1763: Fun-Filled Day

A rather pleasant day all round, really, though my aching body will attest to the fact that we’ve done a whole lot more than we’d usually do on a Saturday. That’s probably not a terrible thing, mind you.

We kicked off the day with a substantial breakfast courtesy of the awesome “breakfast packs” sold at the on-site supermarket, the Parc Market. This contained four sausages — decent sausages, too, not cheap crap — along with six slices of bacon (six!) and two lumps of black pudding. We also supplemented it with some eggs — because what sort of breakfast doesn’t have eggs? — and some hash browns. It was tasty, if rather filling.

After letting that lead weight settle in our stomachs a bit, we headed over for our first foray into the Subtropical Swimming Paradise. The Center Parcs I’d previously been to several times was the Elveden Forest one rather than this one here in Longleat, but I was expecting the pool to be almost if not completely identical. Sure enough, the layout was a little bit different, but all the same things were there — the lazy river, the two flumes, the terrifying fast slide (which appears to have been remodeled into two separate, smaller, single-person slides rather than the wide, multi-person slide it once was and, of course, the Wild Water Rapids. There’s also a wonderful warm pool outdoors that leads into the aforementioned Rapids, and an even warmer jacuzzi just off that. The contrast between hot and cold when you get into these pools and feel the cool air on your skin while the warm water heats up your body is rather wonderful.

After a bit of exploring everything the pool had to offer, we headed to the first of two “extra” activities we’d booked for the weekend: a spot of target archery tuition. This was a fairly substantial walk away from the main plaza building and involved a little bit of getting lost amid the many identical-looking streets of villas along the way, but we eventually got there on time to shoot a bunch of arrows.

I’ve done archery a couple of times in the past, and I’ve always enjoyed it despite not being all that good at it — my score in the competition at the end of the session was the second lowest. It’s inherently satisfying to feel that release of the bowstring and to watch your arrow arc gracefully through the air on the way to its destination, be that the bull’s eye of a target or the protective fabric at the back of the range. And that “thunk” of an arrow actually hitting the target? Wonderful stuff.

Andie did pretty well at the archery, beating my score by a considerable margin — although my pride dictates that I should mention at this point that I was shooting at the “grown-up” targets that were a fair distance away while she was shooting at the medium-range targets for beginners and/or short people. She still did great, though; evidently all that Bard training in Final Fantasy XIV is good for something.

After that, we caught the “land train” (actually a road-based train stopping at various destinations around the park) to the Village Square area, which we hadn’t explored previously. This small area, separate from the main plaza, features a few nice little restaurants and a pottery workshop. We were interested in the former aspect, specifically an intriguing little establishment called The Pancake House. It did not disappoint, providing huge and delicious Dutch-style pancakes (with the option of American-style pancake stacks instead if you prefer) topped with a variety of both sweet and savoury options. Andie went for a rather delicious apple affair that had lovely soft cooked apples along with plenty of caramel, cinnamon sugar and all manner of other goodness. I had an equally caramelly pancake, but mine featured lumps of honeycomb rather than the apples. It was damn good, but it was the second lead weight of the day to hit our stomach, which made the walk back to our accommodation rather hard work!

After a break back at the apartment, we headed out to the Subtropical Swimming Paradise for an evening swim as I’d previously enthused that it was very nice at night time. Sure enough, it didn’t disappoint; the outdoor pools in particular were lovely in the dark of the evening, with the underwater lighting highlighting the steam rising from these warm pools, providing a lovely relaxing, chilled-out environment that was blissfully largely child-free at that time in the evening.

After that, we headed back, ate steak, chilled out, played My Little Pony cards, went to bed. Then I got up and wrote this. Now I’m going back to bed.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday, to be sure.

1762: Minibreak

It’s Andie’s 30th birthday soon, so I wanted to do something nice. Rather than taking the “present” route, however, I decided to book us some time away at a place I’ve been wanting to come back to for many years now: Center Parcs.

