#22 - A holiday to remember

It’s nice to have a little break, isn’t it. Nine consecutive days of no work (OK, I did a small amount of work) and more time with the family - time to chill. We didn’t go anywhere, but we did embark on day trips, with at least one in an attempt to inject some culture into our lives. I’m the least cultured person around, more likely to be found reading an online chat about the merits of the Sega Saturn than I am the latest award-winning novel. I’ve never been to the theatre, but I’ve been to the circus many, many times. Does that make me basic? Probably.

Anyway, the nine days off. Where to start? It all sort of blurs into one now I’m looking back at it, but early on I bought an amazing hot Reuben sub sandwich (please accept that I am an unsolvable conundrum of a human being when you read the bit later about vegetarianism) from a village café. This might rank as the greatest sandwich I’ve had in my life, it was that good. If you’re ever in Lindfield or Haywards Heath, look up Duck’s Hot Subs. Incredible.

I ate a rather lovely pizza. Waitrose’s takeaway range, plain cheese and tomato, with olives and caramelised onion added before cooking. A bit of Caesar salad and some avocado on the side. Supermarket pizzas can’t compare to the best restaurants, but they’ve hit a really rather superb level. Excellent start to the holiday. I’m sure you’ll agree.

Drusillas, a zoo-cum-play park was Monday’s activity. I had packed a Sainsbury’s meal-deal halloumi wrap, yoghurt bar, Cool Doritos (the best ones, come at me!) and an iced tea. A nice spread, but sat on a bench in the blazing heat wasn’t the ideal way to eat lunch. My Pac-Man cap was getting a beating, and if I’m honest the halloumi had sweated a little in the wrap. Doritos never disappoint though. The perfect crisp.

To take the edge off the heat I bought a FWIP ice cream. Rather expensive, everything is these days, but it comes with the novelty of seeing it being made from the pod inserted into the machine - sort of like a Nespresso machine but for delicious frozen treats. Hearing me order a FWIP amused my wife, and to be honest I was quite jealous of my son’s freshly fried ring doughnut. Still, I can’t complain about the salted caramel flavour and ice cold relief. 

On the way home we decided to stop and get chips, pickled eggs, mushy peas, and curry sauce. I became slightly perturbed and convinced my order had been forgotten as other patrons came and went with more complicated orders, but we did eventually get the food. My wife is vegetarian and I’m trying, so we encountered my worst nightmare: needing to leave the food bagged and losing heat as we cooked some Quorn nuggets. Despite this 20-minute(!) wait, the chips were great. I know it’s good not to eat animals, but I do miss a bit of fish. My brain can’t shake the association with chips. More fish and chip shops need to serve battered halloumi!

After a rather disappointing morning bowling (lost to my wife and my five-year-old daughter), I won the jackpot on the Nerf arcade game (1000 tickets), then headed to lunch at Burger King. I whipped out my Burger King app and proceeded to order three Plant Whopper meals, onion rings, and jalapeno cheese bites for just £15. What a bargain! That’s even better value than a supermarket meal deal. Of all the plant-based burgers I’ve tried, Burger King is by far the best.

A day trip to Brighton brought with it many opportunities for food. Sadly our favourite coffee shop decided no one could sit upstairs despite downstairs being rammed, so we left in a huff (to onlookers this huff might not have been apparent, but the huff was there) and walked into Starbucks. Not ideal, but they do an excellent vegan breakfast roll and I’m partial to a caramel macchiato. I was less thrilled with my son’s £6 cup of ice and syrup, which I was somehow convinced to buy for a second time later in the day - but it did grant me 20 minutes of peace (twice).

One of the week’s real highlights came later at dinner, with an absolutely mouth-watering pizza. The Regina from Rudy’s is honestly one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. I’ve embedded a video of it below, which doesn’t do it justice, but gives you some idea of its wonder. Prosciutto, mushrooms, white base, basil… I’d eat it again, and again. Can I ever get bored of pizza? I think not!

Greenwich market on Friday offered up an incredible stone-cooked pancake filled with spinach and feta, with yoghurt on the side. We saw the Cutty Sark and visited the Maritime Museum, the latter home to a lovely café. Honey cake and carrot cake, shared with my wife, and a mocha. I’m keen to return to Greenwich just for the market, the food there all looked so good.

All in all, a marvellous week. I hope you enjoyed reading this exhaustive rundown of everything I did during my week off. I leave you with these rather salacious notes on the building surrounding the Cutty Sark. Pure filth!

I haven’t had much time to play games myself recently, but I have managed to get my son to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. It’s up there with the very best licensed games ever made and deserves far more success than it received, so please do check it out if you haven’t yet. All I really wanted to say about it is how brilliant the walls look in this game. There’s a point where you go under The Vatican and the light is bouncing off the water and onto the walls. It looks so good I asked my son to just move about in that area for a minute. I really hope this game gets a follow-up, but given the changes at Xbox I very much doubt it.

This newsletter isn’t entirely about video games - in fact, this one was a thorough rundown of my holiday. I’ll have a think about some other bits and pieces and round them up in the quick reviews below. I’m a critic, too, you see.

Things I can review (80s edition):

• The Breakfast Club (SKY/Now TV): Did I hate this? I might hate it. I’m not sure. I just know this film is perhaps one of the most dated I’ve ever watched. I can appreciate that it presented teenagers in a different way to how they had traditionally been portrayed in films, and that was a big deal back in the mid-80s, but it rubbed me the wrong way with pretty much everything it did. 1 tedious conversation out of 5 inappropriate male interactions with women.
• Say Anything (SKY/Now TV): The second 80s movie of the week, and this one is so much better than The Breakfast Club. While some of the acting has that old-fashioned woodenness, and there are a handful of moments that resulted in exchanging puzzled looks with my wife, John Cusack is excellent and the overall heart and tone of the film is in the right place. The graduation speech sucked, though, didn’t it? 3 teenagers making good decisions out of 5 drinking too much.
• Ghostbusters (SKY/Now TV): It’s funny watching classic films with your kids. You want them to love them, but also you see things that you completely forgot about. Ghostbusters is a perfect example. While I remembered it being funnier, I'd also blanked out the scene in which Ray has a sexual encounter with a female ghost. Now I think about it, didn't the film's iconic theme song originally play here, with the “Bustin' makes you feel good” lyric being sung at this exact moment? - was this cut or is it simply a false memory? 4 surprisingly scary moments out of 5 sexual moments somehow snuck into a PG.