Currently… Playing:
Dungeon Defenders
Listening to:
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Watching:
Smallville: Season 10
Reading:
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Hey look, a Paypal button.
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Although the thing is, I’ve not been Mango’d. I’m just trying to be. I keep forcing the Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” update onto my phone, but all I’m getting is the Omnia bug. Again. I guess I’ll wait until Orange officially release it to me, and it pops up “An update for your phone is ready”, then I shouldn’t have driver issues. Fucking drivers.
I’m back down to just under 16 stone after piling on half a stone on holiday. It wasn’t too hard actually (being active helps), I thought it’d take longer.
I finished Transformers: War For Cybertron. The class I was looking forward to, Scientist, turned out to not be as good as I’d hoped. Ah well. I was hoping to fly in, dispatch someone with my Shotgun, then zoom off again, but it never worked out like that. Soldier was ok, bit of a powerhouse but ultimately too slow for my liking. Scout was good fun: turning invisible and sneaking around, or sniping bitches from miles away. The Leader class was probably my favourite. Buffs, homing mines, lots of residual-damage causing gadgets, and decent weaponry. Good stuff. Still, Scientist was good for the discovery I made. King Of The Hill style games gave out way more points per-minute than straight up Slayer games, and as a jet I could swoosh in, let off a Shockwave and spawn a turret, capture the node, then dash out again. In games where other people had that idea, you could just spend the entire game chasing opposing nodes, building up insane amounts of EXP. Good game, I enjoyed it.
I also finished my 60th Xbox game, Ionball EX, on my phone. It wasn’t that great. Enjoyable as far as Arkanoid clones go, but nothing special. Next post I write will be about Vanquish. I’ve finished it already (on Hard, no less), but there are still a few Achievements to mop up, and some collectables to be shot. It’s really good fun, and was a bargain £12 from Asda.
Well… It was.
I didn’t get much done in terms of blogging, but I did get other stuff done that needed doing. I burnt “Iain’s Digital Pics Volume 4″, I uploaded all the new photos I took with my camera and phone whilst on holiday (ready for the best ones to go on here), I did some online banking, checked that my phone contract was all well, ripped four albums ready to be put onto my mp3 player and generally had a sort out of some computery stuff (on the PC as well as in the study). It’s getting a bit cluttered in this here study, it does need a sort out. I don’t feel we have enough room to be honest.
I took notes over the course of the holiday, so it’s not like everything will evaporate from my memory!
Actually, the title is a misnomer. With WordPress you very rarely have to endure waiting – one of the reasons I love it so much. I finally decided to get around to installing Jetpack, and so far, so good. It hooks up with WordPress.com, and they provide all your stats like “pages viewed” and “visitors per day” from their end, so not having the site stats weigh my server down is a good thing. Also, the “share” buttons on the bottom of each post look much nicer than the plug-in I was previously using. That they all come with Jetpack is a bonus. I’ve only just scratched the surface, and there are more additions to come, but could this be the one plug-in to rule them all?
This feels like the first time in ages I’ve been able to sit and do some site stuff in ages without being dragged off to do some other random activity. I got some Haribo and some Irn-Bru, and I’m ready to do some serious typing. I’m going to retrospectively add entries from our holiday, finish up some other loose ends, and maybe look at updating the theme. Today is looking good for blogging.
The drive home was pretty uneventful. We stopped in a random Tesco on the way back, visited the toilets and got some sausage rolls. The journey to get home seemed longer than the journey to get there for some reason.
Smudge was so cute when we pulled into the drive. She was sitting at the semi-open window of the garage-room, and she went mental when we got out of the car. All purring and dribbling and meowing, clawing at the window in a vain attempt to open it up a little more so I could stroke here. I think she missed us.
All in all, it was a good week. It was great to get away and leave all the troubles behind, and just enjoy some time away in the company of my favourite person in the entire world. I did put on half a stone over the course of the week though, at this stage it’s not coming off as easily as it did in the early days of weight loss, so I may be reminded of the holiday every time I step on the scales for a while.
We went to Teignmouth on day seven. It was raining, so we didn’t really see much there. We went to The House Of Marbles, saw some guys blowing glass things, Jane and Myrtle bought some glass things, other than that, not a lot happened on this day. I got the impression Jane was still feeling delicate. In the evening we went to The Boathouse – the lovely pub on the Dawlish Warren seafront. I had the Mixed Grill, and jesus it was good. Very filling, very tasty.