For the unfamiliar, Center Parcs is a chain of holiday villages scattered throughout the UK and across Europe. They have that holiday village “thing” of being largely identical to one another, regardless of which one you go to, so the fact that Andie and I have come to the much closer Longleat Forest incarnation of the chain rather than the Elveden Forest one I went to several times as a young ‘un is still filling me with a certain degree of nostalgia — plus, I won’t lie, a pleasing amount of feeling that I’m a “proper” adult for booking something like this and my parents not being involved in any way whatsoever.

Anyway. I have very fond memories of my various previous visits to Center Parcs. They’re situated in idyllic forest locations, and provide plenty of opportunities to walk and cycle around without having to worry about cars — cars are only permitted on site on Fridays and Mondays, which are also the only days you can check in or out. The accommodation is good-quality, too, taking the form of either small apartments (which we’ve gone for) or, if you’re in a larger group, villas and log cabins of various sizes. All of these are furnished very nicely, kept in good condition and set up in such a way that you can self-cater your holiday if you so desire; those feeling lazy and/or flush with cash, meanwhile, can take advantage of the various restaurants available in the main plaza building — which, this time around, we’re conveniently about a minute’s walk from, which is nice.

There’s a wide variety of different activities on offer at each Center Parcs, although on previous visits I didn’t partake in that many of them. This time around, we’re going to try some archery tomorrow and spend some time with some owls on Sunday. I predict we’ll probably be spending a fair amount of the rest of our time at the “Subtropical Swimming Paradise” — the huge pool complex that forms the centrepiece of each Center Parcs plaza, and a place that I fondly remember as one of the best water-based experiences ever.

The Subtropical Swimming Paradise is pretty great, for numerous reasons. Firstly, it’s huge, providing a large swimming pool-cum-wave machine pool for actually swimming properly in, a slow river to get caught in, several excellent water slides (a long, slow flume, a short fast flume and a large white straight-down slide) and a white water rapids to fling yourself down with enthusiasm. Secondly, it’s warm — that “subtropical” bit isn’t an exaggeration, since the whole place is deliberately made warm and humid to feel like you’re really on holiday while you’re in there; it also allows various tropical plants scattered around the area to thrive, giving the whole place a really nice look, particularly when compared to your usual municipal pool. Thirdly, it’s kind of beautiful at night-time — there are several outdoor pools lit by coloured underwater lighting, and the warmth of the water combined with the cool night air makes for a very pleasant experience. Going down the Rapids, which is largely outdoors, is also a lot of fun at night-time.

Today we’ve had a fairly relaxed day getting here, doing a bit of shopping for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast (though we forgot eggs and oil — back to the shop tomorrow morning!) and booking our activities for the next couple of days. Tomorrow, as previously noted, we’re going to shoot arrows at things and probably spend a fair amount of time in the pool, then the day after we’re going to hang out with some owls. Exactly what we’re going to do with the owls remains to be seen, but Andie likes owls so it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Anyway. Being away from home means being away from my Mac, Comic Life and Paintbrush so no comics for a few days, I’m afraid. I’m sure you’ll survive, though. You’ll just have to read my thrilling prose instead, huh?

1750: Time Kompression

Once again, time has been proving itself to be somewhat fluid. I’ve only had a week off from work, but it feels like an eternity; it probably helps that I’ve done one hell of a lot of things in said week off — most notably going back and forth to Scotland, but also last night’s trip to London for Distant Worlds as well as a few other things — but this would seem to disprove the whole “time flies when you’re having fun” theory; I’ve certainly been having plenty of fun, but this week feels like it’s been an extremely long one.

I’m not complaining; it’s been nice to have what actually feels like a really long holiday when, in fact, I’ve only been away for a week. I feel quite rested and relaxed and, necessity of waking up at an ungodly hour for a commute that doesn’t suck all of the balls aside, pretty much ready to face the day tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll be back into the same old routine before long, but that’s not really a bad thing; routines are comfortable and familiar, and form the backbone to one’s existence. Routines mean that breaks like I’ve had this week feel all the more meaningful and enjoyable; times like this week are honest-to-goodness breaks when I don’t have to worry about anything and can just enjoy some legitimately completely free time.

