#oneaday Day 525: Heat Wave

Any time it gets a bit hot in the UK, it's a "heat wave", even if said "heat wave" only lasts for a few minutes. More than a day and you start getting into "serious risk of hosepipe ban" territory, and more than a week and the Apocalypse is clearly here. We're currently in the midst of one said "heat wave", and naturally things are going downhill fast. Apparently there are a bunch of trains that can't run because it's too hot.

Too hot? They stop running when it's snowed, they stop running when it's too hot. Did it not occur to anyone to make these transportations devices which are rather important to the British transport infrastructure a little more all-weather compatible?

Of course, as a nation, the Britons are well known for their distaste of any kind of weather whatsoever. Hot outside? Wander around complaining that it's "too hot", that it's "sticky", that you "wish there was more shade" or crack some lame joke about global warming. Raining? Mutter about it being "nice weather for ducks" (even though ducks don't like rain), be unbearably smug about the waterproofs you might be wearing or look thoroughly miserable as you get completely drenched. Grey and miserable? Bemoan the fact that there's never any "interesting" weather, huff and sigh to yourself or simply gaze into the middle distance. Snowing? God help the country as it grinds to a complete halt.

All this seems to suggest one thing: humans are clearly not designed to cope with any kind of weather condition whatsoever, at least while clothed. Clothing gets wet, or sticky, or smelly, or covered in snow and cold, or otherwise messed up. As such, the solution is clear: we must stay inside, install air conditioning and be naked at all times.

Okay, that's perhaps an extreme solution to the problem. But you'd think that given we're an indigineous species to this planet we'd be able to cope a little better with a bit of sunshine or a bit of water falling from the skies.

Me, I like it when it's raining. I like the sound it makes. It's a relaxing sound — an opinion backed up by the fact that various "noise machine" apps for iPhones and whatnot often include the sound of rain as a default noise to fall asleep to. Sun I can take or leave. It's nice for it to be warm, but having to squint in order to see anything and running the risk of looking like a lump of well-cooked ham after spending too long outside is always something of a risk.

One thing is absolutely for sure, though — it's bloody boiling in this room right now, thanks in part to the weather and thanks in part to the amount of technology in a fairly confined space. All respect to my PC, which is coping admirably with the heat and is somehow managing to remain one of the coolest things in the room.

It goes without saying that I'm ho– no, I can't do it. Seriously.

#oneaday Day 524: Live and Let Live

The whole "OMG YOU MUST SEE THEM LIVE" argument has never really washed with me. In my admittedly limited experience of going to gigs, the experience of hearing a beloved band (or, in one case, a beloved band of my friends', and one which I was totally unfamiliar with) performing their best work on stage is infinitely inferior to sitting down, putting their album on your high-falutin' home theatre setup and cranking up the volume.

For one, the people in charge of the mixing desks at all the gigs I've been to felt that the bass should clearly be the highest number, meaning the subtleties of the sound were completely overwhelmed by the WHUBBBB WHUBBB WHUBBBBB of the bass. I know there are people who specifically go in search of music that goes WHUBBBB WHUBBBB WHUBBBB but I'm not sure there's as much crossover with fans of guitar bands as some sound engineers think.

The other thing is all those bloody other people that are milling around blocking your view, bumping into you and spilling your drinks. You may well give the "oh, it's all part of the atmosphere" argument here, but, well, I think we're rapidly establishing that the only kind of atmosphere I'm particularly interested in is one where I can sit in front of the fire with a pipe and listen to some records of the hippity-hop music on my high-fidelity home stereo audio system, preferably with some sort of family-friendly dog or cat sprawled out in front of the fire at the same time.

My attitude towards a lot of live music, I think, is why I've never had any interest whatsoever in going to Glastonbury, Reading or any of the other festivals there are. Living out of a tent? Fine, I could do that. Living out of a tent and sharing limited toilet facilities with approximately eleventy bajillion unwashed hippies smoking the crack? (Well, maybe not all of them smoking the crack. Some of them are shooting up heroin.) No thanks. The toilet facilities on my primary school camping trip terrified me enough to not shit for a week (I wouldn't recommend it — that first shit after a week will 1) be immensely difficult and 2) present you with some of the more unpleasant things that will ever come out of your body) so I shudder to think the effect that Glastonbury would have on my bowels and arse, especially with the quality of the food as it is there.

