainful employment; in April, I will have been in this day job for two years, which equals my previous unbroken record of continuous employment in the same place. And, unlike the previous two examples where I reached the two year mark, I am neither beholden to the whims of retail, nor am I in an environment that causes daily damage to my mental (and probably physical) health. My day job may not be the most exciting (and I'm sticking to my unwritten rule of not mentioning exactly what it is or who it was for anywhere online, so please don't ask if you're curious!) but it pays the bills, I'm good at it and I don't see any reason to go anywhere else… particularly as I can just "switch off" from it at the end of the day and continue working on MoeGamer in my spare time.

MoeGamer itself has enjoyed some significant growth over last year; at the start of the month, I'd already exceeded last year's view counts. Numbers aren't everything of course, but it's nice to know more and more people are enjoying what I'm doing. It'd be nice to look at getting a few more YouTube viewers in the new year — and I have a few interesting plans for video in the coming months — but writing will always be my first priority and passion.

Health-wise, some frustration with what turned out to be a hernia has led me to finally get back on the weight loss wagon; both my wife Andie and I are, as I mentioned last week, back on the Slimming World programme, which worked extremely well for us last time around. So far I've lost a smidge over half a stone in the three weeks (four sessions) since I started, and I know from past experience that I can continue a slow but steady downward trend. I'm actually quite looking forward to being… a bit "smaller" again, as last time around I recall it did wonders for my self-esteem and also just caused me to feel physically a bit better in general.

There have been frustrations throughout the year, chief among which are, I feel, the somewhat turbulent nature of my friendships. My local friends who have had children in the last couple of years have become increasingly difficult to pin down and actually do things with, which can be upsetting and annoying at times, but they do still make the effort now and again; it's just hard not to take it personally sometimes. We had a thoroughly pleasant evening this Tuesday just gone, though; I hope there are more of those in the new year.

Online, I remain quite annoyed and upset at how many people who used to be close friends have pretty much abandoned me since I was let go from USgamer in 2014… but at this stage I kind of have to feel like if they weren't going to stand by me at a difficult time like that, they're not going to stand by me now, and thus perhaps weren't as good friends as I thought they were. It doesn't help that at least some of them have become well and truly entrenched in the culture of games journalism's "hatebait" trend, whereby they post ridiculous hot takes intended to draw in furious commenters, then take to Twitter to go "LOOK HOW AWFUL THESE GAMERRZ ARE".

I don't have the time, patience or energy for that shit, and if you've been following MoeGamer you'll know I am not about clickbait at all; I don't even like posting topical, time-sensitive editorial pieces (even though they get good viewing figures) as I'd rather the site be something anyone can enjoy any piece of content from at any time — the kind of thing you'd dip into like a coffee table book.

On the upside, since that regrettable aspect of my online friendships, I've been fortunate enough to cultivate some truly valuable relationships too. Chief among these is — and I apologise for singling you out here, sir — my good friend Chris Caskie, who co-hosts The MoeGamer Podcast with me after we'd been contemplating doing something along those lines for a while. Chris is a valued and deeply trusted friend who I speak to pretty much every day, and it's not an exaggeration to say he's helped me through some tough times as well as happily listened to me rave on about the latest games I've found particularly exciting or passion-stoking, even if he's not personally interested in them. I'm proud to call him a friend, and I'm even more proud of what we've created together with the podcast to date. Thanks, Chris.

As the hours tick down until hometime today, I find myself mulling over what I should perhaps set my sights on for the new year. But that sounds like a subject for a whole other post to me, so I'll save it for now!

Some days, I find myself wondering what life would be like without the Internet.

Obviously I wouldn't have the opportunity to do what I'm doing right now, and that would be a real shame… but there are other aspects of life where I feel it would actually be quite positive.

One such area is that of humour and comedy. The Internet can, at times, be a hilarious place — but the side effect of how quickly Internet humour (particularly in the form of memes) moves is that by the time more… for want of a better word, "normal" people come across a particularly entertaining joke or meme, it's already "old news" to those of us who primarily socialise online.

When I hear someone in reality quoting an Internet meme or referencing a joke I'd already got sick of seeing repeatedly retweeted on Twitter six weeks ago, it's hard to suppress a sort of "cringe" reflex, when in some cases this is actually a rather unreasonable response. Of course, in other cases — particularly when it's a "Brand" trying to make awkward use of a joke which heavily relied on context — that cringe factor is justified. But very often one might find that an individual not saturated in daily social media — a family member who only follows people online that they already know "in real life", for example — has no idea that the hilarious joke they saw on their Facebook feed that morning had already been well and truly through the online digestive system that is the 4chan > Reddit > Twitter > Facebook > email chains from your auntie cycle.

