#oneaday Day 115: Forest getaway

I slept terribly last night and consequently woke up this morning feeling like absolute garbage. It didn't improve much as the day went on, but I feel vaguely more human now, just as it's about time to head to bed.

I can, at least, console myself with the fact that the wife and I have booked a much-needed holiday for in a couple of weeks. We're going to Center Parcs in Elveden Forest again. This is, I believe, the third time we've been to Center Parcs together generally, and the second time we've been to Elveden Forest. It's actually the fourth time I've been to Elveden Forest, as I went twice when I was a kid: once with my parents, my brother and one of his friends, then again some years later with my parents and one of my friends.

Center Parcs can be a pricy holiday, particularly if you start getting involved in the activities they offer, but honestly even if you do pretty much nothing for the time you're there, it's still a thoroughly pleasant getaway. This time around, we're taking a two-bedroom villa (or "lodge", I believe they call them now) as it was only fifty quid more than the apartments we usually go for. That should provide plenty of space to spread out, relax and enjoy ourselves.

I was kind of hoping that the next time we went away on holiday, I'd be in a better physical condition, but that's very much a slow process that has kind of stalled a little bit of late. I'm still down in weight from where I was, but I've been really struggling with motivation, so I've decided to take a short break from attending Slimming World meetings, at least until after our holiday, and then decide what to do after that. I have been deriving some satisfaction from the Fitness Boxing sessions I've been doing, though, so once I feel a bit better after today's crappy feeling, I'll be back on that.

Anyway, regardless of the state I'm in, I'm looking forward to some time away. It's good to get away from it all now and again, have a change of scenery and spend some time in an environment where there's zero pressure. And I well and truly intend to "unplug" as much as possible from the Internet while I'm away. I'll still post my daily blog there, and we'll almost certainly take some gaming equipment with us, but other than that, I intend to pretty much completely ignore that the rest of the world exists for a while, and I'm very much looking forward to that.

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.

#oneaday Day 63: Late-Night Disco

Finished Disco Elysium this evening. I think I will save more in-depth thoughts for a proper write-up on MoeGamer, but I came away very satisfied with the whole thing, and impressed that the game as a whole managed to successfully carry a highly replayable 30+ hour RPG without a single combat sequence. If you've been hanging fire on giving this one a go, don't; it's absolutely great, particularly if you enjoyed Planescape: Torment's approach to the CRPG: dialogue-heavy, emphasis on the story and on having the flexibility to really "play" your character in a number of different ways, despite following a canonical storyline that focuses on them.

Anyway, that has… been the majority of my day, to be perfectly honest. It's the last full day of my week off work, so I thought I'd take a day to just do "nothing" in particular, just enjoy something. So I did. And I'm glad I did; it's always satisfying to reach the conclusion of an enjoyable game, and especially if you can do so while not under any real sort of time pressure to do anything else.

Tomorrow I might go into town for a bit to have some lunch with Andie and a couple of her friends, then I think I might record a few more videos. I had sort-of planned to make a bunch of videos during this week off, but that didn't happen for one reason or another. I'm not annoyed about that, mind; part of the reason for having this week off in the first place was just to decompress and unwind somewhat from the daily grind and stress of work, so loading myself up with self-imposed "work" to do may not have been the best thing to do.

But anyway. Now Disco Elysium is safely ticked off the list, I can think about other things. I got a few retro treats through the post today — Jungle Strike and Urban Strike for SNES (I already have Desert Strike), Golfamania for Master System and Rad Racer for NES. I'm excited to give all of these a go for various reasons. But that can probably wait until tomorrow. For now, I need a poo, then to go to sleep. So that's what I'm going to do. In that order.

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.

#oneaday Day 56: Disconnect

I'm officially on holiday for a week! I don't have anything much planned for the time off, aside from our trip on Thursday to go and look at pianos, but I'm going to try and be vaguely "productive" with my time. That means I'm going to try and force myself out in this heat and into the gym — once I'm in the air conditioning, I'm sure it'll be fine — and I'm going to record some videos, and perhaps write some stuff.

One thing I'm going to try and make an effort to do is not look at "online" stuff as much as humanly possible. I'm not going to look at Twitter (easy, since I don't have an account any more except the official one I use for work), I'm not going to look at Facebook (ditto), I'm not going to look at BlueSky (easy enough) and I'm probably going to try and ration my Discord usage as much as possible also.