Perhaps I'm missing the point. I have a feeling that I am, because otherwise that many people wouldn't converge on Glastonbury year after year and see apparently increasingly-mainstream headline acts (I believe Beyoncé is on as I write this) and mutter to themselves about how it "used to be better".

Ah well. Live and let live. They have their field full of mud. I have my pixelated tower block simulators and 2D multiplayer Team-Fortress-2-in-aeroplanes joy Altitude (which I discovered tonight — seriously, it's awesome). I think we're all happy with our lot. Ish, anyway.

(As an aside, can I just say that this weekend has gone by entirely too quickly for my liking and I'd very much like another one, please. That said, this week I'm expecting to be able to share some exciting news, so perhaps it's good that this week is starting imminently.)

#oneaday Day 523: The Adventures of Lord Bath

I finished The Witcher 2 today after quite some time. It's a beautiful game with a few niggly, tickly little flaws, but overall a fantastic experience for those with the hardware to back it up. Even better, Xbox 360 owners will be able to enjoy it for themselves at some point in the near future, too. This post won't contain spoilers, for those of you still intending to play it.

The best thing about it is its uncompromisingly adult nature. It doesn't do this in the slightly tacky way that its predecessor did with its collectible "sex cards" — instead, it keeps the best bits of its predecessor, which is a feeling that your choices throughout have consequence — and that said choices don't have a "correct" option. You say your words, you deal with the consequences. This has such a big effect on the game that once you've finished Chapter I, the rest of the game is completely different based on a choice that you make — and then within each chapter, there are plenty of smaller choices to make that affect the way things transpire and indeed the way the whole thing draws to a conclusion. It is, in short, a Good Thing.

The combat is the biggest hang-up for a lot of people. Taking its cues from Demon's Souls, this is a game that's not afraid to stick its cock in your ear and thrust until it hurts — or, indeed, some equally unpleasant metaphor. You fuck up in combat and you will die against regular enemies. Several times. You will learn to block and you will learn how to use your spells effectively rather than just hacking away a la Zelda or Diablo.

For the most part, this is cool. Swordfights feel like swordfights. Boss encounters require strategy rather than endurance. But there were just a couple of points throughout where it just felt a little bit unfair — mostly when it came to situations where our titular Witcher Geralt was attacked by multiple assailaints from all angles. There were several occasions where I couldn't see how I was supposed to defend against the barrage of incoming blows — this alone would be enough to put some people off, I feel. I, fortunately, have a bit more patience than that, and settled for a few expletives. Only once did I feel the need to lower the difficulty level — and I put it straight back up again to complete the game, and the bosses towards the end weren't as difficult as this relatively incidental confrontation.

So in summary then, if you're looking for an RPG that treats you like a grown-up without feeling tacky, The Witcher 2 will scratch that itch. If you're not one for overly-technical action RPG combat, then bumping the difficulty down to Easy allows for a satisfying experience from the story without the frustration of dying repeatedly on a battle that really shouldn't be that difficult.

And if you're wondering why I titled this post "The Adventures of Lord Bath"? Well, when I explained the concept of the original The Witcher to my girlfriend Andie by pointing out that the protagonist was a "white haired dude who kills people and has sex with a lot of women", her immediate response was "Oh, like Lord Bath?" (Disclaimer: I have no evidence as to Lord Bath's extracurricular activities. But I find the alternative name for The Witcher amusing, so it stays.)

#oneaday Day 522: Addressing the Audience's Demands

So in an attempt to better understand my audience, such as you are, I've been delving once again into the top search terms for my blog. I'm going to take the top ten search terms from the last year and address each and every one of them individually so that hopefully if you've been in attendance on this page at some point in the past and found it to be wanting for further information on the topic you searched for, you'll feel better and more satisfied in your choice of Google links that you clicked on.

Divine Divinity (303 hits)

Divine Divinity is an action-RPG from Larian Studios which bears more than a passing resemblance to Blizzard's Diablo series. The difference is that the world is not randomly generated and there is a more robust quest and interaction system more akin to something like the Baldur's Gate series. The entire world is available to explore from the get-go and aside from some appalling voice acting of the very worst kind, it's a great game. Pity its sequels aren't up to much. You can grab it from Good Old Games.

I'm Not Doctor Who (81 hits)

That's the name of this site, because my name is Peter Davison, though I usually go by "Pete" because I prefer it. Peter Davison, as you may know, was the stage name for Peter Moffett, who played the Doctor in Doctor Who between 1982 and 1984. I am not him, therefore I am not Doctor Who.

