Category: Uncategorized

I’m a Luigi!

I recently read an article about the re-released NES/SNES consoles. It was work, I swear. It was on the website of my accountancy body and everything!

It reminded me of the first time I ever played Super Mario Bros. I went round to a visit a friend from school and they had just got the NES. It blew my fragile little mind. I think at that point we may have had an Amstrad CPC 464 but Super Mario was on a completely different level and I attribute it with igniting my love for gaming. This would eventually lead to me paying hundreds (probably thousands over my lifetime) of pounds on consoles and games. I would be much richer were it not for the moustachioed Italian plumber.

As it was my friends console, he was Mario and I was Luigi. I’m sure many like me developed a fondness for the little green guy who was often relegated to the sidelines, based on the fact that they were not the alpha where the Nintendo was concerned.

One of the items on my bucket list was to complete Super Mario 3. I won’t go on about it again here, but the fact that the desire to complete it lasted maybe 20 years is something that older video games have over newer ones. Some of them release new versions every year. Some of them are just too difficult to keep you hooked. Some of them are just too big. There are very few games that I’ve got 100% on my PlayStation and having just checked the ones that I have seem to be linked towards interests I have outside of gaming – Batman, The Walking Dead and Blood Bowl.

Over the last few years I’ve drifted away from video games. This is for a few reasons. Time is one. Growing up means you don’t have as much time on your hands as you do when you’re at school. You can’t get head home just after 3 each day and spend hours playing a game. You’ve got Responsibilities.

Another reason is no longer living with another gamer. For me, quite a lot of gaming is social. I much prefer playing something like Smackdown or Pro Evo or even Halo (despite being crap at it) because it involved interacting with other human beings. When I was living with my brother, we’d play all the time. I’ve also had housemates who I would play with often, but when I started living on my own I started playing less frequently.

I do enjoy some single player games – especially horror games for some reason that I haven’t worked out entirely as I don’t really enjoy horror films. I think it’s probably that being immersed makes it a lot more scary. Condemned on the Xbox is still one of my all time favourite games and playing it in a dark room by myself probably just heightened the experience.

However given the choice, I would probably now spend the time playing a board game if I’m with other people, or often doing one of many other things if I’m not. Which is a shame as I’ve got a whole bunch of games that are currently sitting unplayed. Maybe I’ll get around to playing them soon. Maybe.

It’s probably like many things – the thing that gets you hooked is the thing that you always try to get back to to recreate that hit. It is likely nothing will be the same as the first time I made an Italian man waddle along and jump on two dimensional bad guys.

A rough night’s sleep

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a few occasions when I’ve not slept too well. I put this down to the fact that we’re soon to be moving home and that my mind has been working overtime with all the things I need to remember or to sort out around it – I am very much a planner.

However, many people have much worse sleep than I do. I have been reminded of this most mornings as on my walk to the bus stop I’ve been seeing two people sleeping on benches. One laying down under a pile of coats, the other sat upright under a coat, clutching on to a suitcase full of what I assume are their only worldly possessions. It can’t be a comfortable way to sleep but for them it must feel like what they have to do.

When I arrive at Stratford, most days I’ve been walking past between two and four people who have obviously been sleeping rough the previous evening. Some under a tent, some with signs, some still asleep, some chatting to people. Some talking to police officers, who hopefully are helping them to find somewhere a bit more comfortable.

I find it difficult to walk past without trying to help them in some way, but the sheer number of homeless people at the moment means it is simply not possible to give a spare bit of change, a sandwich or a cup of tea to everyone who you pass.

It saddens me that as a society we are not able to help those who get into these sorts of situations. However I am proud to be working for a company that is attempting to do something about the national housing crisis but it worries me that we are nowhere near to breaking the back of the problem.

The town I am from has a voluntary organisation which for the last 9 years has arranged a Winter Shelter where over the course of 12 weeks, volunteers open up a different church hall each day of the week where anyone can turn up, get something to eat, warmth and shelter for the night. It’s a truly remarkable endeavour which our town is fortunate to have.

This is something which is completely run by volunteers and funded from donations. For the last year I’ve been playing in a band with a couple of close friends. We’re hoping to raise a little bit of money to help the Winter Shelter in our own way this Christmas.

We have recorded a version of It Feels Like Christmas from the Muppet’s Christmas Carol. You can see the video we made for it here.

We are attempting to raise money for our local Winter Shelter and if you are gracious enough to check out the video and don’t dislike it, we would be grateful if you could donate a small amount on our donation page here. 