It's hard to suppress that cringe reflex at times. But I feel like in some cases life might be more pleasant and amusing if I did. Some of these jokes remain funny even long after their original time of telling, after all — and why should I not be able to mutually enjoy something entertaining with another person? I mean, come on, if I can still find farts hilarious after 37 years on this Earth, I can probably find it in me to laugh when my work colleagues recite a joke from the Internet out loud, right?

Much funny. So laugh. Wow. (Sorry.)

I feel like I scored a personal victory last night: I helped someone who previously disliked Super Smash Bros. to enjoy Ultimate.

I'm really happy about this, as it means that on the increasingly rare occasions when I'm able to get my local friends together, Smash Ultimate is now a reasonable option for us to suggest without any sort of "guilt". All it took was giving the person in question a brief instructional session in the controls and how they work, and he was away, suddenly coming to understand the appeal of the game after probably about a decade of not really liking it.

I've been absolutely delighted with Smash Ultimate's multiplayer offering so far — both online and offline. I know some esports types are getting pissy about the online for some reason that I frankly can't be arsed to look into, but for my needs — and those of my immediate friends, those who I will most likely be playing with — it works extremely well.

The only thing I'd say was definitely missing was some means of directly inviting a friend into your game, but I suspect this is more a feature of Nintendo's implementation of online services than anything else; there's no messaging feature at all, and voice chat is very much on a case-by-case basis. And while the lack of things that people consider to be "essential" to online services has drawn some criticism, I understand why Nintendo has omitted them: it's so they can keep the service as "safe" as possible, maintaining that good old family-friendly image. Without a messaging service, you can't have 12 year olds calling you a fag for not being good at Splatoon; without an invite system you can't have someone spamming you with game invites when all you want to do is play World of Light mode; without public voice chat, you don't have to listen to strangers talking unless you specifically want to opt-in to conversation.

Anyway, I'm not here to debate the pros and cons of Nintendo's online service; it is what it is. What I do want to talk about is the two multiplayer experiences I've had over the course of the last few nights: one online, one in person.

For our online matches, those of us who owned Switches agreed a time beforehand, and I set up a Battle Arena. This is Smash's main "custom" online mode, allowing the host to set the parameters beforehand, including whether battles are 1-on-1, free-for-all or team-based as well as the actual ruleset used in the match. Oddly, it doesn't appear that you can change these rules once the room is open, but this is presumably to prevent any sort of "griefing" in public rooms by drawing people in with a popular mode, then changing the ruleset at the last minute. We were in a private room, so that wasn't an issue; it might be nice to see the ability to change rulesets without having to start a new room in a subsequent update, but it's something you can work around easily enough.

For voice chat, on one occasion I tried the Nintendo Switch Online app for mobile, which makes use of a "speakerphone" system that works very well. For the other, we simply all used Discord, which is well-established as being a good choice for real-time online interactions. Obviously this depends on your computer being near your Switch (or I guess you could use mobile for that too), but this wasn't an issue for any of us.

The online experience was good. The "queueing" system works quite well — though the fact you have to leave the queue to change characters meant that a couple of us missed the opportunity to spectate a 1-on-1 match on a couple of occasions — and the actual in-game performance seemed to be very good both when I was playing someone in the States and my more local friends. There was the odd hiccup, but certainly no kind of unplayable lag — certainly a far cry from the "slow-motion" gameplay I've experienced in the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle and SNK Heroines on a couple of occasions.

As for the in-person experience, it, as you might expect as Smash's specialism, works wonderfully. It's easy to add and remove players, and having more than four participants for a basic Smash match is no longer considered a special case. The player profile system allows players to easily set up their preferred control settings and for these to be saved for future sessions, and the wide selection of characters, while potentially intimidating to new players, is full of recognisable faces.

The five-player three-stock match we had was extremely enjoyable. I was expecting absolute chaos to unfold, but it actually ended up having a rather nice flow to it. It helped that we were playing on a massive stage — the Mother 3 one, as I recall — as this allowed us to effectively break off into smaller "sub fights" before all bundling in together when we felt like we wanted a good and proper rumble.

Perhaps best of all, we found that "the guy who always wins at Smash" didn't win every fight he played. Yes, he did significantly better when playing as the characters he was "best" with (Link and Ganondorf) but he felt less "undefeatable" than he had been in previous installments in the series. As such, the whole thing felt much more balanced and enjoyable for everyone, which is exactly what you want from a party game.