This is something I never really got when I was working from home. Although most of the publications I worked for were perfectly happy for me to take a few days off here and there, it was sort of hard to justify doing so when I have a laptop and could work from literally anywhere there was an Internet connection. Indeed, on a number of occasions I found myself working hard well into the night when I should really have been relaxing and enjoying myself doing other things, but I was always keen to make a decent impression with the effort I made — that and, in the case of things I wrote regularly, such as my Japanese gaming column on USgamer, I didn’t want to let down my audience.

This is something I never really got when I was a teacher, either: you can’t just take a day (or week, or month) off here and there when you’re working as a teacher; you have to go by the holiday calendar the school follows. This makes things both restrictive and prohibitively expensive; school holidays are “primetime” season for travelling, tourist attractions and, indeed, pretty much everything, so the prices are jacked up accordingly. Not only that, it means that there’s just no letting up, even when you need a break for the sake of your health — mental, physical or both. Couple that with the guilt trip you get when you take a day off genuinely sick — you’re expected to provide a full day’s worth of lesson plans for cover teachers to use even if you’re on your deathbed — and the whole situation is just rather shitty all round.

So now I am pleased to enjoy my times of holiday, because they’re just that — time off. Nothing to worry about. No work I “should” be doing while I’m away; no “I’ll just check in on the office email”; no “I’ll just pen a quick article on that” — just rest and relaxation. Bliss.

1743: Sleepless in Perth

Andie and I are having a few nights away from home as we head up to Scotland (and back) for my friend Cat’s wedding. Cat lives in Aberdeen, so it’s quite a trek from the south coast, but we’ve made very good progress today — we got up to Perth by mid-afternoon, leaving us just a couple of hours’ drive to do to get to Aberdeen tomorrow.

Tonight we’re staying in a Premier Inn in Perth. I’d always assumed that Premier Inns were cheap-and-cheerful affairs on a similar level to Travelodge’s grotty-but-convenient charms, but I’ve actually been very impressed so far. The room is really nice — the bed is big (if surprisingly high off the floor), there’s a chaise-longue for reclining on (or for allowing a third person to sleep in the room, should that become necessary), the TV is a nice big Samsung HDTV (and even has extra HDMI, composite, audio and USB inputs built into the wall so you can connect your own devices) and the bathroom is pleasantly shiny, albeit somewhat short on pinchable cosmetic goods and sporting a public toilet-style sheet-by-sheet bog roll dispenser rather than regular toilet rolls.

The restaurant is dubbed Thyme and is open to members of the public who aren’t staying in the hotel. Normally I’d question whether or not anyone would ever want to come to a hotel restaurant if they aren’t staying in the hotel, but after most of a day’s worth of driving, Andie and I decided we didn’t really want to go out in search of dinner, so we went to give it a go — and, you know what? It was actually really, really good. Like, surprisingly so; it wasn’t what I’d call “cheap” but it also wasn’t extortionate hotel prices and, more importantly, it was actually excellent quality food: Andie had a frighteningly gigantic burger while I had, I think, the best rack of ribs I’ve ever had. Not bad for a chain restaurant in a cheapo chain hotel.

It’s almost a shame we don’t have more time to spend just relaxing here, though thankfully we did arrive early enough to be able to just chill out for a few hours without feeling like we immediately need to go to bed. It’s always nice to get away from the daily grind and have a bit of a change of scenery now and then, even if you’re not really doing anything specific while you’re away from home.

Of course, tomorrow we are doing something specific — we’re celebrating my friend’s marriage after a couple of hours’ driving — but for tonight, at least, we can just relax and enjoy that holiday-esque feeling of being far away from home in a comfortable room in a strange city. So I’m off to go and do just that, and try not to think about the exceedingly long drive back we have waiting for us on Tuesday!

1653: Impromptu Vacation

Whew.

Now that our international visitors have departed, it is time to collapse into a heap and fall asleep — and indeed, that is what I did for much of this afternoon, and that is what I’m probably going to do shortly after I hit the “Publish” button on this post.

It’s been a great few days, though, and Mark and Lynette appeared to have an enjoyable time. We didn’t have nearly enough time to do all the things we might have wanted to do — such is inevitably the way when you have just a few days to spend with people you don’t get to see in person very often — but we got a decent amount of things in, including a wander around Southampton (including the waterfront and the “old bits” at the far end of town), a visit to the stately home and grounds at Mottisfont, and a trip to Oxford for two room escape games, a wander around two of the colleges and finally an evening of gaming at the UK’s first (only?) board game café Thirsty Meeples.

