Tag: Going home

#oneaday Day 829: The hotel after the holiday

As promised, I am coming to you live from The Broadway Hotel, Letchworth, where I am staying overnight ahead of a Work Thing that I don't think anyone in their right mind is looking forward to.

I am tired, I am grumpy, my back hurts and I just want to be at home in my own bed with my cats, but instead here I am in another hotel room, the same day I returned from holiday, trying to get comfortable on a bed that is weirdly high off the ground.

Still, at least I was fortunate enough to get a room with a bath this time, so I enjoyed a mildly indulgent soak earlier, which was nice. The hotel baths are nicer than our bath at home, so I usually take the opportunity to use them if I have one. Unfortunately not all the rooms have them, so I can never guarantee this will be the case — and the shower-only rooms here appear to have been designed by someone whose understanding of spatial awareness is somewhat different from what one might call "the norm", shall we say.

Also I smelled pretty bad, so I was glad to be able to properly wash off the stench of packing up, going swimming, having lunch, driving home, placating the cats, packing up again then driving for three hours.

Were it not for the last bit, our last official day of holiday would have been very pleasant. We got up in plenty of time to pack up and vacate the lodge ahead of our 10am departure time, but we thought we'd hang around for a little bit before leaving. You're technically allowed to stay until midnight on the day of your departure, you just can't have your accommodation after 10am.

We kicked off our morning of being in limbo between vacating the lodge and leaving the site with a swim. I have been doing a lot of swimming on this holiday, and my aching body today reminded me of this fact, so we took it prettt easy, just having a casual splash around in the main pool, a few times around the slow river and a session in the wave machine.

After that we did something we haven't done before: we thought we'd have a nice meal out at one of the restaurants as a final farewell. We picked Bella Italia, which I know isn't super exciting, but Andie had been working on the assumption that "it's just pasta, which you might as well do at home" until I convinced her to look at the menu and she discovered they do a bunch of other stuff.

Andie had dough balls then a sea bass fillet with veg and buttery potatoes, and I had calamari then a spicy pizza with nduja, roquito sweet chili peppers, red pepper and tomato. It was really good, but I have had humongous farts for the rest of the day. I say "but", when of course I consider this to be a tremendous benefit.

Anyway, the first part of today was a good way to see off our holiday. The latter part has made me grumpy, but I'm trying not to think too hard about that. Tomorrow will be over and done with before I know it, and then hopefully normality can resume.

Oh, and my mini PC was indeed dead dead, so I've had to hastily buy a new one. Fun. That should arrive tomorrow, so aside from not actually having my own computer in the office tomorrow, life should continue with minimal interruptions — and from next weekend, I plan to make a start on my renewed plans for YouTube, so there's that to look forward to.

Anyway, I should probably attempt to sleep amid this cloud of fart gas I currently exist within, so on that note I will bid you a good night.

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 828: Today is last full day

Dawn of the Final Day, 24 Hours Remain and all that. (Except it's less than 24 hours now by quite a bit, because I'm writing this at 11pm and we go home tomorrow.)

This "re-holiday" has mostly been a success. It's a shame Andie had to be ill for a lot of it and thus spent a lot of her time self-confining herself to the lodgings, but she admitted it was better to be ill in an environment where you have absolutely no commitments or worries than it is to have to stress out over calling in sick to work and all that stuff. I think she's had a mostly good time despite this.

I've definitely had a good time. I've really enjoyed getting out to the pool most days, and we've eaten good food, I finished Super Mario Galaxy (writeup for that coming on MoeGamer at some point in the next week) and generally had a nice relaxing time. I just wish, as I've mentioned a few times already, that I didn't have to come home and then immediately go straight back out again for an unfortunately timed Work Thing that I'm really not all that enthusiastic about. (Nothing to worry about; it's just an HR Thing where they tell us all not to sexually harass one another — not something I'm aware has ever been a problem at our company, but something people apparently need reminding of on a semi-regular basis.)

I'm gutted that I missed the special Evercade Nexus event in London while I was away, but from secondhand reports it sounds like it was a big success. People got to play with Nexii, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie and Doom, and it seems everything went down well. Now we have to get our heads down and get these things released next month. Exciting times. I will be glad to put a lot of the stress of these high-profile releases behind us for the most part — but I hope I'm not spoiling too much by saying that we have some equally challenging but immensely worthwhile stuff coming up next year. Nothing has, of course, been announced just yet, but the wheels are already in motion. You might be surprised quite how much work goes into a lot of these releases!

Anyway, I'm talking work when I'm still on holiday, so I'm going to stop that now. I'm going to have a big indulgent glass of milk, then I'm going to get a relatively early night so we can get up at a sensible hour tomorrow morning (compared to our usual rolling out of bed around lunchtime on non-work days) to have a swim, have a nice lunch and then, reluctantly, head for home.

No, it will be nice to be home (for a few hours, in my case) to see my mother-in-law and the cats, who I'm sure have been getting along famously. We've been checking in on the security cameras every so often, and Oliver has, of course, been incredibly sociable, as he always is, and Patti came out from hiding as quickly as she always does when the Nice Old Lady comes to stay and look after them. They will be fine, but they will be happy to see us, I'm sure, and that's always nice.

Right, on that note, I am going to get that aforementioned indulgent glass of milk and head bedwards. Your next thrilling update on this rollercoaster of a blog will be… probably from a hotel room in sunny Letchworth. So look forward to that, I guess.

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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.