#oneaday Day 455: The Last Banana

I finished Donkey Kong Bananza this evening. I know I said I did that the other day, but I properly finished it this evening — all 777 collectible bananas and all the fossils (collecting all of which is, I was dismayed to discover very late, a prerequisite for getting all of the bananas) then completing the game's monstrously difficult final challenge in order to get… a slightly underwhelming "true" ending, to be honest, but I don't begrudge the game the additional time I spent with it. In fact, some of the game's best platforming challenges are found in the endgame sequence, so it's very much a case of "the journey is more important than the destination" here.

I mostly stuck to my desire to not use a guide for Donkey Kong Bananza, and I'm glad I did that, because dear Lord, a lot of the guides, even from "big" sites out there, are full of wrong information, or outright handwaving away the possibility of providing helpful information, largely because I suspect the author hadn't actually completed the game in some cases. I know this because the absolute final challenge in the postgame is something that could really do with a helpful walkthrough, and all one guide from a big site offered was a paragraph basically saying "use everything you've learned to clear these challenges" without going into any detail whatsoever. Good job!

Another guide even promised to "explain the ending", after there was some pre-release discussion on where this game might fit in "Nintendo canon", if such a thing even exists — then went on to post an entire article that basically shrugged its shoulders and went "I dunno, it's all speculation really". Clickbait at its absolute finest. No wonder the games press — and indeed the whole Internet — is dying.

But anyway. One of the nice things about Donkey Kong Bananza is that it has built-in hint functions. You have to pay the in-game price for them, but by the time you're doing the "cleaning up" required for the postgame, you will generally have plenty of the currency required to purchase these hints, along with a selection of powers that make 1) searching for hidden items and 2) acquiring more of said currency much easier. Consequently, on the few times I did peep at a guide, I found it didn't really help matters, and I inevitably found myself better off just exploring the game for myself and stumbling across things. The game is well-designed enough that you can just piss around and discover pretty much everything it has to offer, and that's testament to Nintendo's skills at making games like this — even with the added wrinkle of almost entirely destructible levels.

So, yeah. I really enjoyed Donkey Kong Bananza. I'm glad. I had a feeling it would be good, because I really enjoyed Super Mario Odyssey, and the same team worked on this. I had my misgivings, because I've never really had a lot of time for Donkey Kong as a character, but I must say, spending a considerable amount of time in his company has brought me around on him. Granted, he's almost as much of a blank slate as his stablemates Mario and Link in terms of characterisation — he has no dialogue whatsoever, despite the other "Kongs" you encounter being able to talk — but his goofy facial expressions and his interactions with Pauline are consistently delightful. Not only that, but they evolve over the course of the game as a whole; the eventual close relationship between Pauline and DK by the end of the game is rather heartwarming to see — even if in the "normal", pre-postgame ending, DK comes across as a bit of a selfish dickhead. It's at times like that you have to remember that he is, in fact, a gorilla.

Donkey Kong Bananza is a great addition to Nintendo's pretty flawless record of first-party games, then. It's definitely a good showcase of the Switch 2, even if other titles in this regard are a bit thin on the ground, and absolutely worth the money, time and effort to fully enjoy it. I'll remember this fondly for a very long time, I feel. But now I need to go to bed!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 454: The Black Crochan

I mentioned a while back that I'd started reading The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, the series of novels that the Disney movie The Black Cauldron was loosely based on — and which, in turn, the Sierra adventure game The Black Cauldron (my first encounter with the series) was even more loosely based on.

The other night, I finished reading the second book in the series. Much like the best-known book in the Chronicles of Narnia series is the second one (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe), so too, it seems, is the case for The Chronicles of Prydain. Because the second book in the series is the one called The Black Cauldron. But if you're only familiar with the Disney movie or the Sierra game, it's around here that things diverge a bit more wildly.

Y'see, in the Disney movie, the Big Bad of the piece was the Horned King. And he was terrifying. He was terrifying in the 160×200 chunky pixel graphics of the Sierra game and, while I haven't watched the Disney movie yet (though I did acquire it on DVD recently) I am given to understand that he is even more frightening in fully animated form.