Offensive GIFs (73 hits)

Here's one.

Teaching Sucks (65 hits)

Teaching does indeed suck. I've worked as a classroom teacher on two separate occasions in my life and on both occasions it nearly killed me. In the first instance, I stuck it out for three years in the secondary school music classroom — my first year in a run-down school half a million quid in the red where I was threatened with being knifed on a regular basis, and my second in an ostensibly "nicer" area but which still reduced me to a literally gibbering wreck by the end of my time there.

The reasons why it sucks? Poor behaviour and teachers' lack of power to do anything about it. Ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy. The fact that one person is expected to do what, in any other job, a team of at least four or five people would take on between them.

If you can stick it out, fair play to you. It's not for me.

"Mandatory Sex Party" (35 hits)

This was a term coined by Allie Brosh, who at one point wasn't sure whether or not it was an actual thing that happened. I'm still not sure, but there's certainly a lot more than one Google hit for it now.

Persona 4 (35 hits)

Persona 4 is one of my favourite games of all time. Featuring a hugely lengthy quest, genuinely loveable characters, a gripping (if crazy) plot and a love-it-or-hate-it catchy soundtrack, Persona 4 is one of the greatest JRPGs of all time and I will fight you if you disagree.

Fatal Labyrinth (34 hits)

Fatal Labyrinth is a graphical roguelike for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. You can play it as part of the Sega Mega Drive Collection on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but I bet you haven't.

"Get Rich or Die Gaming" (27 hits)

Get Rich or Die Gaming is an absolutely terrible Xbox Live Indie Game with artwork that looks like it was put together in Microsoft Paint, voice acting that would make a school play's director blush and designs on being a point-and-click adventure. Fair play to them for actually releasing it, but it really is not very good.

NSFW GIFs (26 hits)

Here's one.

Memes GIF (25 hits)

(Click to embiggen. Some NSFW. Some NSF anybody. Apparently this character is called "optimized GIF dude" and is something of a meme. I'd never heard of him, actually.)

So there we are. I hope you feel suitably satisfied now. If not, go and have a sandwich and a wank.

#oneaday Day 521: It's Your Turn Now

I've discovered the most terrifying thing in the universe: the man who very politely, but incredibly loudly, tells you "It's your turn now!" on the iPhone version of Carcassonne. It's terrifying because hearing someone's voice when you're not expecting to — such as, say, when you're trying to get to sleep — is a frightening thing. Quite why a murderer or rapist would say "It's your turn now!" is… no, hang on, that sort of works, doesn't it? Shit.

But anyway. The terrifyingness of Carcassonne is not what I wanted to talk about — at least not directly, anyway. I wanted to take a moment to talk about asynchronous games, how awesome they are and where they can go from here.

The iPhone (and, presumably, Android) is home to a wide range of excellent asynchronous-play games, allowing people to play at their own pace at a time to suit them. The upside to this is that people even in wildly disparate time zones can play games against each other. The downside is that it's easy to forget what games you're playing, particularly if your push notifications decide not to work properly.

But that downside isn't sufficient to dampen the awesomeness that is the ability to play Carcassonne with someone across the other side of the world. The "…with Friends" series (Chess, Words and Hanging) are all excellent examples of How To Do It Correctly, too, providing a simple, intuitive interface to games that most people know how to play. The quirky and entertaining Disc Drivin', too, offers a fun experience, even if whoever goes first has a clear advantage over everyone else. (That's my excuse, anyway.)

Certain social games are taking steps to incorporate asynchronous features, too. Dragon Age Legends, for example, allows players to recruit their friends' characters — complete with equipment and abilities — into their party for combat. This allows people to play with their friends without their friends actually being there — defeating the object of a multiplayer game, you might think, but actually making the best of the fact that it's pretty rare for you and all your friends to be online at the same time.

Consider this taken to the next level, though. Why haven't we seen an asynchronous MMORPG yet, where players can party up with AI-controlled characters based on their friends' equipment and ability lists? It works in Dragon Age Legends, though admittedly that's a very simple turn-based game. But most MMORPGs have AI built in for enemy and ally characters anyway, so why shouldn't there be a way for players to "play" even when they're not actively logged in to the game? I think that'd be kind of cool, actually — and it would certainly get around my biggest bugbear with MMORPGs, which is the fact that a good 90% of my friends live in a completely different and mostly incompatible timezone to me.