Seeing as this entry is a bit short, I may as well tell you about the WP7 games I got to enjoy whilst on holiday. I got Monopoly as it was an easy 200 gamerscore (it was), Uno (same reason as Monopoly), Ionball EX because it was supposedly quite good (it wasn’t, but it was an easy 200), Beards and Beaks (awful game, but another easy 200) and Star Wars Cantina, which was easy, but time-consuming. I’ve still not finished that one. I also got a fair way through Angry Birds, which is, quite simply, brilliant. Well worth all the hype surrounding it.
We went to Torquay on day six. This was one of my favourite days.
Myrtle was obsessed with finding a Marks and Spencers in Torquay. I’m not sue why when we have a couple not too far away from where we live. The shopping area in Torquay was really nice, although it did sprawl a little. Lots of little streets off the main strip, but not really very many appealing local shops. We walked along the parade, looked at all the boats and watched the world go by for a bit. I tried to win an Angry Bird plush from those crane arcade machine things, and failed. We visited a Museum, they had an exhibition on Egypt running. That would’ve been good, if we hadn’t seen it all already when it, and we, were in Coventry earlier in the year. What a wacky coincidence. I had a Knickerbocker Glory on Torquay seafront. I had to, really. It was quite nice.
The arcade on the pier was full of cool old machines. I never had a go on any of them for fear of incurring the impatient wrath of older people, but just seeing their faded decals and pixellated screens made my day.
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What the fuck is this
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Daytona YEEEEAH
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A Super Street Fighter II cabinet
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And it still worked
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Some kind of random entertainment thing
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Amazing white plastic bikes
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G Loc cabinet
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Some kind of strength testing device
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MADE BY SEGA
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Gerald failed GCSE English
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Knickerbocker Glorious
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Secret Egypt: As seen in Coventry
In the evening we went down to the Dawlish Warren seafront again. On the way there, I noticed the above sign on the front of the local Happy Shopper. Atrocious. When we got to the seafront I did more paddling, which was nice. And rather than be predictable and make a sand castle, I made a sand-face.
I had some time to myself after we had a paddle as everyone else went for a little walk up the banks, but I sat and had some quiet reflection.
Today was pretty much a washout as Jane was really hungover. She had drunk quite a lot the previous night. We all set out to go to Brixham, but we had to turn around and drop Jane back at home, she was that rough. Colin, Myrtle and I went to Brixham, it was nice. We saw some nice paintings and lots of tasty looking fish. In the evening we went to The Ship Inn at Cockwood. It was a nice little place, the steak was delicious. I do like steak.
Seeing as this entry is a bit short, I think I’m going to tell you about our advanced tactics of “winning” on the 2p Pushers. It’s incredibly therapeutic, slotting several 2p coins into a machine and eventually retrieving a token (tokens can be seen on the pictures below) or two. You quickly learn which machines to avoid and which to go for. Ones that the arcade employees have recently re-jigged the tokens on: Avoid. Ones that a small child or elderly lady have recently given up on or have run out of coins to play: Play. Most people play in a sedate manner, one coin at a time, and get bored when the tokens barely move. You see kids and old folks playing like this all the time, plopping one coin in at a time, watching it go into the machine, possibly moving one or two other coins slightly, then slowly putting another coin in, and so on, in a war of attrition that they really can’t win because they are going so slowly.
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Avoid, for now
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Worth a play
The key is to insert two coins at once, with good timing, at regular intervals, so that they fall onto the sliding bit just as there is space for them to land and lie flat. Then, when the coins go back into them, there is maximum movement. When the metal slider comes back towards you, insert two more coins so they can do the same and you can actually cause some momentum. Sometimes after as little as 10-14 coins have been put in there is definite movement in the sea of 2 pence pieces. Keep up nice timing and eventually all the tokens will be yours. Things changed a little this year, as they had installed “rapid fire” slots on all the machines which encouraged people to smash coins in at an alarming rate. At first I was brainwashed into doing so, but quickly reverted to tried and tested tactics. The rapid fire slots simply caused the coins to block the passageways more often than not, rendering all previous play obsolete.
I do like the 2p Pusher machines.