But in the actual books — spoiler, I guess, though I'm not apologising for it, given that we're talking about a series from the mid-1960s — The Horned King is offed rather unceremoniously at the end of the first book, The Book of Three, and this is well before protagonist Taran and his buddies have come anywhere even vaguely close to the Black Cauldron itself. As the name suggests, it's not until the second book, The Black Cauldron, that Taran and company set off on a quest to deal with the infernal thing once and for all, and the whole situation is resolved rather differently to how things happen in the movie — and in the game, which is different again.

To be clear, I don't mind these differences at all. If anything, it makes experiencing The Black Cauldron in all its different forms all the more worthwhile. It makes sense for the movie to have a more self-contained story with fewer characters — and for the game to be even more limited in scope. The book has no such constraints, meanwhile, and as such there's a much stronger feeling of "fantasy epic" to the whole thing.

Thus far I've found the whole thing to strike an excellent balance between readability and not treating the reader like a moron. Lloyd Alexander respects the intelligence of his readers, but he doesn't overwhelm them with difficult prose, over-elaborate descriptions or pretentious language. Instead, we get a clear story with some well-crafted characters and some genuine stakes to the action.

I particularly want to highlight his character work. While many of the characters in the series are relatively simplistic — Taran in particular is clearly intended for the young male reader to project himself onto — there are some definite standouts. As mentioned in my previous piece on The Book of Three, I am thoroughly enamoured with the Princess Eilonwy, who takes her place alongside Ce'Nedra from David Eddings' The Belgariad/Malloreon and Lady Mandragorina from Douglas Hill's Talents series as one of my favourite spunky, sassy princesses. She might even be my favourite to date. The girl's got bite, but she also knows when to switch it off and be supportive. Since she and Taran are clearly going to end up together, I'll preemptively say that he's a lucky man.

Anyway, I'm yet to start the third volume of the series — I'll likely kick that off once we're on holiday — but I've been really enjoying it so far. Looking forward to reading the rest, for sure — and, as I've previously said, very sorry and frustrated with myself that I've never read it prior to today!

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#oneaday Day 453: The Generation Game

There's been some resurrected discussion today on the subject of "video game console generations", primarily based on a month-old Bluesky post from a member of the Video Game History Foundation describing them as largely unhelpful, and something that serious video game historians don't rely on at all. He posited that "generations" were made up by a Wikipedia editor in the early 2000s, and people have just sort of accepted them as "gospel" ever since.

As another part of the discussion, others have objected to descriptors like "8-bit", "16-bit" and suchlike for similar reasons.

My feelings on the subject are relatively straightforward. I agree that the "generation" thing isn't necessarily helpful — if someone uses it, I always have to look them up and check which one is which, particularly when people like EA attempt to redefine what the "generations" were, as they did around the start of the PS4 era — but I don't have a problem with "8-bit", "16-bit", "32-bit" and the like — up to a point. Dreamcast was the last console that people really referred to in terms of its "bits" ("128-bit") and that didn't really catch on; after that people just sort of… gave up, perhaps because console architecture became a bit more complicated. I don't actually know why we stopped talking "bits", but we did.

Anyway, one area where I do disagree a little with what appeared to be emerging as the popular consensus is that I think it is helpful to stratify computer and video gaming technology in terms of rough contemporaries, because while numbering generations isn't necessarily helpful, saying that the Atari 8-bit, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Apple II, Amstrad CPC and numerous others all coexisted at the same point in history — though some endured longer than others — is useful.

If you consider rough contemporaries, you get into some interesting overlapping territories, too, such as where the Commodore 64 and Spectrum were happily coexisting with the Atari ST and Amiga, or where the Super NES was still holding its own against early PlayStation games. Those are interesting periods of history to talk about, not least because the "outgoing" hardware tends to have thoroughly fascinating (and often quite hard-to-come-by) games released during those curious times of overlap. And this is to say nothing of the fact that the "generations" of home computers work a bit differently to those of the consoles, especially since it pretty much went "8-bit, 16-bit, PC" and then sort of stopped when "PC" became a thing unto itself.

I think it is also helpful to distinguish distinct groups of computer and gaming hardware by their capabilities, also. Again using the home computers as an example, there is an obvious technological leap between the ZX Spectrum and the Amiga. There's another massive difference between the NES and Super NES. Those differences aren't all down to the "bits" of course — in most cases, it's more about the custom hardware and its capabilities, hence how the "8-bit" PC Engine is more commonly considered as a contemporary and rival of something like the Mega Drive rather than the NES — but there are clear moments when the industry has gone "we're releasing something new now, and it's going to be way more impressive than anything you've ever seen before".