On a related note, then, if you live in Europe and want to play Champions Online, Spiral Knights or anything else you'd care to suggest (preferably of the free to play variety) do please get in touch!

#oneaday Day 520: The Top 5 Things I Wish You'd Stop Doing In Swimming Pools

I went swimming today having rediscovered it with Andie last weekend. I used to go a lot after work (that long-forgotten concept soon to be reawakened) alternating swim days with gym days, and while I didn't get "good" as such, I certainly found myself able to swim surprising lengths without too much difficulty — or indeed speed, but that's beside the point.

Today I managed 1km, which equates to 40 lengths of the pool I was in. I'd got up to being able to do 100 lengths at one point and to be fair, I could have kept going today were it not for the fact I needed to get home and Get Shit Done.

So, in honour of my swimming achievements I'd like to present the Top 5 Things I Wish You'd Stop Doing In Swimming Pools.

Putting on deodorant before getting in the pool

Seriously, Lynx-clad chav boy, who do you think you are impressing by making yourself smell like a gypsy's jockstrap before jumping in the pool? You'll only stink of chlorine in approximately 5 minutes anyway, so you might as well not bother, because swimming through the cloud of "aromatic" chemicals emanating from your person as they rinse off your hairless body under the water is anything but pleasant.

Finding your kids splashing people in the face amusing

Yes, a kid learning to swim is probably very exciting for a parent, but when some 6-year old git splashes me in the face obviously deliberately and you sit there laughing at him, that's giving him positive reinforcement and unspoken permission to do it again. I would very much like it if he didn't do it again, thanks, because it went up my nose and made me cough, and it also made me hate him, and you.

Prancing around naked in the changing room

Yes, I am aware that you need to get naked in order to get changed to go swimming. But do you have to be naked for quite so long and towel-dry your testicles quite so enthusiastically? And if your friend is with you, don't you find it a little weird to stand there talking to him with your cock hanging out? If you weren't in a swimming pool changing room you wouldn't do it, would you? If you were both in your bedroom or living room it would be a bit weird, wouldn't it? Unless, of course, there's some sort of homoerotic tension between the two of you, in which case you should hurry up and consummate your love elsewhere and stop inflicting sexual tension on the rest of the pool's visitors.

Getting pissy with people in the slow lane

I swim slowly, as do numerous other people. We don't have a "super-slow" lane to downgrade ourselves to. You, however, have a "medium" lane which you can upgrade yourself to. Please use it. I bet you walk on the left on Underground escalators, too.

Being there

Frankly, I like the pool better when it's just me (and maybe one companion) there. Kindly bugger off out of my way and, preferably, the pool so that I can enjoy the time in the pool I have paid for. Sure, you may have paid for it too, but I am grumpier than you. Go and see your naked friends in the changing room.

#oneaday Day 519: Good News

Almost a year ago to the day, I posted an entry on this very blog noting that I was starting to feel more positive about things. Of course, things didn't quite work out the way I planned for quite some time, but for those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, I'm pleased to report that today, Tuesday June 21, 2011, I was offered an actual job from an actual company. Not only that, but the actual job from the actual company in question represents something that I actually want to do — something that I was beginning to give up hope on. Something I'd given up hope on enough to apply to be a customer service monkey for British Gas — an opportunity which they were keen to pursue with me, but which I thankfully didn't follow up on. I don't see myself as a phone jocket. Largely because I fucking hate talking on the phone.

No, this new job, which I will refrain from posting too many details about until I've signed various contracts and officially accepted the position, will have me doing some writing in the games industry, though not as a journalist. It's a role at a software company, meaning I'll hopefully have the opportunity to be exposed to the process of game development as well as marketing. It's based in London, too, which is a mild pain in terms of accommodation prices, but quite exciting in that it's 1) closer to my friends who are still on the south coast 2) closer to my friends who now live in London and 3) it's London, and I've never lived in London before.

From a cursory examination of Rightmove, actually, the area of London that would be most practical for me to live for this job actually doesn't cost that much more than a shithole like Aldershot. Granted, in Aldershot you probably get a bigger room for your money, but given that I'm effectively "starting over" at level 1 with nothing but vendor trash gear on my back, I don't mind slumming it in a pokey little flat for a while. After all, the future's already looking brighter, so better things will inevitably be on the horizon.