Now, I just need to convince everyone involved to play a bit more often and we'll be well away…

I caught a tweet earlier that resonated with me somewhat, and I wanted to share with you both why it resonated with me and how I think being aware of this might help me going forward.

Here is the tweet:

This tweet resonated pretty strongly with me because I've been aware that this is exactly what I've been doing for a while, even with a sort of passing awareness that it's a harmful and unhelpful thing to do. So perhaps me putting this out here today — publicly acknowledging that this has been a thing for me, and that it's had an adverse effect on my mental health — will be at least the start of a process of growth and change in a more positive direction.

Or perhaps it will just provide you, dear reader, with the opportunity to empathise with me, mock me for my misfortune or just get a bit of "insider insight".

I try not to be someone who holds grudges. But there are a few people in this world who, for one reason or another, are individuals that I feel have "wronged" me, and that I do not feel able to forgive. And there are a few in particular that have led to the specific phenomenon Tim describes in his tweet above.

I have, regrettably, found myself on the receiving end of bullying on multiple occasions in my life — starting at primary school and continuing sporadically throughout the rest of my 37 years on this planet. And one of the things I've found over the course of my life is that being bullied is oddly… "addictive", I guess is the best word.

I'm not talking about masochism here. I don't mean that getting bullied is in some way gratifying for me… I don't think, anyway. What I'm referring to is the fact that the negative attention brought by bullying — something I do not enjoy — can sometimes lead on to more positive actions as people empathise and sympathise with you, standing beside you against the sources of that negative attention.

This might sound ridiculous, and I have no idea if it's a widespread phenomenon or particularly unique to me, but it's definitely something I've been aware of since I was a kid. There were times when I'd deliberately go and provoke one of the people who was bullying me at primary school just so I could get punched, start crying and get the attention I apparently craved. Unproductive, I'm sure you'll agree.

Now, the things I've encountered later in life aren't the same kind of "bullying" at all, but I've found that they feed into that same sort of addictive negative feedback loop. And part of that is that, thanks to social media, it becomes possible to "check up" on bullies to see what they're saying; to deliberately seek out their negative opinions of you and reshare them to people who will (hopefully) stand with you — even if you have them blocked, or if they have you blocked.

I'll give three specific examples here, of varying severity. And yes, I will be naming names. Edit: I have redacted names when republishing for sake of a quieter life.

The first is a guy named X. I don't remember how I initially came into contact with X; I think I was just on a following spree and saw that he was supposedly into anime, visual novels, gaming, all the same sorts of things as me. We didn't interact much directly, but things went along all right for a while.

Over time, I noticed X getting considerably more negative and rude towards others — and inconsistent in his opinions, too. He'd tweet at developers, publishers and localisers excited to announce their new projects about how shit he thought their work was, and hurl abuse at anyone who showed their support for said companies.

One day, I told him to put a sock in it. PQube were promoting their recently released Gal*Gun Double Peace, and this was both a game I was very excited for and looking forward to covering on MoeGamer. (Check it out!) X responded to PQube's promotional tweet with some whiny negativity, so I told him to just leave them alone if he wasn't interested in the game. Fair enough, surely.

From that point on, X started hurling abuse at me on a fairly regular basis. I'd find him in my comments section (from which he got blocked). I'd find him on Twitter, where he'd passive-aggressively mention me in regard to "political" things he thought I'd be in favour of (somewhere he got it in his mind that I am an "alt-righter" despite me leaning noticeably left of centre in any test I've done) — and where I ultimately blocked him after giving him an earful one day. And I even found him in other people's comment sections; on one occasion, I left a comment on onahole reviewer Infernal Monkey's emphatically NSFW blog, only to find a reply from X whinging about my taste in games — despite neither Infernal's post nor my comment having anything to do about gaming.

Enough was enough. I took every effort to block this hateful little troll… but still I found myself "checking up" on him every so often. And I'd always get a peculiar knot in my stomach any time I saw him badmouthing me — because it was always, always stupid, ridiculous lies. Now, speaking rationally, his tiny follower count and the fact that no-one ever replies, likes or RTs his posts on Twitter — probably because he's an insufferably Negative Nancy — means that his bitching probably won't have any impact on my audience. But it's still not a nice feeling to know someone harbours such irrational hatred for you — and for such a stupid reason.

X is utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But, regrettably, having anxiety means that you blow stupid things out of proportion. And as such, his comments would get to me — but still I'd seek them out. This is, of course, a stupid thing to do, but I've already talked about how weirdly "addictive" it was. This needs to stop now.