I actually think it's somewhat easy to forget quite how fast things moved in the '80s and '90s, since today's technological advancements, particularly in terms of visual fidelity, have slowed to a crawl. There was another good post recently about how you could have released a game from ten years ago (like Metal Gear Solid V) today, completely unchanged, and no-one would know it wasn't a brand new game. That certainly wasn't the case ten years ago, and not at any point prior to that, either. Things were moving just so quickly that it was kind of mindblowing to see.

And it's easy to forget how surprisingly early some of these advancements happened, too. The Atari ST and Amiga came out in 1985, when the 8-bit home computers were still thriving — hence the considerable years of crossover. The PlayStation came out (late in) the same year as Super Metroid, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Earthbound and Donkey Kong Country, all games that most would probably agree were released while the SNES and Mega Drive were in their absolute prime.

So yes. Numbered generations are kind of stupid. But I do think there's value in looking at the things that were coexisting at a given moment — and at the notable leaps forward computer and gaming technology was taking throughout the 1980s and 1990s in particular.

I guess, as with everything, the real value is in just saying what you actually mean rather than trying to find a catch-all shorthand — if only because that catch-all shorthand often assumes knowledge that not everyone has. Same reason I don't like using "Metroidvania" or "JRPG"; much better to be specific about these things and say what you really mean. In an age of attention-deficit "short-form content", being verbose and detailed can actually make you stand out quite a bit. In a good way.

At least I hope so, because I'm not changing.

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#oneaday Day 452: Creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky

Now I've got the MiSTer Multisystem 2 up and running to my satisfaction (not helped by some sort of accident corrupting the entire SD card's filesystem, necessitating a complete reinstall of everything — I'm running games from an external hard drive now, and have taken a complete backup of the system software!) I have been enjoying the pleasurable experience of being able to sit down in front of my old faithful Sony Trinitron CRT and play… pretty much anything I want up to the Saturn, PS1 and N64 era.

As you will doubtless know if you've been following me for any length of time, I am a passionate advocate for physical releases of video games. My living room is effectively a games library, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But I must say, there is an absolute, definite appeal to having a dedicated box that I can boot up, say "I feel like playing [insert game name here]" and be doing so within a matter of seconds. No fiddling around with SCART cables needed. No digging out the correct power adapter required. No blowing on cartridge pins or isopropyl alcohol on cotton buds required.

Not only that, but a significant portion of software that one can play on the MiSTer has been creeping into "unattainably expensive and/or hard-to-find" territory over the course of the last few years — particularly anything from the 16-bit or 32-bit platforms, and especially role-playing games. I could drop several hundred quid on a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga, or I could just play it on MiSTer. The choice is pretty clear.

"Now hold on a minute, good sir," I hear you say. "Don't you work in official retro gaming rereleases?" And to that I say, yes, absolutely, I most certainly do. But unfortunately, however much many of us might want them, there are some games that are never, ever, ever going to get an official rerelease for all manner of different reasons. And in those cases in particular, there is zero shame to be felt in experiencing them via… let's just call them "unofficial" preservation methods.

But anyway. I want to talk a bit more specifically about one of those unofficially preserved games I have been playing and enjoying for the past few evenings. It's not a particularly rare or hard-to-find game to my knowledge (checks CEX — £12 loose, £38 complete in box at the time of writing) but it is one I have some fond memories of, and one that I doubt will ever get an official rerelease. It's Ocean's The Addams Family, a platformer based loosely (very loosely) on the 1991 movie, and which was available on numerous different platforms; I've been playing the SNES version.

I'm actually not entirely sure how I attained those memories, mind, because I never owned a copy of The Addams Family on any platform back in the day. I might have had a demo of the ST version (which is surprisingly competent) but I certainly never had the full game on anything. But I definitely played it.

What I suspect happened is that on one of my brother's trips home to visit us — by this point he had left home to go and work on Games-X magazine at Europress up in Macclesfield — he had brought a SNES with him, and one of the cartridges he had also brought along was The Addams Family. The only other possible alternative is that one of my friends from school had it — and I don't think they did. My main SNES-owning buddy at school played various versions of Street Fighter II almost to the exclusion of everything else (although I did borrow Super Star Wars multiple times from him), and my other main console-playing friend was a Mega Drive man.