This, then, represents pretty much all of the negative status effects I picked up over the last year and a bit being lifted. Now it's just a case of restoring HP (and finances), acquiring better gear (and somewhere to live) and then the path is clear to level 80.

Or, you know, something less geeky. Oh, sod off. I can express my good news however the hell I want.

So, then, that was today. I start my new job on July 4, so that will be a period fraught with both excitement and nervousness — but the good kind, rather than the "shit, everything is going wrong, how am I possibly ever going to get through this?" kind. Which is nice.

#oneaday Day 518: Championing the Free to Play Model

I mentioned a few days ago that I was going to give some of Steam's free to play games a try, and mentioned I might investigate APB Reloaded and World of Tanks. I have played a tiny bit of APB (it's quite fun, if nigh-on-incomprehensible to begin with) but haven't touched World of Tanks yet. I also continue to enjoy Spiral Knights, although with the game's lack of quest structure and progression system tied to your equipment rather than your character I'm not entirely sure what the "point" is — but it's fun, regardless.

Instead, though, I've been spending a fair amount of time playing Champions Online, aka City of Heroes 2. This is one of a growing number of MMORPGs that used to be full-price products with subscription fees, but which have adopted the free to play model as a means of drawing in more customers and potentially earn more money via microtransactions.

Champions Online takes an interesting approach in that you can still pay a subscription fee for a "Gold" membership if you prefer, and that keeps the game pretty much in its original form — you get free access to all new content, are able to play a hero with your own completely customised set of powers and have a bit more flexibility in terms of how much currency you can own and the like. Free "Silver" members, on the other hand, are limited to selecting preset archetypes for their heroes and have to pay for episodic "adventure packs" — story-heavy instanced missions that offer experiences a little different from the regular world-and-instance-based PvE that the main game offers. Regular promotions allow Silver members to get access to some things for free for a limited period, and players can always buy individual things via microtransaction if they don't want to pony up for a full-on subscription every month.

The way this is implemented is incredibly smart. The fact that Silver players are limited to preset archetypes which are nigh-on-impossible to fuck up while Gold members actually have to plan out their builds in advance means that people are less likely to get themselves into a situation where it's impossible to proceed due to some unfortunate decisions 20 levels ago. It also allows players to effectively try out the various combinations of powers with characters that actually work properly — and have a lot of fun in the process. I'm playing a "Soldier" character right now and she doesn't feel gimped at all — she feels like a preset character class in a traditional action RPG. There's just enough level of choice to allow me to customise her a little bit without daunting me with complete freedom.

Champions Online falls into the usual traps that MMOs do — the interface is a bit clunky, the animations in cutscenes are either laughable or non-existent and aforementioned cutscenes have been put together by someone who doesn't know what "directing" or "cinematography" is. But that doesn't stop it being fun — and definitely higher quality than some of the crap that has been released under the free to play banner in the past. Quality of these games is definitely increasing, and I foresee that Champions Online will hold my attention for quite a while yet. So if you're a player, do join me! Look for "Lap Cat@AngryJedi" or just add me on Steam to see when I'm playing. Feel free to give me a shout and we can team up.

#oneaday Day 517: Social Peril II: The Periling

As a social network, Facebook is arguably becoming less meaningful — that is, from the perspective of encouraging meaningful interactions with one another. This, I feel, is in part due to how cluttered it is these days — cluttered with people, cluttered with businesses, cluttered with applications. I long for the simplicity of the site as it was when I first joined it, when it didn't even have a chat system and friend requests required you to indicate how you knew the person — kind of what LinkedIn does nowadays, only with people actually talking to each other instead of using phrases like "blueskying" and "monetization".

A fine example comes up if you look at the Facebook Page for any social game, ever. You can pick any random example and this will happen. Look at something the producers of the game say, then look at the community comments. You might have 25% meaningful discussion (a somewhat optimistic estimate — if the game is popular you can reduce that down to less than 5%) and 75% people just going "add me". This also happens on App Store reviews for "multiplayer" (and I use the term loosely) games.

It's not just that, though. Posts on Pages vaguely related to Xbox/PS3 will bring the fanboys for both camps out in force, ranting and raving at each other and not even addressing the point that was made in the original wall post — burying any meaningful discussion amidst the usual spray of bile, hatred and testosterone.

