Month: May 2021

Spacing the return

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This summer and beyond is starting to come together in terms of ‘gradually poking my nose back out into the outside world’. I’ve got six real races booked for the remainder of the year, with hopefully a seventh to be added when entries open, and it looks like there’s absolutely no problems with them going ahead. The restart of parkrun has been delayed from the 5th to the 26th of June (which selfishly I’m pleased about because it means the first one back doesn’t clash with a race for me), and hopefully they’ll be able to confirm enough events in the interim that the new date will go ahead. I’m excited to get back to group running again!

Geth and I will also be seeing family a few times over the next few months, but we’re adamant that that’s the only thing we’re doing that involves travel (apart from the London Marathon in October, which has been booked for a long time). Travel is very difficult for both of us – I have mental health issues about being out of routine that have become ever more obvious over the last two and a half years since I quit drinking, and Geth’s constant travelling contributed to his seizure and subsequent hospitalisation in March 2020. As such, it’s something that we know we have to minimise in the future, and so we won’t be doing nearly as many things away from home as we used to do pre-pandemic.

Finding a balance is going to be quite tough.

Choose Your Own Adventure books
Some new reading material. I’ve been enjoying reading my old childhood gamebooks again recently (the Asterix ones are fab!) so I added some more to an Amazon order to qualify for free delivery 🙂

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Murray Gold – ‘Doomsday’
Michael Land – ‘The Swamp’
Duran Duran – ‘Five Years’

Sunday

Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Opening Credits Part #1’
Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Bully In The Alley’

Monday

Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Bully In The Alley’
Blink-182 – ‘All The Small Things’
The Offspring – ‘Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’
Patti Smith – ‘Because The Night’

Tuesday

The Running Channel – ‘Run With Me’

Wednesday

Duran Duran – ‘Invisible’
Carter USM – ‘And God Created Brixton’

Thursday

Duran Duran – ‘Invisible’

And a bonus track Geth was humming that day:

Lisa Lougheed – ‘Run With Us’

Friday

Mark Knopfler – ‘Local Hero’
Duran Duran – ‘Invisible’

Phone Box Thursday: Barry Basic and the Quick Escape

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I’m out of real-life phone boxes, so here’s the interior of the one I drew for my game Barry Basic and the Quick Escape.

Red phone box
Red phone box, a small village somewhere in England, summer 1969.

I based it on an image of a mid-century phone box interior I found online, as the game is set in 1969. The A and B mechanisms were to do with coin return (explained here under ‘Coin Boxes’).

Most of my planned games for the next year have phone boxes in. I think I’ve just been missing seeing real-life examples!

Playlist Pick: Duran Duran, ‘Invisible’

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There was only one song that was ever going to make my Wednesday playlist pick today. It’s ‘new Duran Duran single’ day!

I woke up early to listen to it on Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 show this morning, and have been enjoying it on and off all day. I really liked it on first listen, which is unusual, as most songs take some time to grow on me.

The new album (which is coming out in October) also became available for pre-order at midnight last night. I may have ordered both the signed CD and the green vinyl. New Duran albums don’t come along very often.

Now off to listen to the single again…

Booze Alternative: Freixenet 0.0% Alcohol Free Sparkling White

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My other favourite! It comes in second to the rosé version, but then the rosé version is outstanding.

Freixenet 0.0% Alcohol Free Sparkling White
Freixenet 0.0% Alcohol Free Sparkling White.

This one has a slightly drier taste, but I’d still describe it as medium. Like the rosé it’s a very different taste to alcoholic fizz, which is a good thing in my book, as it feels like a different kind of treat. Sober treats are important!

Adventures in Coding: The Halfway Point

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So the reason that I’m taking a hiatus from my running vlog is because, fun though it is to make videos, the editing process does take a lot of time – and I need to prioritise other fun things at the moment, namely the frighteningly large text adventure game that I’m making for the next big competition. As such, in lieu of my Monday vlog share, I’ll be doing a weekly update on here about the game project.

Last year, I made the first section of this game – an excerpt called Pre-Marie that I entered into IntroComp. The full game is called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Marie, and it has turned out to be an absolute behemoth. All my games start out as behemoths but most of them get ruthlessly hacked down to size due to the time constraints of the game jams I make them for. I had three months to make Marie, starting from the beginning of April when I finished Barry Basic and the Quick Escape, and believe me I have found I need every spare minute of those three months. It’s an ambitious project, but I’m so determined to get it finished.

Marie
It all starts in an attic on a rainy night.