Anyway, I guess that isn't really important. What is important is that The Addams Family for SNES left a solid impression on me, with probably the most potent part of that memory being the amusing farty noises that play whenever Gomez jumps on an enemy (fart-POP!) or if he takes damage (breathless clown car-horn HONK). Aside from those excellent sound effects (and they are excellent; it's been a delight to hear them again), I remember simply enjoying the game a great deal, too, and I'm pleased to report that It Holds Up.

Lest you've never played The Addams Family on SNES (or any of the other platforms it appeared on), you take on the role of Gomez, who is attempting to rescue the various members of his family from… some sort of unfortunate circumstance that was probably a flimsy reference to the movie's plot. I forget. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that your quest unfolds as an open-structure 2D platformer that eschews a linear level-based structure in favour of giving you a big, open map, the vast majority of which is open to you from the outset, and then inviting you to just get on with it.

I'm not sure I'd call The Addams Family a "Metroidvania", largely because that term can get in the bin, but also because I'm not sure its commonly agreed definition applies here. Sure, you have a big open map to explore, but areas are not gated by abilities that you gradually acquire as you progress. Instead, only the finale sequence is gated by you having completed the rest of the game, and you are otherwise left to tackle the game's various challenges in whatever order you see fit.

These challenges are upgrading your health bar three times, then finding Wednesday, Pugsley, Granny and Fester Addams in whatever order you please. (You can even find them before the health upgrades if you want to, but the extra hearts make it much easier.) After that, the door to the final challenge, where you can rescue Morticia and take on the game's final boss, opens up and you're on the way to beating the game.

Being developed by Ocean, one would expect The Addams Family to have a certain "Euro" feel to it, and this comes across in its structure, with each of the game's main areas being split into named rooms that give a hint as to what hazards the player can expect in there; there's definite shades of classic home computer games like the Dizzy series and Spellbound from the Magic Knight series here, but rather than being single screens, each room in The Addams Family is a scrolling mini-level in its own right.

Thankfully, the game resists the temptation to get a bit too Euro in its structure, as while it is non-linear and often presents the player with multiple possible routes, it's not really possible to get "lost", and any necessary backtracking is generally assisted by helpful shortcuts. There's no map to refer to, either; while it might have been helpful to have one, after spending a bit of time with the game you'll find it pretty intuitive to navigate. The real joy is in discovering the game's many, many, many secret areas.

The Addams Family drew some criticism on its original release for being "derivative" — and by that most reviewers meant that because you jump on enemies' heads, it's a Super Mario clone. And, to be sure, there were a lot of 16-bit platformers around at the time, many of which were based on popular movies.

But for me, something always stood out about The Addams Family, even with its many peers in the genre. It was slick, well-designed and enjoyable to play — and I'm pleased to report that it is still all of those things. It's been a genuine pleasure revisiting it over the course of the past few evenings, and I'm looking forward to creeping my way gradually towards beating it. I've already got all the heart upgrades and rescued Wednesday; next up is Granny, Pugsley or Uncle Fester. It'll be great to finally tick this off my list — and I suspect it won't be the last time I play it through once I've beaten it, either.

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#oneaday Day 451: Random encounters

Popular Internet wisdom has it that you should never read the comments. And, for the most part, this is fairly sound advice. Because if you do read the comments, there is a significantly greater-than-zero percent chance that you will run into someone like "Steven Woolf" here, a thoroughly disagreeable individual who did me the questionable courtesy of leaving a particularly rancid comment on a five year old MoeGamer article earlier today:

I have never encountered this person before. Their email address was unfamiliar to me. The fact they showed up in the comments of an article from five years ago suggests to me that they stumbled across MoeGamer via random Googling. And the fact they took such umbrage at me using a naughty word to discourage "AI people" from feeling in any way welcome on my site suggests to me that they are, themselves, an "AI person" and thus, by extension, a cunt.

Comments like this are always sort of fascinating, because there was evidently some sort of thought process involved — and one that is alien to me. What was Steven Woolf doing reading a five year old article about a character from an obscure Japanese beat 'em up? The nature of his comment suggests that he wasn't there to celebrate his love of Japanese video games, otherwise he might have, you know, mentioned Japanese video games. Instead, he chose to absolutely, spectacularly lose his shit at a disclaimer halfway down my site's sidebar presented in a 12 pixel high font. Why is that? Could it be because he's a cunt? All signs point to "yes" thus far.