Beyond that, though, a lot of the trouble lies with the changing way people use Facebook nowadays. When it was a simplistic, app-free system, people used it to communicate. People would write a status, other people who knew the original person would comment. People might post a link or a photo, people would comment. Simple, effective. Now, though, with the fact that everyone and his dog has a Share to Facebook button, this simple clarity of communication has been almost completely lost. You get the occasional aberration where a topical post can bloom into an interesting discussion between friends, but soon enough it's lost in the never-ending cycle that is your News Feed, devaluing the interaction until it's gone, forgotten, meaningless.

The simple answer is, of course, to adapt. Realise that Facebook is not about permanence and the long-term, it's about the here, the now, the narcissistic. "This" is happening right now, so you share it. Here's a photo. Here's my new Bejeweled Blitz high score. I'm playing a game with farms in it. I took a quiz to determine which colour from the Dulux range I "am". PAY ATTENTION TO ME.

Facebook's new Messages system doesn't help, either. Muddling your chats in with your actual messages is a dumb idea, because the sort of thing you write in a message is typically lengthier than what you write in a chat. And then it all gets jumbled together, so if you had a message thread with some meaningful information in it followed by a chat with said person about how much you heard they like cock due to whoever just facejacked their profile, then it becomes nigh-on impossible to find anything useful.

I'm not too concerned about the whole thing, though, to be honest. Facebook does what I need it to for now, which is to allow me to share links to my articles and work to people who might be interested or might not have another means of finding out about them, and occasionally proving to be the most reliable means of contacting people. As such, I'll likely keep my profile there, but my usage of the platform is at a bare minimum these days, as I don't feel like it's really for me any more. Twitter, on the other hand, still does everything I need it to and still remains pretty much as pure and clear as it was the day I started using it. Let's hope it stays that way.

(In other news, I had a lovely weekend away, as you may have surmised from that last post. Thank you to Andie for making it happen!)

#oneaday Day 516: Away Game

Spending a weekend in markedly different surroundings to the place where you spend most of the rest of your week is an eminently worthwhile experience, particularly if you spend most of your week chained to a desk — whether that's in a working-from-home sort of situation or the daily grind at an office. Over the last few weeks (and probably months) I've been fortunate enough to be able to spend some time away from the environment I spend the working week in, and it's a healthy, positive experience.

The only frustrating thing about the whole shebang is the fact that most places I go away to are inevitably attached somehow to either my awesome girlfriend Andie, who currently lives 150 miles away from me; or to friends I left behind back in the Southampton area (about 120 miles away) when I was forced to depart last September.

In some senses, this is good, though, as it means I get completely out of the daily "grind", as it were, by going somewhere markedly different from the places I see every day. Even if I do go out while I'm back at home, it's inevitably to the same old places time after time — local shop, local supermarket, post office, local coffee house. And while I know Southampton and Winchester pretty well having spent the best part of 10 years living and working in the area, the fact I don't live there now is enough to keep them feeling fresh, pleasant and not "new" as such, but places I feel I can rediscover each time I visit.

Now, granted, Southampton's a bit of a shithole and if you want to do something on a Saturday night that isn't getting pissed (and, by extension, into a fight) or going to the cinema, there's actually really not a great deal to do — not in the town centre at least. But as I've said on several occasions in the past, it's a place in which I lay down some "roots" and even if I end up never moving back there to live — which is looking increasingly likely — it will always be if not a "home" then certainly a home away from home.

Winchester, on the other hand, is a place I'd return to in a flash given the opportunity. My favourite place I've ever lived was in Winchester. It was a gorgeous big fully-furnished flat with a dishwasher, heated towel rails and a dressing room off the main bedroom. The furniture provided was good quality, not the usual hand-me-down shite, and while I was there, even though I was working a soul-crushingly awful job in the secondary music classrooms of Hampshire, it was a haven I could return to of an evening and feel like I had come "home". Of course, as Sod's Law tends to go, this dream-come-true of accommodation was snatched up by the landlord, who rather inconsiderately wanted to give it to their daughter, so we ended up living in a nice-ish cottage that was unfortunately afflicted with a great deal of damp and mould, and smelled disconcertingly of gas in the living room.

I often wonder where I'm going to end up next. I hope it's somewhere good that I can lay down some roots once again and start afresh. For now, there are weekend escapes like the one I'm on now with Andie, and right this second, that's the best life has to offer, so I'm damn well going to enjoy it.