I just don't want to know, you see. I don't want or need to know what people are arguing about today, or what the worst people on the Internet are being sexist, racist or transphobic about today. I don't want to know about the seemingly endless parade of layoffs in the games industry. And I don't want to know how shit online media in general is. I know all these things. They are not going to change.

Instead, I would like a nice, quiet week off, away from it all as much as possible. This will demand a certain amount of willpower, of course, but I'm confident I can find enough things to occupy myself with that I won't need to idly flip through social-related apps on my phone. I have games to play, books to read, episodes of Deep Space Nine to watch, music to play, videos to make and all manner of other things. So why should I waste my time with stuff that, on balance, makes me miserable?

I shouldn't, obviously. So that's the plan. Minimise looking at anything potentially upsetting, frustrating or annoying online and just enjoy the things I have around me. I will, of course, still be checking in here and those videos I'm making will be up on YouTube, but aside from that… a bit of "digital detox" is just what the doctor ordered for a week. I hope it leaves me feeling refreshed, because heaven knows I feel run-down right now.

Time for the first sleep of the holiday, then. Bring on the aircon!

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.

#oneaday Day 54: Catch-Up Time

I apparently forgot to write anything yesterday! In my defence, it is so brain-meltingly hot here right now that remembering to do literally anything is proving to be somewhat troublesome. After I'm done here, I'm going to go and sit in the air-conditioning in the bedroom and watch some Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I've got a week off from work next week, which I'm looking forward to. I'm feeling a bit run-down and tired at the moment, and a bit of a break is just what I need. Plus I have some potential excitement ahead: hopefully next week I will be getting a new piano, or at least ordering a new piano. The one we got for £250 a few years back has pretty much reached the end of its life, as it's not staying in tune at all, and is, to put it mildly, displeasurable to both play and listen to. So it's going, hopefully to be replaced with something much nicer and newer.

I'm looking forward to this, because I keep telling myself that I should play the piano more, but then with the piano itself not being at its best, I felt disinclined to spend time with it. Still, it's had some good times here in its lifetime, and we must have had it a few years at this point. (According to the archives, we got it in 2015.) It has to go, though, and sadly, due to its age, it's unlikely to find a new home. The place I'll hopefully be getting a new piano from is able to take it away and responsibly dispose of it, though, so hopefully at least some of its components can live on as spares or something.

I've probably shared some piano stuff on here at some point in the past, if you're not already familiar. Hold on and let me rummage through the archives.

Hmm. Can't find anything on the blog, but there's a couple of things on YouTube. Here you go:

And here:

Both of those were actually recorded using the electric piano I still own but don't really have anywhere convenient to put. And annoyingly, the make of electric piano I have seems to be the one and only that they don't make stands for. I have an X-shaped keyboard stand for it, but that's far too wobbly and uncomfortable for everyday use — plus since the electric piano doesn't have any built-in speakers, I'd have to find somewhere to put the amp that goes with it. Not ideal.

So yeah. Hopefully by this time next week I will have, at the very least, ordered a new piano. I look forward to sharing it with you!

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.

2147: Back to Reality

Was going to assemble a lengthy post full of Xenoblade Chronicles X tips and tricks, but felt that three days in a row would probably be pushing it a bit, so I'll save that for tomorrow. I have plenty to share!

So, as Sunday rolls into Monday, our short holiday is over, and we're both back to work in the morning. The last week has kind of flown by, which is a bit of a shame, but we've both had a good time, and it was clearly good for both of us to get out of the house and away from numerous stressful influences so we could just enjoy ourselves.

I actually don't mind the prospect of going back to work, though. I feel like I'm getting into a decent "rhythm", for want of a better word — though irregular shifts and hours mean that it's probably not the best word — and I feel reasonably confident staring down the Christmas retail period. I'm also feeling semi-confident I might manage to stay on after the holiday season is over, but I've learned to my cost to not, you know, something something chickens hatching. So I'm not counting on it.

Not a lot else of note to share right now, really; we saw some owls and did some archery at Center Parcs (not at the same time) and lots of swimming. We ate nice food — we set aside a particular day to ignore the diet and treat ourselves, so we'll see on Wednesday how much impact that had — and enjoyed some peaceful R&R in the woods.