The other related cases involve my former employers and colleagues at USgamer, with the main culprits being Y and, to a lesser extent, Z.

Let me provide a bit of context here for those unaware of why I left USgamer. I wrote a variety of articles on the site. During its opening months, we were encouraged to "be ourselves" and write about our specialisms, so I wrote a lot about the Japanese games I was interested in. Over time, we received both audience feedback and an edict from on high that we should be focusing on more "ad-friendly" things, and it was around this point that Z got involved.

From this point on, any news stories I wrote had to be run past Z before I could post them — despite his working day not starting until mine was getting close to its conclusion. Z outright forbade me from writing about certain games, with Monster Monpiece being the main one that sticks in my mind, and would also berate me for "writing about boobs and panties" when in fact I had done nothing of the sort.

One occasion that remains particularly memorable for all the wrong reasons was while I was at the Eurogamer Expo (now "EGX") in London, covering the show single-handedly for the site. I got some time with the third Final Fantasy XIII game, Lightning Returns, and came away with quite favourable impressions of what I'd seen. Around that time, numerous other publications had been joking about the fact that the eponymous heroine apparently had considerably more pronounced "boob physics" than in previous installments, and I thought this was rather childish; as such, I wrote an article about all the interesting things Lightning Returns was doing from a mechanical perspective, with the title "Lightning's More Than Just Jiggle".

I thought nothing of it at the time; I just thought it was an entertaining retort about the general standard of coverage the game was receiving at the time, but Z yelled at me about it — clearly having not understood the context or actually read my article at the time. It was extremely upsetting, and it made it very clear at that point that Z had it in for me.

It was a few months later when I suddenly received an email from Q, then the head honcho of Gamer Network, the company that owns, among other things, USgamer and Eurogamer. He unceremoniously laid me off, saying that USgamer wanted an "all-American" staff instead of me as the lone Brit populating the site with interesting content "overnight"… and not long afterwards, two new writers were recruited onto the staff: Y and B, both of whom were close personal friends of Z.

It doesn't take a particular genius to figure that one out, does it?

Anyway, I'd worked with B previously so although I was upset at her for replacing me, I just kept my distance. Y, though, I clashed with almost immediately. The opportunity to review Atelier Rorona Plus came up during my notice period, and the editorial staff discussed it in an email thread. Y, supposedly an expert in Japanese games and RPGs, had never heard of the Atelier series and thus decided to "research" it by running a Google Images search. He noted, I quote, "it didn't take me long to find the creepiness".

I immediately took the opportunity to cover the title, politely requesting that we have "a little less of the 'creepiness' thing, please" — particularly as during my time as USgamer I had helped establish the site as a place that was a lot more friendly to Japanese "otaku games" than many other outlets, and myself as someone who both knew what he was talking about and was willing to give these games a chance.

From that point on, I've received sporadic abuse from Y (typically second-hand, delivered by people who think they're being helpful, so I can't really blame them) about the past things I've written. His favourite hobby horse is that I "promoted an incest porn game to people who liked The Walking Dead", which is a gross misrepresentation of the fact that I suggested a number of games with bleak, depressing themes to those who enjoyed Telltale's narrative-centric classic, and one of those games was Kana Little Sister. Anyone who has read Kana Little Sister (or indeed read my coverage) will know that, despite having explicit scenes in it, it is most certainly not "porn"… but you know how people get with this sort of thing. Sex is the great taboo in gaming, after all.

Like with X, I found myself "checking up" on Y every so often, and was frequently dismayed to discover that he obviously namesearches himself and screenshots people who talk about him, even if he's blocked by them. Not only that, he has followers who are more than happy to do this for him, too. I found myself publicly "shamed" in this way on a number of occasions, and it was always that weird, horrible combination of nausea and addiction that I felt when it happened. And there was nothing I could do about it, either; I tried reporting Y, but without any direct insults or slurs directed at me you can't get Twitter to do anything.

As for Z, I haven't looked at his feed at all, I'm pleased to say. I know he wrote something about me shortly after I left because MoeGamer got a bunch of referrals from his personal blog, but I never checked what it was — I was too scared, to be frank. I resent him, though, for treating me like shit while I worked under him, and for ultimately ruining my career in favour of recruiting his cronies to come and work for him. I feel he jumped at the chance to get rid of that disgusting Brit who didn't immediately scream blue murder any time a game with the slightest hint of sexualisation showed its face.