What's even better is that because MoeGamer (and likewise this site) has an "approval" process for new commenters, meaning that his furious, impotent raging at my discouraging of AI cunts from using my site as the basis for any of their lake-boiling bullshit will remain completely invisible to the rest of the world for all time, with the only record of it being a snarky post on Bluesky (which he doesn't appear to be on, and which will be deleted at the end of this week anyway) and this post here, which he will probably never see because it's on a different website and he's almost certainly too stupid to track it down for himself despite 90% of the URL being the same.

And even if he does find it, all he'll really encounter is the simple and indisputably correct assessment that he is, in fact, a cunt.

So well done, Steven Woolf. You gave me something to write about today. You have officially become content, and that's not a fate I would wish on anyone, except you, because you are a cunt.

I hope you're having a better day now you got your little tantrum out of the way. If not, I recommend you go and play some video games or something. I hear Denjin Makai is pretty good?

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#oneaday Day 450: Ooh, banana

I finished the main story of Donkey Kong Bananza last night, and I've been playing through the postgame today. I will do a proper full post about the game as a whole over on MoeGamer in the not-too-distant future, but suffice to say for now that I have had an absolutely lovely time with this game, and I'm very likely going to "100%" it. Or, at the very least, get all the collectible bananas; I haven't decided if I'm going to try and max out the skill tree (which requires a touch of grinding other collectibles to purchase even more bananas that aren't scattered throughout the game world) — probably not.

Donkey Kong Bananza is one of the best examples to date of how Nintendo still understands what makes video games a distinct medium all their own. It tells a story, sure, but that story is brief, to the point and never obtrusive. There is no point in Donkey Kong Bananza where more impatient types will find themselves mashing buttons to bypass dialogue; the emphasis is firmly on keeping you playing, exploring and having a good time.

And the very nature of Donkey Kong Bananza's mechanics means that it is more of a toybox than even the most recent Super Mario games. The fact that a significant portion of each level is completely destructible means there are a lot of challenges you can approach in very different, creative ways. There are obvious "intended" ways for you to solve things, but the game is open to you trying other things and experimenting. Even more so than Super Mario Odyssey, Donkey Kong Bananza rewards you for asking questions of it and going in search of answers. Almost everything you do will reward you somehow; curiosity and creativity are encouraged, and it's very difficult to get "stuck".

That's not to say it's easy. It strikes a good balance between accessibility and challenge factor. Blasting through the main story will probably be fairly breezy for most players, but each of the game's areas has numerous optional challenges that test all sorts of different skills. Donkey Kong is capable of quite a few different actions by the end of the game, but crucially, the game never overwhelms the player with options and obtuse button combinations. Instead, the control scheme is simple and straightforward, and new mechanics are introduced gradually, one at a time, with plenty of opportunity to practice them in a "safe" environment before having to contend with them under more challenging circumstances.

This is, of course, the same philosophy that modern Super Mario games are designed around, and there's a reason: it works. It gives the game a good sense of pace, means it never gets bogged down, but also keeps things constantly interesting. And, by the end of the game, having all these options available to you doesn't mean "pick the right one to succeed"; it instead, under most circumstances, means "pick the one you think will succeed, and you can probably make it happen".

It's a truly magnificent game, and absolutely a good reason to grab a Switch 2 — even if other reasons to have one are still a little thin on the ground right now. (That said, don't discount the Switch 2's improved performance on a significant number of Switch 1 games as a selling point; it really does make a difference, and is a worthwhile upgrade for that alone.)

I've got a week to finish the postgame before we go on holiday. Nothing bad will happen if I don't — and I will probably be taking the Switch 2 with me — but it would be nice to have it all wrapped up before then. I think I've done a lot of the hardest, most challenging/annoying (delete as applicable) postgame objectives already, so now it's just a case of working my way through and cleaning up the remaining objectives on my way to the grand finale. Easy, right…?

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#oneaday Day 449: Revisiting Teachers

Back in the dim, distant past before streaming video services were a thing, and in a wonderful time before the apparently collective decision that if you're not continually "consuming new content" you're Doing It Wrong, there were several DVD series I had on my shelf that were in almost continual rotation in my DVD player. Spaced, Black Books, Peep Show, Big Train, that sort of thing; a particular brand of British comedy, almost always originally broadcast on Channel 4, and in many cases involving the exact same cast members.