We're into December now, and the end of the year beckons. 2015 has been another year that hasn't been all that great for me, frankly, but there have been highlights here and there; this last week has probably been one of them. Let's hope there's a few more I can squeeze in before 2015 becomes 2016.

For now, though, it's time for bed, and back to normality tomorrow morning. Boo.

1872: Long Trip

I'm in Boston! PAX East proper starts tomorrow, so today was all about actually getting to the place, getting together with people and then just bumming around to have a bit of fun.

I was a little stressed out at the prospect of the journey, to be honest. When I'm going abroad, I usually travel with other people whom I can rely on and ask questions of, so this was a relatively new experience to me. Still, I got through safely, and my bag even arrived at the same time as I did, which is the main thing I was worried about.

The reason I was a little anxious was that this was also the first time I'd taken a multi-stage trip to the States — in this case, flying from my local airport Southampton to Dublin, then onwards from there to Boston. I was particularly interested to discover that Dublin airport has a "pre-clearance" area for visitors to the States. I hadn't come across this before, but it appears to be an extremely good idea: rather than wasting hours of time after you've been stuck on a plane for hours, pre-clearance allows you to do all the immigration and passport control nonsense before you actually take your flight. It's actually sort of surreal; it looks like you're entering the States — there are pictures of Obama and everything — but in reality you're just heading for a normal airport gate.

When I arrived at Boston I successfully navigated the subway system to the hotel I'm staying at with my friends; this cost a fraction of the price of getting a cab, so it was an infinitely preferable option given that my funds are somewhat limited at present.

I'm not sure what we're going to see at PAX tomorrow; for one thing, we're probably going to take on the Final Fantasy XIV battle challenge and fight Shiva in the hope of winning a T-shirt, but other than that, I couldn't tell you yet.

For now, though, it's after midnight (here) and my body clock still probably reckons it's about 6:15 in the morning, so I better go to bed. Night!

1764: An Outing with Owls

It's our second (and final) full day here at Center Parcs. We both woke up extremely stiff all over after what was a pretty busy day yesterday, so we had a relaxing morning. We headed over to a cafe in the main plaza area to have some breakfast — a pretty magnificent Eggs Royale (Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon instead of ham) accompanied by spinach and some really nice if slightly salty crispy potato bits.

After that, we had a little wander around the shops in the plaza, which we hadn't really explored a great deal. We paid particular attention to the sweet shop, which offered the typically overpriced pick and mix, a selection of American sweets (including Nerds, Runts and Gobstoppers, the latter two of which I haven't seen for years), some nice looking ice-cream and a selection of fudge that would put Cornwall's finest to shame. We came away with a box full of fudge of various flavours and have been enjoying that over the course of the day. Pro-tip: chocolate fudge with Oreos in it is proper delicious.

Our main activity for the day was "An Outing with Owls", which we signed up for largely on the promise of being able to see some owls, since owls are pretty cool. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the session, but it turned out to be a lot of fun, with everyone getting the opportunity to get their falconry on and let owls of various sizes land on their (leather glove-protected) hands while they nommed on bits of chicken. These well-trained birds swooping from person to person is an impressive thing to witness, and not a little disconcerting when one comes flying straight for you before perching politely on your hand until it's had something to eat.

We got to see a selection of owls, ranging from a barn owl to a Great Grey, which, true to its name, was both grey and massive. (And dubbed "Clock Owl" by Andie and I, due to the fact that when it was sat on its perch prior to the session, it had the size, shape and appearance of a rather feathery mantelpiece clock.) There was also a South American burrowing owl, which was kind of adorable, too; rather than swooping around as the larger owls did, this tiny little thing preferred to scurry around on the floor, then occasionally leap and fly up onto anywhere that took its fancy — knees, hands, shoulders and even, on one particularly memorable occasion, the top of a gentleman's hat.

We came back to the apartment for a well-earned rest after that, and we're shortly to have one final night-time session in the Subtropical Swimming Paradise before grabbing some dinner.

It's been a very pleasant — if quite expensive! — couple of days away, and I predict it will be quite tough to go back to reality on Tuesday! Such is the way with holidays, though; good times have to end at some point and we all have to make our way back to the humdrum nature of our daily existences.

Still, for now, there's still more to enjoy, so we're going to make the most of it.

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.