I need to let these incidents go. As I am now, I would almost certainly kick all three of these people square in the bollocks if I ever had the misfortune to meet them face to face, and I know that is not a productive or helpful use of my time. But I want — need — to get my frustration with them out of my system. I don't really know how.

I do know that an important step in that process is paying attention to Tim's tweet above. I don't need their approval. They are people whose opinions I do not value; people who I'd go so far as to say I legitimately despise. That's not a nice thing to say, but it's important to acknowledge, because why would you deliberately seek out the "approval" of someone you hate?

I feel if I can find an answer to that — or, well, no. I know the answer to that — it's "you shouldn't". I feel like if I can sear that answer into my brain sufficiently, I'll be able to move on and be much happier. MoeGamer has already made me happier and more proud than anything I ever did as part of the professional games press, because it's all mine. So that should stand by itself, and none of these other people should matter.

I need to keep telling myself that.

It's the last working week before Christmas. Which, in my experience, tends to be the most interminably long and tedious working week of the year.

It's a period of time where everyone is winding down ahead of the holiday season, most of the projects that desperately need to be done by the end of the year have probably already been done, and, frankly, there isn't all that much point in most of us being here.

Still, I guess on the positive side of things it means that, now that everything that needs to be done is pretty much done for the moment, it is a relatively stress-free period, which is nice. It's extremely nice in particular to not be working retail over the festive period, which I have done on a number of occasions in the past, both for GAME and for Apple.

Both of those proved to actually be rather interesting experiences. Sure, there were times when they were hellishly busy — starting around Black Friday (which we apparently do in the UK now despite not doing Thanksgiving), then dropping off a bit before the real holiday rush started in December — but they were the sort of "challenge" that was actually quite enjoyable in a perverse sort of way.

I liked my time at both Apple and GAME. Apple was over 10 years ago at this point (how time flies) and my memories of it are unfortunately slightly coloured by the workplace bullying I and several friends suffered towards the end of our time there, but as a working environment, it was actually quite pleasant for the most part. Apple emphasised interacting with customers like a normal human being, answering their questions and offering them advice that was appropriate to their needs, rather than that which would bring us the most revenue. And customers really appreciated that.

GAME, meanwhile, was a relatively "relaxed" affair. There were still corporate requirements to try and push strategy guides, loyalty card memberships and warranties, of course, but the atmosphere in the store where I worked was thoroughly pleasant. It was a good crowd of people — albeit a slightly different crowd of people on each holiday season I temped there — and, once again, customers appreciated having people on hand who knew what they were talking about.

The only part I disliked about retail was dealing with returns and trade-ins. While both Apple and GAME like to make out they have a pretty clear policy on such things, in practice it was often anything but. And saying "no" to people is unpleasant and difficult, particularly if they are dissatisfied with some aspect of the product they have bought or the service they received.

Trade-ins were only an issue at GAME, since Apple didn't do such things, but they were a pain because they required hardware testing, checks against the database of registered stolen goods and all manner of other gubbins. In particular, trading in mobile phones always felt particularly sleazy; you'd get people coming in the store with brand new iPhones, still wrapped in the box, wanting to get cash for them — and it was hard not to feel a bit suspicious about that sort of thing. Perhaps I'm just not mercenary enough, but I always take the groundbreaking approach that you get a new phone, you use it. I guess an "upgrade" from your provider and then keeping your old phone is one way to get some quick cash though.

Regardless of the fact I actually quite enjoyed my time in retail, I am very much glad that I'm not doing it any more. If only for the fact that I actually have the luxury of being able to book some holiday and have a blissful few days off between Christmas and the new year… I'm looking forward to that brief period of peace and relaxation, I can tell you now!

It's already over a month since our beloved Ruby left us for the next world, and I still miss her terribly.

I think I'd go so far as to say this is probably the most difficult loss I've ever had to deal with in my life to date. I've lost pets before, and it's always been a tragic, terrible experience, but there was something about Ruby in particular that felt… special.

Perhaps it was the fact that she and her companion (possibly mother?) Meg were the first "big" pets I'd ever had for myself. Andie and I had kept rats for a few years beforehand and they had all been delightful companions to have around (despite the smell of rat piss)… but a pet like a cat is a longer-term commitment, a companion for a more significant amount of your life, and someone with whom you develop a much more intimate connection.

In my experience with cats over the years, different cats are comfortable with varying amounts of intimacy.

The cat I grew up with, Penelope, was a somewhat haughty cat who very much believed that she was in charge of the household — but not in a purely selfish way. On the contrary, she could often be found "taking care" of us in various ways; my parents are very fond of telling the story how, when I was a very young child, she would sit outside my bedroom if I was ill, and if I started crying, she would come and fetch my mother. In her later years, she had that unique ability cats have to know when you need some company, and she would come and spend time with you to listen to your problems.