Doing so much in such a short space of time has reminded me that our lifestyle on “normal” days is rather more sedate. I feel genuinely exhausted right now, though not at all sorry that we got to do as many things as we did. Whenever I host visitors — even if it’s just for a couple of hours — I often find myself worrying that I’m not entertaining them enough, or not being a good enough host or whatever. This time around, I feel like we did a decent job: a bit of downtime to relax and play things like ZombiU and Towerfall, trips out to see interesting things near and far, and a few “quintessentially British” things just to make them feel like they’ve had an experience that they can’t have anywhere else — even if that experience is just, I don’t know, eating a Jaffa Cake or something.

But anyway. Now they have departed and I am about to collapse, it’s time for a sort-of holiday before my new job starts at the end of August. I’m not quite sure what to expect from the job as yet, but I’m quite looking forward to it, for a number of reasons: chiefly, the fact that I’ll have reliable money coming in every month, but also the fact that it’s something I’ll be able to show up to, do, clock out at the end of the day and not have to worry about in the evenings. (Hopefully, anyway.) This will allow me to kick back of an evening and enjoy myself with some games or some TV or some anime without feeling like I “should” be doing something specific — a common issue that will be familiar to anyone who has ever written about games for a living. While I still fully intend to write about a variety of subjects for my own site MoeGamer, I’m not planning on putting any undue pressure on myself to romp through games as quickly as possible; I’m not working to a review schedule, nor do I have to worry about the “glut” of games coming later in the year. I can simply write about games as and when I feel like it, as often as I feel like it, and in as much detail as I feel like. It’s refreshing, and I can’t help thinking it will be a fine way to dispel some of the cynicism I’ve built up over the last few years. (Shitty free-to-play mobile games can still eat a dick, though, as can pretty much anything from EA.)

Anyway. I can feel my writing descending into rambling stream-of-consciousness, so rather than inflicting that on you, I will simply say good night for now, and hopefully be a little more alert tomorrow!

1206: My Holiday, by Pete, Age 32

I am still on holiday, or “vacation” as you crazy Americans call it, and I’m having a great time. A significant proportion of this can be attributed to our gracious hosts Mark and Lynette, whom I’ve been looking forward to coming to visit again for the past several years. It’s a bummer not living near the vast majority of my friends, most of whom live in various parts of North America and a few of whom live even further afield than that. This means that the opportunity to actually spend some time with people who mean a lot to me is something that I will seize whenever possible.

The other part of the reason I’m having a great time is simply the fact that I’m on holiday with absolutely no commitments or worries right now. It’s a thoroughly pleasant feeling to be in a position where I know I can just enjoy myself without having to think about getting work done, or live up to any responsibilities, or anything like that. It’s a feeling I haven’t had for quite some time, so I’m taking full advantage of the opportunity while I can.

Today has been a lazy day. Andie has been feeling a little under the weather as a side-effect of being a bit ill shortly before we left, so we took it easy for the day. Most of our time has been spent sitting around playing video games, watching TV and generally just hanging out. Some people may think it’s a waste to come three and a half thousand miles to do things that I’d do at home anyway, but combine the opportunity to relax without responsibilities with the chance to hang out with friends I literally haven’t seen face-to-face for years — despite talking to them most days thanks to the Intertubes — and that sounds like a thoroughly good time to me.

I’m a very easy guest. Provide me with a couch to sit on, something to look at and occasionally someone to talk to and I’m happy. I never feel obliged to be doing stuff constantly, unlike many other people I know. (That’s not a passive-aggressive thing — it’s simply the fact I know different people like to holiday in different ways.) I’m very happy just sitting around relaxing and doing things I enjoy with people I like rather than always being on the go, trying to cram as many “sights” into a short period of time as possible. To me, that way lies madness; I go on holiday to chill out and relax, not to be stressed out trying to mark things off on an imaginary, arbitrary checklist.

Basically, all is well in the world, and the holiday period is progressing pleasingly slowly. By the time I return, I should be ready to face whatever the future has in store for me.

