I locked myself out of my house yesterday.
The dawning moment of realisation happened a good step and a half towards the car, in a rush to get to the gym on time. Needless to say, I failed to run my allotted 7km that evening, though in hindsight the associated running around surely carried me a good portion towards it.
Now, in my youth, I was not unfamiliar with lock-picking, if for no other reasons than my chronic forgetfulness and the relatively simple locks on the doors. Finally, I had a chance to put all that practice into use… were my picks not in the house also. Other efforts involving credit cards and sticking my hand through the letterbox proved the house’s resilience beyond doubt. I suppose that’s a Good Thing, but not much consolation in these trying times.
The next course of action was to contact my landlord, in the optimistic hope of a spare key secreted in the grounds or at a helpful neighbour. Alas, this avenue too proved fruitless. Much love must thus be afforded my brother, who, after explaining my predicament and the exorbitant £150 fee for a locksmith, suggested the landlord post down a spare set of keys.
Now for the next couple of days, I’m staying at a friend’s house, spending their money and drinking their wine. Were it not for the limited wardrobe, I could see myself settling well into my new roll as hobo, slacker and general drain on society.
If your memory is as ignominious as mine and you’re sensible, it would be wise to leave a spare key with a neighbour. However, if you prefer a more.. exciting life, I would strongly advise installing flimsy doors locks. These have a proven track record of facilitating action-packed entrances as you kick down your door.
I’ve started buying in packs of ten.
It seems that it’s only after events like these that you actually question what, in the grand scheme of things, could made you have thought that attempting to drink continuously for a entire day would be a helpful and enriching experience. What would have possessed me to write off the harrowing tales of woe related to me by (significantly) bigger and better athletes in the inebriation Olympics?
More the fool I, Dave Hill, and a number of friends took up this gauntlet of insanity, vowing to complete this Herculean task or be-very-disappointed-with-ourselves (hastily changed from ‘commit seppuku with a blunt spoon’ by general consensus).
Starting at noon on Saturday, though we managed to complete a gruelling 16 hours, that still left us fully a third short of the goal. Surprisingly, the difficulty arose not with imbibing the considerable quantities of alcohol, but in remaining awake for the duration of the trial. As those who know me will attest, I’m far from a heavyweight, so I have to ascribe my survival and amazing lack of hangover to my choice of Kopparberg as my poison. Other scoffed at my choice of quite sweet pear cider, but when beer and cider drinkers were blowing out left and right, I remained strong in, sipping my way to sweet, sweet victory (well, in the right direction at the very least).
The accumulation of so much alcohol in one place was in and of itself was a truly epic event; bringing tears to grown men’s eyes and bowing their heads, fixing in their minds that moment so they might one day say to their children, and their children’s children, “I was there.” Yes, their children might be malformed, undernourished and in the care of social services, but at the least they’ll finally know the turning point in their father’s lives when they finally took upon themselves the mantle of alcoholism.
Without the vacuous hyperbole, here is a subset, not by any means exhaustive* of the hi-jinks surfacing on that fateful day:
- Top Hat-tastic action!
- Moshing sans shirts to Jamiroquai
(yes people, apparently you can mosh to anything..) - The Game of Mao (
The first rule of Mao, is don’t talk about Mao) - Exploding Lollipop Conkers - try it today!
- An exclusive Glow staff performance to 4, you lucky few!
- More sleeping people in a room than explainable by physics
- A face full of… socially inappropriate posturing and presentation
* The majority of stories may not be retold for litigation purposes.
Sunday was officially by far the best ‘day after’ ever, most significantly for a distinct lack of.. pain. The entire day I was waiting for the hangover to kick in, the worst I felt was actually the caffeine hit from the super-sized Frappachino we bought when we headed into town for jeans… and which we roundly failed to purchase, getting waylaid in the arts and crafts store and buying canvases instead. I’ve never painted on canvas before, it was like being 5 again! With longer arms.
Fishing for plumbers..
In the past, Rare has had a reputation for being secretive - about our games, what goes on in the studios, and even so far as to limit the interaction between different game teams to prevent any leaks of ideas and information.
This video from Inside Xbox doesn’t do much to dispel that furtive feeling, but it does shed some light on the game that I’ve been working on for the past year.