Day four was plagued with indecision. I got the impression that Myrtle wanted to go somewhere but wouldn’t say where, waiting for someone else to suggest the place she wanted to go to and then say “YEAH LETS GO THERE”. Maybe it wasn’t that, but that’s the impression I got.
In the end we went to Tuckers Maltings. The most entertaining part of that particular place was the visitors book (which I always make a point of leafing through older pages and leaving a comment myself). One comment in particular caught my eye, it went something like:
Yeah this place was interesting but it smelled a bit. IROBOT IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER!!!
In fairness, it did smell a bit thanks to all the malt and stuff, but why did the person feel the need to mention iRobot? Utter insanity. I will do my best to match that in future visitor book comments.
That was pretty much it for the day. We went to the Club in the evening and there were a couple of notable fellow holiday people. The first has a backstory. We went to Welcome a few years ago, around the time “Monster” by The Automatic was a popular song. Well, there was this one girl we saw on our holiday who was a bit of a monster. Hugely overweight, frizzy hair, dire complexion, angry face – every time Jane or I saw her we’d sing “What’s that coming over the hill…”, you know, like the song. Well. We saw her on THIS holiday as well. At first we thought she must work there or something, but then we realised she was with her Mum, Dad, sisters, brothers, her entire family, and when one of the Bluecoats asked “Who’s going home on Friday?”, they all raised their hands. What are the odds? Two holidays, several years apart, shared by the same guests. She had such a memorable (and ugly) face as well. I find it uncanny. Anyway, we changed her nickname to Hexbug, as the song “Monster” by The Automatic is now used in Hexbug adverts. What’s that coming over the hill, is it a Hexbug? Is it a Hexbug?
The second memorable holiday-goer also has backstory, but not years old. On our first night, we noticed this guy, sat by himself, nursing a long orange juice. He was wearing socks and sandals, and had a cute little pedometer on his belt. We figured he was watching the show, and had a kid or two sat up by the stage, as all the kids do. Thing is, when the kids disappeared while the grown ups were playing bingo, he disappeared also. We nicknamed him “Pedo”. Not paedo. That would be insinuating something. We named him after his pedometer. He was by himself, we figured he used to come to Welcome with his Mum and/or Dad, who had now sadly passed away, and being of diminished intelligence, carried on the tradition without them. Anyway, he was quite a fan of the cheesy music, and was tapping his foot away. Then Tragedy came on. He started doing arm moves. Not the Tragedy arm moves, but his own stupid approximation of them. Then he got up and started dancing by his table. Then he slowly moved to the dancefloor and busted some wicked moves on there. Then the song finished and he got a STANDING OVATION. It was hilarious, the entire club stood up and clapped harder than when the Bluecoats finished one of their shows. He obviously didn’t realise what he was doing, the music just, like, took over. One of my holiday highlights.
Oh yeah, Jane got absolutely hammered. She was drinking double vodkas as if her life depended on it.
On day three we went to Bygones in Torquay. It is a place that revels in the past, and has around a million interesting artefacts from the 40s and 50s, mostly nostalgic packaging. From preserved biscuits (which look surprisingly like modern day biscuits), through racist gollywogs, to “titillating” images. It was quite interesting though, and fair play to them for wanting to preserve the past for us all to enjoy. It was interesting to see how people used to live and the tools they used to use. Some of the model people were really lifelike. Their security was a bit over the top though. I leaned over a barrier to assist a stuck clockwork toy, only for alarms to sound and klaxons to… klax? Do klaxons klax? I don’t know. Anyway, yeah, OTT!
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Biscuits
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Gollywogs
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Saucy!
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Mount Pleasant view
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Beach huts, Dawlish Warren
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Paddling
Later that day we went to Dawlish, checked out Gay’s Creamery (honestly, yes, it is the real name of a real place), had a look around the knick-knack shops, looked out to sea and all that. I was tempted to buy a little pot of mussels, but they were quite expensive and were probably too salty. Later that day Jane and Colin and I went to Dawlish Warren seafront. We had a long walk down the nature reserve, it’s such a beautiful place. The path was quite sandy so I took my shoes off and when it came to walking back, that was the perfect excuse to go and have a paddle in the ocean. It was quite nice. The water was cold, but you quickly acclimatise to these things. I had forgotten how nice it was to have sand between your toes as the waves engulf your ankles. It sorted out my dry skin too, there are definitely benefits to having your feet in nice salty water for fifteen minutes.