1201: WE AR GOINGON HOLLYDAY TUMOROW

Well, we are. I’m looking forward to it a lot, even though my innate Britishness prevents me from showing any outward signs of it.

It’s the first proper holiday either Andie or I have had for quite a while, and it’s the first one I’ve had for ages where I haven’t had to do at least some work in it. (As it happens, depending on when my new gig starts, I may find myself having to do some work while I’m out there, but at present I’m as free as a bird, which is a very pleasant feeling indeed.)

Holidays are ludicrously expensive, aren’t they? Well, depending on where you go, obviously. But for the most part, if you want to go somewhere nice and/or abroad, you’ll generally find yourself having to pay through the nose just to get there, and then a whole bunch on top of that once you are there, assuming you actually want to, you know, do stuff. Fortunately, we’re lucky enough to have some friends where we’re going (all right, the primary reason we’re going on holiday is to visit them) and as such the expenses while we’re actually there will be significantly less than had we had to find a hotel for the time we’re out there. So thank you enormously to our gracious hosts for putting up with us!

This will be the second time I’ve visited Toronto. I really enjoyed my last trip there, as it’s an interesting city. Those who live there probably take it all for granted by now, but I was struck by its incredibly multicultural nature. I’m not talking like British multicultural, either, where you have districts that are predominantly Asian, Polish, whatever — no, I’m talking about this strange and wonderful thing Toronto has going on where you’ll be walking down one street and it’s Chinatown, then you’ll walk down another and the architecture is completely and utterly different and the people are likewise completely and utterly different. It’s quite chaotic, in a sense, but in a thoroughly pleasant sort of way.

The other reason I’m looking forward to visiting Toronto, of course, is the people we’re going to visit. Mark and Lynette are some very dear friends whom I haven’t seen face-to-face since 2010 and my trip to PAX East, at which I got to meet a whole bunch of people from the Squadron of Shame for the first time. I’ve often said that that trip was one of the most genuinely happy times of my life, and I stand by that; the fond memories are made all the more potent by the fact that everything else in my life pretty much fell to pieces shortly after that trip, but fortunately, as long-time followers will know, things are in a much better place for me now.

I’m looking forward to seeing Mark and Lynette (and their friends, too, some of whom I’m already acquainted with) because they are My Kind of People — people with whom I can nerd out about Persona, anime, JRPGs, board games and all manner of other geeky stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy spending time with my friends who live near me here in Southampton, but very few of them are “into” the same things to quite such a degree as I am. Sure, a lot of them are gamers to varying degrees, but an unfortunate side-effect of the games industry’s diversity these days is that not everyone is into the same things. One of my regular board gaming buddies is massively into Minecraft and Skyrim, for example, whereas I think I’m pretty much “over” both of those games, largely because I have such an astonishingly huge Pile of Shame to play through and thus don’t really want to devote any time to two potentially endless experiences. I don’t really know many people in this country — certainly not anyone I can just pop over for a coffee with — who would get quite so excited about, say, Ar Tonelico or Trauma Team as me.

Still, I guess in one sense this is a sort of good thing — I’m grasping here, I know — because it makes those rare opportunities to get together with Your Kind of People special occasions to be enjoyed and treasured. I’m hoping the coming two weeks will be memorable and fun not only for me and Andie, but for Mark, Lynette and anyone else who gets involved, too. There will doubtless be plenty of board and video games along the way, plus eating good food with good friends.

Can’t wait. So I should probably get to bed so I don’t miss our flight in the morning, huh? Catch you on the other side of the Atlantic, then.

#oneaday Day 846: Holiday Time

We’ve gone away for a few days as a late birthday treat for me. Since I took Andie to Legoland for her birthday last year, she’s taking me to Alton Towers since I’d dropped a few hints that I’d like to go sometime.

I haven’t been to Alton Towers for a very long time. I think the last time I went, I was still at school. I’m not sure how much has changed since that time, but I’m excited to find out.

I used to hate rollercoasters. I have vague memories of going on rides like Big Thunder Mountain at Disney when I went there back in 1985. I found them terrifying, but give me a break; I was about five years old at the time.

