Hello blog! I’m typing this on my delightfully fresh new laptop, which – thanks to the really decent longevity of my former laptops – now joins an impressively short list by becoming only the fourth I’ve ever owned. It’s also my first non-Intel laptop, using an Arm-based processor instead, and the good news is that Windows now does a decent job of emulating most older software so making the switch is pretty seamless.
The big exception is supposed to be gaming, and although I’ve never done much of that, the process of setting everything up did make me think “hmm, but what game would I even want to play anyway?”. And then it hit me: Crash Bandicoot. I have a childhood memory of staying up all night with my sisters at someone else’s house – I forget whose – watching them play Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation and being quite envious that we didn’t have a video game console at home. But surely now, with an exciting and expensive machine from the far-future sitting in front of me, I might finally be able to play it? And the answer is… yes! It turns out the series was remastered a few years back, including for PC, and my Arm laptop is able to pretend to be an Intel laptop cosplaying as a PlayStation without any complaints. Of course, I am obviously quite rubbish without all those childhood years to practice, but while Randi’s been in South Africa on a work trip over the past week I’ve been having a great time smashing boxes and jumping over things.
It didn’t take Randi and I quite as long as this to crack open the Dominion: Empires expansion we were gifted a few years back, but now that we’ve had more weekends together we’ve finally had time to play a few games, and it’s been really fun diving back into Dominion and – in this expansion specifically – wracking up debt to buy new and exciting cards. We also had an indulgent tapas dinner together at Good as Gold in Brockley, which Randi had been eyeing, ordering almost twice as many dishes as the more restrained couple next to us. I’ve also been able to enjoy watching Doctor Who all over again! (Memo to the universe: there’s no law saying that Doctors are term-limited to three seasons, and I’d be very OK with Ncuti pushing the boat out here.)
For the August Bank Holiday weekend we went to see mum in Exmouth, where Randi felt an influx of holiday vibes and suggested that the three of us take a cycle ride together along the river to Topsham for a drink. As only a very occasional cyclist I was still slightly nervous on the way there, even though the route is almost entirely along a quiet cycle path, but fortunately it turns out that having a pint is immensely relaxing and I enjoyed the ride home with a lot more breezy confidence! (Note: this is not driving advice.) Shout-out also to the pub in Lympstone where we broke for a very enjoyable dinner on the way home, before quickly taking to our bikes to avoid losing all the light completely.
On Sunday we reverted to our feet for a circular walk around Otterton, and then settled in for the evening to watch Nyad – a biopic about distance swimmer Diana Nyad who successfully made it from Cuba to Florida on her fifth try in 2013, aged 64, after an initial attempt back in 1978. There’s very much a Steve Jobs-like quality to Nyad, which means you can either sit back and admire the incredible achievements – and sheer force of will – or you can start to unpick things by noting that she sometimes treats other people very badly, and isn’t always completely truthful about her accomplishments. To be clear, I don’t think this is a problem we need to stress out about: the world does need people like Steve Jobs and Diana Nyad, and even if there are a lot of grey areas around the events of 2013 (Guinness World Records later renounced its certification of the record as an ‘unaided’ swim, not that you’d know from the film) nobody disputes that Nyad is an incredible athlete who made it through shark-infested waters after swimming for over two days straight.
Other recent things have included a fascinating conversation with fellow QPCS alum Munnawar (in which we definitely went way, way beyond the scope of what the phone call was supposed to be about), serendipitously catching some of the Paralympics opening ceremony with Tash and Cormac (after buying nine Magnums, to make a point) and catching dinner with Bronwen and Josie at the Honor Oak.
With Randi, I also finally watched Mean Girls. It’s been a least a decade after I first said something like “hmm, I should actually watch this film so I can appreciate all of the memes better” and by this point half of the fun of watching a teen comedy from 2004 is laughing at all of the many, many things which would no longer be deemed acceptable in 2024. (Hey, that’s the nature of comedy, after all – for something to be funny it normally has to lie somewhere on the boundary of good taste.) But it was good. I endorse Mean Girls, at least the original, although I do not endorse serving school lunches in brown paper bags.
Without Randi, I also followed Katie’s recommendation and watched Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. As you might deduce, it’s a documentary about a group of people who are really, really good at Tetris. What’s interesting is that the whole thing is self-consciously inspired by The King of Kong film from a few years earlier (which I also watched recently) but the people taking part in this one have clearly taken notes and don’t want to come over as “cheats, sycophants or sanctimonious self-appointed referees” (©Me). Instead, for the most part the Tetris community comes across as much more supportive and lovely than those Donkey Kong bros.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this fortuitous last-minute meeting of the ways at Casa Tua, James’s spiritual home near King’s Cross!