After Penelope passed away of old age, it wasn't long before my family decided that we didn't want to live without a cat, and so we acquired Kitty from a nearby rescue shelter. Kitty was not the name we would have given a cat, but she already knew and responded to it, so Kitty it was.

Kitty apparently came from a home where she had been somewhat terrorised by a dog, and as such was somewhat wary when we first got her. She was particularly afraid of going outside, and seemingly rather small for her supposed age. It didn't take long for her to understand that she had found herself in a loving family, however, and quickly blossomed into a cat who liked nothing more than to jump on your lap and fall over. Even if you were a self-professed "not a cat person". She was particularly fond of demonstrating this affectionate side of herself on our local rock star Don Airey (of Deep Purple fame) whenever he came to visit.

And Ruby… she was one of the friendliest cats I've ever come across. She adored me, and that was a wonderful feeling. Andie noted that Ruby would often come and "ask" her where I was when I wasn't yet home from work, and if I'd shut myself in the living room to record some videos, Ruby would always want to come in and join me.

If I was sitting on the sofa (which, let's face it, I usually am), Ruby would come and sit with me, and would always arrange herself in such a way that as much of her body as possible was resting against me. This was something that she did with such frequency that I even drew reference to it in my coverage of the visual novel series Nekopara last year.

Meg is extremely affectionate too, I have to add — and probably more so since Ruby left us — but it's hard not to miss those feelings of genuine love and warmth from someone who isn't here any more. I miss her so much, and I wish things could be different; I wish she didn't have to leave us so soon, and that I could be writing something happier right now with her softness resting against my thigh as it had done on so many other occasions.

But it's not to be. Ruby may be somewhere else now — somewhere that I hope she's as happy as she was when she was with us — but she'll also always be with me in my heart. I'll never forget her and the love she made me feel, and I'll strive to make her proud.

[Good morning! I drafted this yesterday and then got distracted by some combination of cats, making videos, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and/or Atelier Rorona. Apologies. I present it now for your delectation.]

Let us continue on our journey through my own personal Manor of Sleep, with the third and final room that seems to crop up regularly in my dreams.

This last one is much more mundane, but it's appeared often enough in my subconscious thoughts for it to feel like it's "important".

Whenever I visit this last room, it's always night time, and there's the feeling like the house is playing host to a party, but there's never anyone there. I'm on the ground floor, the details and layout of which are lost to the mists of the subconscious aside from what I'm about to describe, and despite knowing that something unusual is going on, I don't feel the need to go looking for people.

Where the dream becomes vivid and memorable is just before I reach the main room in question. I round the corner of a passageway on the ground floor, and walk down a couple of steps to a slightly lower level, though not a whole new storey of the building. Then I make a left turn and open a glass door to pass into what appears to be a long, thin conservatory of sorts.

The room has windows on all sides — even the one that connects to the corridor outside — and has covered tables down its left edge. Whenever I enter this room, these tables are always filled with various pieces of party food, but I never eat any of them. I always feel like I'm looking for someone or something when I come in here, so there's no time to eat; I never actually find them, though.

The exterior windows look out into a somewhat overgrown garden. Attempts have obviously been made to tame it so it isn't completely unmanaged, but there's still rather more foliage out there than one might see in a well-maintained outdoor area.

There's a piano in one corner of the room; a nice-looking but aged upright with music stacked atop it. I feel inclined to play it, but the someone or something I'm looking for is more important, so I never do.

Ultimately I never spend particularly long in this room, but for some reason the memory of it is unusually vivid. I'm sure it all means something, but as yet I'm at a loss. I find myself constantly expecting to walk into a house in reality and discover I'm actually in "the Manor of Sleep", but I feel the terrifying toilet I described in part 1 probably means this is unlikely to happen!

A brief break from the Manor of Sleep today to update you on my Slimming World progress, should you be interested.

It was our second week on the programme this week; our third week of attending the group. And it seems things have been going pretty well — over the course of those two weeks, I've lost a little over half a stone already.

This is very pleasing indeed. Based on my previous experience, the rate of weight loss tends to slow down a bit after the initial couple of weeks, but that's fine; I simply want an overall downward trend, because I often think back to how good it felt last time around when I dropped over six stone in total and could once again do things like fit into jeans, cross my legs and see my knob.