(Aside: a fair few of these have been sullied a little in recent years by their association with Graham "I Hate Trans People… Wait, Why Do You All Hate Me Now" Linehan, but I do try my best not to let that bother me too much, because these series — and the work of the actors therein, most of whom do not subscribe to Linehan's odious bigotry — will always be special to me.)

One of my absolute favourites was Teachers, which was a thoroughly interesting show. I've just re-acquired the DVDs of the complete season, and I watched the first episode last night for the first time in a very long while.

Teachers, if you're unfamiliar, is probably best described as a comedy-drama rather than an out-and-out comedy. It initially focuses on the life of a 27 year old English teacher named Simon, who works at a comprehensive school in Bristol. In later series, several of the original cast members (including Andrew Lincoln, who played Simon) depart to make way for a new ensemble cast, so as a complete run it's more of a snapshot of a moment in a group of people's lives rather than a particularly "personal" story as such. There are a few constants along the way, though.

One of the most interesting things about Teachers is its heavily stylised nature. A trademark of the show is how each episode looks at several days across a typical week, and the introduction to each week is done diegetically through the name of the day appearing on something in the world — on a billboard, on a sheet of paper being photocopies, on a computer display, that sort of thing. This is just the beginning of things, though.

There's an almost hallucinogenic quality to certain sequences in Teachers, which certainly in the initial series is intended to reflect the somewhat turbulent state of mind that our hero, Simon, is in. Simon, you see, is a bit stressed out and starting to have significant doubts over whether he actually wants to be a teacher, and his rather rocky relationship with his peer in the English department, a stern woman named Jenny (played with great enthusiasm by Nina Sia), certainly doesn't make things any easier.

Sometimes these stylised sections are very obvious, such as when Simon returns to school the night after a drunken night out, during which he and his friends broke into the school and let a sheep in, among other things, and starts hallucinating that a full-on forensics team is dusting down his classroom for prints. At others, they are subtle, such as peculiar things happening in the background of scenes — the aforementioned sheep continually shows up throughout the series, for example — or little sound effects, such as when Jenny aggressively touches Simon on the shoulders with her fingertips while admonishing him, and you can hear the sound of sizzling.

One of the best things about the show is the ensemble of Kurt and Brian, played by Navin Chowdhry and Adrian Bower respectively. This pair are, in many ways, the worst of the worst. They're male chauvinist pigs constantly obsessing over people's arses, they always do their best to avoid getting out of having to do anything, they're utterly irresponsible, and they're absolute pranksters.

And yet you can't help but love them. Their behaviour towards women, which might initially seem winceworthy in the somewhat more enlightened world we supposedly live in today, is endearingly, amusingly pathetic in light of the fact that the pair of them seemingly get no action whatsoever for the vast majority of the run (that and the female members of the cast are more than capable of standing up for themselves); their irresponsibility actually comes across as a relatively healthy method of coping with the potentially overwhelming stress of working as a teacher; and their pranks… well, they're always amusing.

Probably the absolute best thing about the show, though, is its use of music, which almost exclusively consists of late '90s/early '00s Britpop and indie rock. In some respects it dates the show enormously — as does the fact that a plot point of the first episode is that teachers are no longer allowed to smoke in the school building in the "smoking room" — but in others it forms an absolutely core part of the show's identity.

Teachers is great because it tells some believably human stories about a distinctly down-to-earth cast of characters and doesn't get hung up on high drama — which is something that subsequent school-based TV shows, like Waterloo Road, could be accused of — and focuses on just being entertaining. Watching Teachers is like being included in this little friendship group of characters; you get to see them at their best and, more frequently, their worst — but that "worst" is never anything particularly serious — and it's always a joy to be among them.

It's definitely a show that is very much "of its time", but after revisiting the first episode earlier, I'm looking forward to watching some more.

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#oneaday Day 448: Biting one's tongue

I'm angry. And sad. And I wish I was neither of those things, but I seem to be unable to escape the general shittiness of the world we live in. And to make matters worse, the things that I am angry and sad about, other people don't seem to think are a problem.