I’m halfway through the project now. I spent April planning out the game, am spending May coding, and will be spending June making the bells and whistles (graphics and music) and doing as much playtesting as possible. I expect it will get a bit tight at the end (game projects always do!) but I’m so invested in this game and it will be so worth it when it’s complete.

I’ve been getting a lot of very good reception for Barry Basic and the Quick Escape, which has been really lovely and encouraging and has spurred me on to keep working really hard on my game creation! The game came second in the jam, which meant that as a top five game it was entered into the ‘Scott’s Choice’ award shortlist, judged by adventure game legend Scott Adams. I’m thrilled to say that I won the Scott’s Choice award, and will soon be the proud wearer of the prize t-shirt!

The halfway point feels a bit scary as I’ve still got so much to do, but I know I can do it!

July will most definitely be a month spent playing other people’s games instead…

Sunday Race Memories: Great North 10k 2017

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In terms of my own running, the most memorable thing about the Great North 10k 2017 was that I didn’t come dead last like I had done the previous year!

Great North 10k 2017
Still slow, but not slowest! Photo by Ian Harman Photography.

On the whole, though, the most memorable thing about the Great North 10k 2017 was that Geth ran it with a broken toe, as he hadn’t yet been persuaded to take a running break and go to the physio. He ended up doing a lot of parkrun volunteering that summer.

I ran 1:17:25 on that occasion, which is about 10-15 minutes slower than I could race a 10k now but also about 25 minutes faster than I’d run it the year before! When you start off sloth-slow, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Saturday ’80s Photo: ‘The Storm’ Poster

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I started primary school in 1989 and so there are lots of photos of me in my uniform posing with everyone I knew. This photo was taken in our kitchen the first time my grandparents visited after the school year started. However, what always catches my eye these days is the newspaper pull-out poster we had up on the wall of ‘The Storm’ (presumably the 1987 storm). I don’t recall this poster so we can’t have had it up for much longer.

1989

Mum and Dad have had a corkboard on that wall for as long as I can remember, so maybe that’s why the ‘The Storm’ poster had to go!

No room at the inn

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My week has been very busy, in the way that a lot of my weeks have been very busy during lockdown. Lots of day job work, lots of working on my own creative projects (writing and coding), a bit of running but not as much as is ideal due to a bad hip, quite a lot of strength training to try and fix said hip, and a lot of playtesting and competition-judging other people’s text adventures (the most fun part of my day and a good way to give back to a community that is giving me so much joy at the moment).

I’ve been working really hard recently and it’s been paying off. There have been a few developments in my editing business that I’ll talk about later in the year, I’m starting to get bits and bobs of writing published, and my text adventures are doing well and getting a good reception. I hit RED day 500 this morning – my 500th day running in a row – which is enabling me to feel like I’m still achieving things with my running even though I’m having a bad time of it with my hip and a general lack of energy at the moment.

All of this has been made possible by the pandemic allowing me to sit on my sofa all day long and get things done. I am one of the people for whom lockdown has, on the whole, been beneficial – of course I’ve had my anxious moments like everyone else, as I really don’t deal well with uncertainty, but in general I have been really, really happy having an excuse to stay home. I’ve realised more than ever that I don’t actually like leaving my house, and that it’s okay not to like leaving your house. The real anxiety I have now is adapting to the world going back to normal again. I’ve said for probably a year now that I won’t just be able to jump back into my life as it was pre-pandemic; there were a lot of things I used to do that, I have realised, caused a lot of unnecessary stress. Constantly going out to group activities and classes, gigs and races every week, travelling every other weekend… I can’t go back to all that. My personal return to normality is going to have to be very gradual, and there are a lot of things I probably never will do again.

Learning to say ‘no’, to myself as much as to anyone else, is probably going to be my biggest challenge this year. I’ve found out how important it is to feel in control of my own time. It’s a precious thing, and I’m not going to give it up.

Lego USB stick
Life is starting to fit into place, gradually.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Opening Credits Part #1’
Whitesnake – ‘Here I Go Again ’87’*

Sunday

Patti Smith – ‘Because The Night’
Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’

Monday

Dee Cooke – ‘Outside Building’
Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Sailor Ain’t A Sailor’

Tuesday

Whitesnake – ‘Here I Go Again ’87’

Wednesday

Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Haul Away Joe’

Thursday

Pet Shop Boys – ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)’
Duran Duran – ‘Tel Aviv’

Friday

Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Crete’
Duran Duran – ‘Save A Prayer’
Talking Heads – ‘Once In A Lifetime’
Ed Sheeran – ‘Lego House’

*RIP Tawny Kitaen.