I can’t remember exactly when I managed to make myself start liking them, but I have a feeling it was as a result of a school trip to Alton Towers. We enjoyed several of these trips during our school career, despite the fact that there were at least two theme parks that were considerably closer to us. Alton Towers was always the prime choice, however, and we’d normally find ourselves heading there for the impressive fireworks displays shortly before the park closed for the winter.

The Corkscrew — sadly no longer with us — was the first “big boy” rollercoaster I ever went on, I think. (Big Thunder Mountain aside, obviously.) By comparison to some of the other impressive rollercoasters we have today, this was a relatively tame affair that took you up high, raced you around a few corners and then twizzled you through the titular corkscrew before landing back at the station again. The whole thing was over relatively quickly, but in the process I discovered that I was actually enjoying myself.

I was bitten by the thrillseeker bug after that. Nemesis and Oblivion were our next targets — for the uninitiated, the former is a rollercoaster where the riders’ chairs hang from the track rather than being a more conventional “train cart” style one, while Oblivion, at one point, featured one of the biggest drops in either the world or the country. I forget, but it was fucking terrifying, partly because it takes you up high then suspends you over aforementioned (vertical) drop for a good few seconds, lurches you forwards slightly and then sends you plummeting to the earth.

I know next to nothing about what Alton Towers offers today, but I’m looking forward to finding out tomorrow. I’m also quite looking forward to seeing whether or not Andie will be brave enough to join me on some of these ridiculous rides!

It’s a strange thing to do, when you think about it, isn’t it? “I know what I’ll do… I’ll get in a rickety old mine cart and fling myself around corners and down hills at ridiculous velocities. Why, you ask? ‘S a laugh, innit?”

#oneaday Day 730: Foreigner

We fly home from the US of A tomorrrow. It’s been a good trip but over far too quickly for my liking. Still, it will be nice to sleep in our own bed again, as the sofa bed we’ve been kipping on all week isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, to say the least. That and the idiosyncratic heating in the room we’re in having two settings: “hot as the sun” and “freeze your balls off”.

As much as I like America, though, it will be nice to get back to “normality”, I guess. Haven’t quite adjusted to the time change while we’ve been here, so going back home is going to be interesting. Either I’ll be able to sleep normally, or I’ll have to endure the mild annoyance of a completely screwed up body clock again. We’ll have to wait and see.

Mostly, though, it will be nice to feel like I’m in my “home” country again. America is superficially similar to the UK in many ways (only a bit bigger) but every so often you’re reminded that you are a foreigner in a strange land.

Try to find prepacked sandwiches in a supermarket, for example. Or decipher a menu at a Mexican restaurant. Or remember what the different types of eggs you can order at breakfast are (hint: it’s not “boiled, fried, poached and scrambled”. Or have a discussion about a kid’s grade point average. Or… Well, I could go on. But I won’t.

It’s actually pretty interesting to see quite how different two cultures which speak the same language can end up. You say “tomato”, I say “why are you shouting out names of fruit?”, that sort of thing.

I’m sure you get used to it after a while living here. Perhaps one day I’ll have the opportunity to get used to it for myself.

Dream on, eh?

#oneaday Day 728: Lag

I’ve had a somewhat inconsistent experience with jetlag on this particular trip. The other night when I was playing Ascension until 1AM, I was absolutely fine. Yet tonight, it’s 9.30PM and I’m knackered. Doubtless I will sleep shortly and awaken at approximately 4AM, when it will be freezing cold. At least it will give me some time to get some work done ahead of visiting the fine Mr Whittington tomorrow.

Part of this evening’s tiredness can probably be attributed to a fairly busy day, however. We took a trip into San Francisco, rode the cable cars and walked a whole lot. I discovered what the hell “taffy” is (chewy, and available in a huge variety of flavours) and enjoyed some calamari and fries by the Bay.

As with so many trips away, time is passing far too quickly. There’s only so much you can do in a week — particularly if you have a bit of work to do along the way — and it’s easy to get to the end wishing you’d done more. Ideally we’d have had the chance to stay over here a bit longer, but that’s not really practical at the moment, sadly.

On that note, I feel I’m going to have to bid you all farewell as I can barely keep my eyes open. Time to sleep early, and wake up at stupid o’clock in the morning; an inversion of my usual habits back home!