I'm not going to get into the specifics of those things, and that's part of the problem. I don't feel like I can, because it's not just that other people don't seem to think that these things are an issue. It's that they are actively hostile to anyone who does see them for what they are. And I really don't want to get into arguments with people on this stuff, because I already feel incredibly alienated, isolated and lonely for a number of different reasons, but at the same time it feels like holding in all these frustrations is completely counter-productive. But I don't want to post those frustrations anywhere that might get back to the people I am upset and annoyed with, however indirectly.

You can hopefully see why I'm feeling a bit mixed-up and muddled over the whole situation. It absolutely blows to be living in a world where, day after day, you feel more and more like you're not welcome, like you're worthless, like there's nothing you can do to make the situation better. It blows even more to not really be able to express those feelings to anyone, for the reasons outlined above.

I was always afraid my life would end up like this. For as long as I can remember, I have been someone who is comfortable in his own company, even welcoming of some solitude in which to reflect and perhaps be creative. But, at the same time, I've always welcomed the opportunity to share the things I love with others, or simply to enjoy simple moments of connection, amusement and joy with other people that I have learned to trust.

I am fortunate to have my wife, who has always been incredibly understanding and tolerant of my many shortcomings as a human being — and, likewise, I have always been there to support her, even during difficult times. I am also fortunate to have my cats, who love me unconditionally, and always know when I really need them to be near me.

But there are times when that doesn't feel like enough. There are times when I feel more alone than I've ever been in my life, and times when I'm terrified that these feelings will only get worse as time marches onwards. And no-one seems to care. And then I feel bad for wanting people to care, because I worry that will make people think I'm self-absorbed, selfish and not considerate of others' feelings. Like I don't deserve anyone's attention or regard. And then I start feeling, well, why should anyone care about someone so clearly filled with utter self-loathing?

I'll be all right. I usually am. It's just one of those bad days; one of those days that medical professionals euphemistically refer to as "low mood", which I feel somewhat undersells the feelings of utter hopelessness and desperation that tend to accompany such episodes.

But for now, I'll just continue to be angry and sad. And hope that tomorrow is a better day.

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#oneaday Day 447: School camp

A childhood memory that I have somewhat mixed feelings about is that of the time I went on "school camp". That is to say, when a reasonably sized group of us kids (in Year 6 at the time) were taken to a campsite on the edge of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, and then proceeded to spend five days living under canvas.

On the whole, it's a mostly fond memory. I enjoyed camping both on this occasion and on the few weekend-long Cub Scout camps I attended while I was a member of that organisation. But there are a few things about it that I'm less than thrilled to have firmly lodged in my long-term memory. I thought today I'd talk a bit about both sides of the experience.

First, the good: we took part in a lot of really fun, interesting activities on the camp, and had the opportunity to mingle with a few other schools who were also in attendance at the time. Naturally, it didn't take long for talk to turn to who "fancied" who — as I recall, a girl named Taymar from one of these other schools was rather popular among the boys from our school and, childish and inexperienced in matters of the heart as we were, it was always enormously exciting for any of us who got to do anything vaguely "physical" (get your mind out of the gutter, we were 11… actually, considering what I'm about to admit, never mind) with her.

To my eternal shame, I all-too-vividly recall excitedly telling my friend Matthew that I had "bummed" Taymar. I didn't really know what "bumming" generally referred to in common vernacular, and instead assumed it meant that, through some circumstance or another, you had touched bums with another person. And, indeed, on a sort of "assault course" (for kids) style scenario, I had indeed touched bums with Taymar when we were passing one another on a rope bridge, moving in opposite directions. That was the extent of the encounter. I don't think I ever actually spoke to her during the entire trip.

But anyway, I digress. Other highlights that didn't involve underage quasi-sexual activity were the time we did a… I forget how it was described, but something like "rope walkway"? We were blindfolded, and had to navigate our way through the forest by following a rope path that had been laid out for us. I remember finding this quite enjoyable and exciting; trying to picture the environments through which we were manoeuvring as kind of thrilling.

We also went bird-watching. As I recall, there were some forms of rare birds (hawks, I think?) who made their homes near the campsite, so we spent some time looking out for them, but mostly just staring at a cliff face with a few holes in it. The possibility of seeing a Rare Thing was quite exciting for us as kids, though.