My thoughts on volunteering at a food bank

Last my team at work used half a day of our 3 day volunteering allowance to visit The Hope Centre, one of four locations of Lewisham food bank. The food bank is part of the Trussell Trust which operates across the UK. Last year, the Trust gave out over 1.3 million food supplies, representing a 13% increase on the previous financial year. This included 134,244 parcels given out in London which I can only assume includes many residents of the housing association that I work for. We’ve all heard the stats about how food bank usage has been increasing so I won’t repeat them all here but it is safe to say that actually seeing part of the operation helped to make it less abstract number and more realistic for me.

Our community investment team arranged for us to spend the morning at the Hope Centre with Carol, the manager, Gary who seemed to be her second in command and Chris whose job was to make tea and on days when the Centre is open to put their visitors at ease and to reassure them – perhaps the most vital task of them all.

During our volunteering morning, we sorted, moved and organised just over half a tonne of food. We became a well-oiled machine. We split food into different item types, loaded shopping trollies and ferried them into their “warehouse” to then sort into more specific sections – splitting Fruit Juice into Apple Juice and Orange Juice sections, for example. This makes it easier for food bank volunteers to quickly make up food parcels specific to their visitors requirements. Planning, sorting and organising turned out to be something that worked well with the skillset of our team of accountants!

The food we were sorting had been donated mainly in a three hour period when Carol and her team were in Waitrose at the weekend where they asked customers for specific donations. They can only do this every so often as the food bank is mostly staffed by volunteers with Carol being the only paid employee and only for 3 days a week. The rest of the time they rely on individual donations and volunteers to run the centres. By the time we left, the warehouse was stocked to the brim but we were saddened to hear that we were probably only looking at stocks that would last them for about 2 weeks. Each parcel given out is around 3 days’ worth of food each time. The centre is open on Wednesdays and Fridays and receives around 15-20 visitors on each of those days. Food banks are intended to provided assistance to people in crisis, rather than be relied upon regularly. People can only access these foodbanks having been referred to them with a voucher from many community sources – doctors, social workers and the citizens advice bureau being a few of those sources. There is a limit of only 4 vouchers per person or family per year. Having said that, Carol is reluctant to turn away anyone in need and will offer a small parcel and advice on how to get vouchers to anyone who turns up without one.

During a tea break Carol, Gary and Chris spoke to us about the way that the centre interacts with political candidates. They are happy to talk with anyone provided no photographers or film crews are present and they feel very passionately about the “unintended consequences” of political choices that have been made over the last decade or so. We can only hope that some of these consequences are dealt with as it doesn’t seem right that so many people in this country have to rely on the kindness of strangers in order to put some food on their table. They mentioned that there have been small victories – such as the waiting time for universal credit being reduced to 5 weeks – but it still isn’t enough for many people and the impact of this is something that our housing association may see in the future in the impact on our rental arrears.

Most supermarkets have food bank bins and it doesn’t take a lot to drop something in their once you have completed your shop – especially as many of the items they require cost under a pound. Please do check out a list of things they need and things they don’t need before doing so though, as there are only certain non-perishable items that they can supply. This can be found near to the bins or on their website. From what we saw in Lewisham, they almost certainly don’t need any more pasta for quite a while! They will probably need many other items that you wouldn’t normally think of.

Carol mentioned to us that after the Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake was released they have actually been so overrun with sanitary products that they have actually donated them on to local schools. It is interesting to note that he continues to have an impact on our social attitudes over 50 years after Cathy Come Home came out.

If you and your team are looking for a team building exercise that will also give you an insight into the hardships that many across the country have to endure, then I heartily recommend looking into volunteering at a food bank.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

About two and a half years ago I moved to a new town, and round the corner from my house is a barbers. Being a man of few follicles, I have rarely had need to visit the barbers but one day I decided to treat myself and have a proper shave.

I find the barbers a weird experience. It might be because I am not a naturally outgoing person and I struggle with the small talk. It might be because the experience of someone you don’t know doing something very close up to me isn’t one I find relaxing (see also: when the optician puts his face right in front of your eyes).

However, it can also be enjoyable. I usually get my scalp done with a wet shave and it feels so smooth and lovely afterwards that I can’t stop stroking it. It also smells nice for the next few hours as well. The barbers also offers a hot towel and a steam machine which the staff are very keen to get you to try out. I’m not sure if they charge more for it – it doesn’t really seem to affect the price. These, my friends, are the good stuff. You need to get in on this if you’re not already. It’s so amazingly relaxing. I’m sure there’s some sciencey explanation for what it’s doing to you, but the feeling is like your face is having a giant warm hug.

Bass told me to try the hot towel treatment and it’s one of the few times that I have entirely agreed with his recommendation. I have since recommended it to my brother-in-law when we got smartened up before my wedding.