This time around Andie and I have been making a real effort with the "speed food" you eat on the programme; for the unfamiliar, Slimming World is based primarily around the concept of "free foods" that you can eat as much of as you like per day and still maintain your weight loss. These tend to be foods that provide energy without a ton of sugar and fat, so include everything from fruit and veg to things like pasta, rice and lean meat. "Speed" foods are a subdivision of the free foods that have particularly good energy density or something; they make you feel full and provide the nutrition you need while minimising calorie, carb and fat intake.

You're supposed to try and emphasise "speed" foods as much as you can on the programme — the ideal is apparently to try and incorporate them into each meal so that they occupy a third of your plate or more. Last time around, we struggled a bit to incorporate these in a practical manner; I, in particular, am not especially fond of a lot of vegetables, so chomping through a third of a plateful of them could sometimes feel like a bit of a chore, making meals somewhat less enjoyable.

However, we've come across a couple of good solutions this time around: frozen fruit in "overnight oats" and vegetable soup. The latter in particular is a revelation; it turns out that in a lot of cases, the vegetables I'm not a big fan of primarily irk me due to their texture rather than their flavour, and if you turn them into unidentifiable mush, I will happily down a whole bowlful of them, especially if said soup is seasoned nicely and perhaps has a bit of "free" meat in it.

"Overnight oats," meanwhile, if you're unfamiliar, involves getting a pot or bowl or something then creating a "layered" concoction involving 40g of oats, some fat-free yogurt and some frozen fruit. You then stick this in the fridge overnight and the fruit thaws, the yogurt sort of oozes through the gaps in the oats and the whole thing becomes… well, fruity, oaty mush, to be honest, but depending on the fruit you use, it can be very nice indeed.

One of the good side-effects of overnight oats, I've found, is that it takes quite a long time to eat for various reasons. You probably could shovel it down yourself, but I find with the acidity of a lot of fruit, it's something I prefer to take my time over a bit more. It's supposedly good to eat things more slowly anyway, because it allows your body to have time to tell you when it's full and satisfied rather than you feeling like you need a little something extra. To have something that seemingly makes me want to eat slowly would seem to be an effective way of managing this — and it's a much more substantial breakfast than a couple of cereal bars, too.

So anyway. That's all been going well so far. I hope the good progress continues; I'm feeling quite motivated at the moment after a long period of not being quite able to summon up the energy to get started on weight loss again. My aim is to end up feeling at least somewhat like I felt when I wrote this piece in 2015. We'll see how things go, however. Perhaps updating you all on my progress every so often will help keep me honest!

Ten days! A far cry off the 2,541 days I managed last time around, but every journey single step blah blah blah whatever. Don't forget if you're enjoying my ramblings here to share my Patreon page with other people and encourage them to sign up — it'd be great to get some more people reading.

Anyway, today I thought I'd continue my exploration of my own personal "Manor of Sleep" (which most people reading this will probably already recognise as a Project Zero 3 reference, but I thought I'd make that fact explicit just in case) that I started describing yesterday.

We shall leave the floor of two toilets behind today and proceed up to the top floor of the house. Up a wooden staircase that leads directly to a panelled wooden door we go; the door opens with a creak, leading us into an expansive attic room that is right in the pitched roof of the house. The ceiling has exposed beams, the floor is wooden — though thankfully not rotten like the toilet of terror — and the whole thing has an oddly "dark" atmosphere. Not in a menacing or evil sort of way; it's just the sort of room that you feel like a bright light would be inappropriate in.

The first time I recall dreaming of this room, I was actually preparing to move out of it. I don't know where I was going, but I was evidently in the process of packing up the room; some of my things were still there, but certain shelves were bare. On other occasions, my mind has visited this room while I still occupied it fully.

From the door, there's a short, narrow passageway that is just a little wider than the doorway. On the right side are some shelves that are set into the wall; they're pretty deep. On various occasions, these have been filled with video games, scale models and character figures, and books. When I dreamed of "moving out" of the room, it was in these shelves that I'd often find things that I'd thought I'd lost — things I'd been looking for for a long time.

The left wall opens up into the full width of the room after a short distance, and in the "alcove" created is a bed. This is quite low to the ground, but always looks extremely comfy. The duvet on it is a deep purple in colour, and the bed is always unmade, as if someone (or maybe I?) had just got out of it. The right wall, meanwhile, continues with the built-in shelves for about half of the total length of the wall, and then there is a traditional-looking work desk that is always covered with piles of hardback books.

There's a lamp over the head of the bed. This is one memory that's a bit hazy; I can't remember exactly how this lamp is attached to anything, though the amount of light it puts out (or lack thereof) reminds me of a childhood "clip-on" reading lamp I had with a flexible neck, leading me to believe it might be one of those clipped on to another shelf.