Strangely, one of my most vivid memories of school camp is one lunchtime, when we were being issued our packed lunch for a day-long excursion into the forest. Our headteacher had a very particular way of talking, and to this day part of my long-term memory is taken up with the specific way he offered us "Cheese… and salad… or… luncheon meat… and salad" as our sandwich choices. Naturally, as children, we were all horrified at the prospect of a salad sandwich, but most of us were quite pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be tasty. I guess when it's all you've got, you learn to appreciate it.

Night-time was a frustrating time, as I recall. The tent I was sleeping in with the other boys included, among others, my aforementioned best friend Matthew, and a young man named Christopher who could politely be termed the "class clown". When it was time for lights out, he would not shut up. On the first night, he started making up a stupid song about what I believe was "Doyget Sands", a fictional girl that he claimed to love. For every single night thereafter, there was at least an hour of him lamenting how he couldn't be together with "his Doyget", or singing that infernal song again. We learned to just stay awake and tolerate his bollocks until he got bored, which he eventually would, and then we could all get a decent night's sleep.

My least favourite memory about school camp is the fact I didn't poo for a week. At the time, I had an absolute phobia of taking a shit anywhere other than the toilet in my own house, and with the campsite facilities being… fairly run-down, to put it politely, I was terrified that getting my bum out anywhere in the vicinity of those toilets would result in being immediately struck down with dysentery.

So I didn't. I just didn't poo. I needed to, sure, but I didn't. And I didn't tell anyone. But I knew. And I was mortified one day when, full of unevacuated poo and struggling to keep up with the rest of the group as a result, the aforementioned headteacher, presumably in an attempt to encourage me, noted that there was "only about half an hour of waddling to go". I was immediately concerned that he knew I was full of poo, though he didn't mention anything else.

When I got home, I found that I had successfully made myself constipated. I wasn't aware that this was something you could do deliberately, but I had apparently cracked it over the course of that week. And when, if you'll pardon the expression and the mental image, the floodgates eventually opened, it felt real good. From thereon, I figured I should probably try and get over my fear of pooing in places that weren't my own house.

So anyway, that's my memories of school camp. You can hopefully see why I have somewhat mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the whole, it's a time in my life I think back fondly on, with my only regret being that I didn't poo more. I would have probably enjoyed everything about the trip a lot more if I had just gone for a poo each evening.

There's your lesson for life for the day. Now I'm off for a poo.

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#oneaday Day 446: A quick week?

This week, oddly, seems to have kind of flown by. I'm not complaining at all, I hasten to add, because the quicker this week and the next goes by, the sooner the wife and I get to go on holiday. And we're both really looking forward to some nice time away.

Things are… less stressful than they have been at various other points over the course of the last few months, but I'm still pretty burnt out and ready for a break. It will be great to completely disconnect from social media, work and most other modern annoyances and just relax. I am taking some form of computing device with me on holiday, though; my intention is to set aside a bit of time to do some creative writing each day, as a pleasant "forest retreat" seems like the ideal environment in which to do such a thing.

I haven't quite decided how I'm going to achieve this as yet, though. I think what I'm probably going to do is buy one of those little portable monitors you can get, then either hook that up to my phone and run that in its "DeX" desktop mode, or just take my mini PC with me. Then all I need is a keyboard and mouse — and I have plenty of those — and we're sorted.

I'm not promising anything that is going to gush forth from my brain during the holiday is going to be great or even coherent, but I am conscious of the fact that I made a big deal of setting up that "Scratch Pad" site for the distinct purpose of doing creative writing, and then haven't done any as yet. That needs fixing, and being in a suitable environment to write for enjoyment and pleasure, rather than for obligations, would seem like a suitable opportunity to do just that.

But anyway. There's a week and a half of work to get through first, but I feel like I can make it through that without too much trouble. I've got a to-do list of things I want to (or should) try to complete before I leave, and it's not at all excessive in its length, so I'm pretty confident I will be able to achieve everything by or before next Friday. Because if it ain't done by then, it ain't getting done… until I get back, anyway. And, as unforgiving as I might have been sounding about unplugging and going pretty much "off-grid" during the holiday (aside from this blog, which will still see daily updates) I don't really want to leave my colleagues in the lurch while I am absent.

So that's that. Now it's time to head to bed and read a bit of The Black Cauldron, I feel. Or perhaps a quick game of something on the MiSTer before that, maybe…?

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