In the evening we went to The Mount Pleasant Inn. It is situated on a hillside overlooking the beach and as we were there at night it was nice to see it all lit up.
Got up and had a shower. The shower was nice. The bathroom in general was quite nice too. Then we had a fried breakfast. This, supposedly, was to fill us up so we wouldn’t want lunch ’til later in the day, but I found I was still hungry at the usual lunch time.
We went to Paignton Zoo on day 2. The animals were great. We saw a sad looking elephant who had no elephant friends, some cool giraffes and some very intense Gorillas (I’m sure I saw a flicker of human emotion behind their eyes). I was trying to communicate with the animals by doing my very best “Perry The Platypus” noise (for those of you not educated in the ways of Phineas and Ferb, see this Youtube). None of the animals were impressed. We also saw a lady who was wearing odd-Crocs, and a hell of a lot of obese people who were struggling with the undulating nature of the ground. We stopped off for a snack half-way around the zoo, and I ordered a Banana Split. It took the girl around ten minutes to construct it (much longer than the time it took me to devour it). Seriously, how hard can it be to make an ice cream based dessert?
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Odd-Crocs
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A giraffe
That evening, we had steak for tea. I fucking love steak. I love it rare, as rare as it can be without killing me. That was nice. Then later we went to the Club again, drank more alcohol, and let the Bluecoats entertain us with silly drunken games. They selected some people from the audience and the drunk people had to dash off and get things from the crowd such as a pair of trousers from a man, a lipstick, a ladies bra, etcetera. Mildly amusing. There was something quite quaint and pre-TV about the whole thing. Are the Bluecoats genuinely happy about working in a holiday camp, or would they rather be on TV? Who knows. They seemed happy enough up there on stage.
Holiday!
I got up at 5am so I could jump in the shower first (I must have a shower every morning – I get terribly sweaty at night), and be ready for the designated 7am departure time. Funny – 5am is my usual Saturday morning wake-up time, so it wasn’t too much bother for me. As I said, 7am was the designated departure time, but Myrtle had other ideas, making random flasks of coffee, and fretting over little things we’d forgotten to pack.
Eventually we got the journey underway, it was pretty uneventful. We never got lost, but when Jane took a turn at driving her Dad’s car, she did hit the kerb. It made a horrible noise. In her defence it was only the second time she’d driven the car (It’s a bit bigger than hers), she was avoiding a crash, and it was a bloody narrow road. I was quite sleepy on the journey actually. I’m used to getting up and doing stuff, not getting up and then sitting stationary for a long time.
We stopped at Seaton on the way there, as we have done on a couple of other occasions when we’ve come down this way. Seaton is a quaint little place, and I loved the blast of windy sea air when we went out to the seafront. I also made a friend – some random guy started chatting to me about a Tesco they were building, some random guy who was holding 50-60 helium-filled, cartoon-character-themed balloons. He was my balloon friend.
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Jane, in the car
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Seaton seafront
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My balloon friend
We arrived at the Welcome Family Holiday Camp in Dawlish Warren (hereafter known as Welcome), got our key really quickly, found our holiday house, unpacked a little, then it was off to Sainsbury’s to stock up on foods and drinks. We bought way too much food and way too much alcohol, although Jane will dispute that last point. Myrtle insisted I get some yoghurts for my breakfast – this was before I knew we would be having a fried breakfast every morning – so they had to come home with us in the end.
When we got back to our holiday house and had settled in a little, we went for a walk to the Dawlish Warren seafront. It’s a really nice beach. We also popped into the arcades, Jane and I love a bit of 2p coin pusher action. Last time we were here we spent a mildly disturbing amount of time in there, pushing 2p coins. There is definitely an art to it, but more on them later. On the way back we picked up fish ‘n’ chips, which we ate. It was tasty.
Later in the evening we went to the “Club”. It is the place where everyone who is on holiday at that particular holiday camp goes in the evenings, to drink alcohol (Jane said the ale was nice) and be amused or appalled by the Bluecoats who put on entertainment shows every night. They shows range from full scale song and dance routines to these things called “party dances” – a catchy song is coupled with catchy body movements, and all the kids swarm up the front and do the moves with the Bluecoats. Funny to watch sometimes. They had party dances in other places we’ve been to, and Jane was most upset that they got the “stack the shelves” move in Big Fish, Little Fish wrong.
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