After trying out the barbers and armed with this new found sense of beard based adventures, I decided to try out all the other barbers in town. If the first barbers I tried had these exciting things, what amazing possibilities were awaiting me in the other ones?

There’s about 6 barbers in our town. Our high street is mainly full of hairdressers/barbers, charity shops, cafes and estate agents. Every few weeks when I felt like it was time for another treat, I took myself to a new one.

And every time I was disappointed. None of them did a wet shave. None of them did a hot towel, and I daren’t even ask whether there was a steam machine.

So after trying every barbers, I went back to the one just round the corner and I have never gone to another one since.

Why I didn’t enjoy Ready Player One (the novel)

A while ago, I asked for recommendations of books. I asked people to tell me what their favourite book is. Several people named Ready Player One by Ernest Cline which conceptually I liked the idea of, so it was one of the first recommendations that I read around 5 months ago. It has been turned into a film by Steven Spielberg which has just been released and so I have been thinking about the book again.

Now, I may be a grumpy old man. I may not just get what kids like these days. However, this book is not something I enjoyed, and there are a few reasons for this. I know from reading reviews on Goodreads that there are others who feel the same way. I also know that there are those who absolutely adored it. I don’t like or want to ruin stuff for anyone, so I’m not going to tear it to complete shreds like I would have done if I had written this immediately after reading the book.

The film might be significantly better than the book, I don’t know. I’d imagine it will be as it’s Spielberg. I don’t intend to watch it. You may enjoy the film, the book or both but I feel that I need to get out my thoughts on why I didn’t enjoy it. This will probably contain spoilers, although it is my opinion that the book could not be spoiled more than Cline has already done so by misusing the intriguing concept he came up with.

The first thing that annoyed me about the book was that it is a mystery book where the reader has no chance of solving the mystery. I love detective stories. I love trying to solve the mystery but always coming up short because the criminal or the detective or both is/are much smarter than I am. This is fine, and it is all part of the enjoyment. The mysteries in Ready Player One cannot be solved by the reader. There are no clues which will allow you to do so. Even if your knowledge of 80’s culture is as good as Wade, the main character, you stand literally no chance of solving the puzzle. When he (or one of the other characters) works out the next step, it comes completely out of the blue.

For a novel where the main premise is solving a series of mysteries, all the suspense got drained for me because I knew it would be something entirely random. This is partly because it is set in a virtual reality world called the Oasis and we have absolutely no idea what is in it unless the author tells us about it. He doesn’t drop any clues about how to solve each mystery. The planet which the protagonist needs to travel to in order to solve the puzzle has not been presented to us, so we have no idea it exists and therefore no idea what the solution could possibly be.

Another thing that annoyed me is that it is a sci-fi novel, although rather than inventing its own universe, it appropriates it from the 1980s. It is basically nostalgia porn. It plays on the fact that people who love that culture will love references to it in the book. Which they do, but it doesn’t mean there’s any substance there at all. It doesn’t add any meaning, depth or insight to the novel. It annoyed me in the same way that all the references to celebrities in Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis annoyed me, so much so that I was unable to read another of his novels for several years.

The book also has a love story, but I never cared if the characters get together or not. Lots of other factors might have combined to create this apathy in me. I might not have cared because I was struggling to get invested due to the other elements of the book that turned me off. However, it seems to me that there is minimal depth of character or character development. The characters don’t have much internal conflict. They have their goal of solving the puzzle and by and large they are focused on it to the detriment of everything else, except when Wade becomes a love-struck teenager. I could not give a hoot if they got together, or even if they died horribly. I struggled to have any empathy for the characters at all.

I feel that this is a story where fairly early on you know what is going to happen and there are few surprises and relatively little of interest. There’s effectively a deus ex machina in the fact that Wade knows literally everything. Some of the puzzles require photographic memory and knowledge of the most obscure things. He twice quotes a film near perfectly in order to solve a puzzle. I have seen some of my favourite films hundreds of times and couldn’t even quote 50% of one of them. How he knows two random films back to front stretches believability.

I haven’t even started to pick apart the quality of the writing and as it’s been a while since I read it and I have no desire to look at it again, I don’t want to criticise this aspect without feeling confident in what I’m talking about, suffice to say that it didn’t feel like it was written well.

I loved the idea of the book. A futuristic virtual world, obsessed with the past as the modern world has fallen apart. Clinging onto some hope of a better time and a better place. I wanted to like the book – I absolutely love dystopian novels but I really struggled with Ready Player One.  I feel the execution of the concept really let it down.