There's another lamp on the desk; one of those "banker"-style ones that I've always thought looked quite cool. It doesn't put out a lot of light into the room in general, but it lights up the desk and its contents very well.

A fairly normal room so far, albeit a dimly-lit one — the only light comes from those two lamps, as there doesn't appear to be a conventional ceiling light. What makes it stand out to me in my memory is the fact that the walls aren't bare; in fact, they're all completely covered in velvet drapes — again, a deep purple in colour, adorned with gold embroidery trim. The sort of thing you'd expect to see in a stereotypical fortune teller's establishment.

The built-in shelves on the right wall of the room also have these curtains attached; they're always tied back whenever I've seen them, but in theory it would be possible to draw the curtains and cover the contents of the shelves. Occasionally — though not every time I "visit", the shelves are also adorned with white fairy lights, which brings a welcome additional source of light into the room besides the lamp over the head of the bed.

The floor is bare but treated floorboards, but there is a large crimson-coloured rug in the centre of the empty space. This is soft to walk on, but not deep pile by any means; it makes the room feel less like an "attic" and more homely.

It's still an unusual, strange room, for sure, but it's one in which I feel oddly at peace. It's certainly a far cry from the terrifying portal to the poo dimension that the toilet just one floor below offered…

I've been having trouble sleeping off and on for the last few years.

I suspect this is mostly related to my anxiety issues, though just recently it hasn't been so much a sense of anxiety that has been keeping me awake as simply not being particularly comfortable.

A possible side-effect of this is that when I actually do get to sleep, I tend to have fairly vivid dreams. And, interestingly, I've found that some of them seem to be connected… or at least my brain has interpreted them as being such when I think back over them after the fact.

I often dream of a house. I've never seen the outside of the house, but I know it's a pretty big one. I have a feeling it may be inspired by a few large country houses that I've stayed in over the years — most notably the house my friend Tim grew up in, and a house that Andie and I stayed in for (if I remember correctly) her sister's birthday one year. It's not identical to either, though, just "inspired" by.

Different dreams have taken me to different parts of the house. I've never had a dream in which I go through the whole house, which is why I say I believe it's my brain "filling in the gaps" and connecting these dreams together rather than the dream itself explicitly stating those things. I shall attempt to assemble the "information" I know so far over the course of a few posts.

The first dream I recall having of the house took place on its middle floor. This mostly consisted of a long corridor that ran from one side of the house to the other, with a staircase at either end. There were stairs up to the top floor at just one end of this corridor.  The floor was carpeted and the fittings fairly "modern"; despite having the feeling of a country house, on this floor there were no exposed beams or anything, just fairly plain painted walls adorned with a few pictures down one side, and at least two doors on the other.

The two doors I can particularly remember both led to bathrooms. One of these bathrooms was perfectly normal, but for whatever reason I'd always find myself unable to get in there. Perhaps someone was in there, or perhaps I just felt "repelled" by it for some reason. This meant I would inevitably find myself drawn to the other bathroom; I don't recall that it was because of a particular need to go to the toilet or anything, I was just drawn there in this particular dream.

The other bathroom was not normal. In contrast to the rather modern corridor, the interior of this one had a bare wooden floor that had rotted quite severely. It was the kind of floor you step on and feel like you might go right through it. And there was some sort of peculiar space-time distortion in there that meant the toilet was actually much further away than it appeared to be at first glace.

As I approached the toilet, the floor finally gave way, splintering with a sickening crunch as a huge hole formed. I leaped back from it to prevent falling, but found myself peering into it regardless. Rather than the floor below, however, the interior of the hole appeared to contain some kind of portal; it was a swirling, violet-coloured tunnel adorned with brightly lit markings that rotated around it in a manner oddly reminiscent of a particularly distasteful 1970s lamp. The markings reminded me, oddly, of leopard-print.

This was obviously an unusual sight in itself, but I felt a particularly threatening aura coming from the hole and knew I had to get away from it as soon as possible. I realised a dull noise that had been present since I entered the room was increasing in volume and intensity, and I was being "pulled" towards the hole by an unknown force. Meanwhile, the toilet was starting to overflow with disgusting sludge that leaked down into the hole, further solidifying my feeling that I really didn't want to see what was in there.

I'd say I ran, but I'm pretty sure I woke up at that point, so I'm not sure if I actually did or not.

Anyway, that's the first memory I have of this strange house in my dreams, which probably says more about me than you wanted to know. More to come.