Last week was a ‘challenging’ week as we say at work when we can’t describe what it’s actually like due to profanity filters and logging. Work took over my life which is fine as it’s for the students but no-sleep me is not a good person to be around. This weekend we were wiped out and did very little apart from some casual no-think gaming and some one colour not complicated cross stitch for me. I think JC was putting some Counter Strike hours in while I did some hours on Animal Crossing and also Little Dragon Cafe on the PS4 (you’ve been asked not to judge in previous posts… I like ‘shit’, grindy games, what can I say). To be fair, the dragon is quite cute and the soundtrack is hypnotic, it’s very linear and samey which is great for kids… yes I’m aware I’m a grown woman!

Anyway, the above is my excuse for a lack of posting last week. I am trying to stick to at least one a week with various other bits on Insta as I get a lot of inspiration from there (@craftyroguegamer). JC conned me into creating a Twitter account (@craftyroguegamr) but I never fell in love with Twitter, all those years ago when I first created a personal account. I’ve got a Facebook page too (@craftyroguegamer) but again, not massively feeling the Facebook love although I would probably feel it more than Twitter as I probably do spend most of my life with Facebook open on my actual profile. I tend to just post when I’ve updated the blog and not much else. Needless to say, little has been done at all over the last week both online and in real life due to work being ‘challenging’ apart from food shopping and taking out the rubbish and recycling.

I have referenced a couple of times the Bribery PC (yes it deserves title case) in previous posts. However, to fully understand and appreciate the tale of the Bribery PC, one must first be familiar with the Chronicle of the Fabled Office. So gather round and we’ll go back in time, to a point when the house was just a plot on a map; and we were renters and owed no money to the bank…

We did a lot in 2018, we packed in amongst other things planning a wedding, having said wedding, buying a house and moving into it. With our first night in the new house being Christmas Eve. Please don’t imagine that night was romantic and fairy-tale like. The boiler broke and we ended up with no heating or hot water. Luckily, our estate has a Facebook page and a nice plumber managed to help us bring in Christmas and the New Year with all or our extremities and none lost to frostbite. I know I’ve mentioned my back catalogue in a few posts, but in case you haven’t and/or can’t be bothered to read anything else, I own a LOT of video games. In that a LOT of games are also a significant amount of collectors editions. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t go buying every collectors edition nor every game that pops up. Let’s just leave it at; I like a lot of games, have bought a lot of games and if I like a game and it has a collectors edition it tends to end up at my house. In the old house, they were all stored in the loft. I don’t think either of us realised the volume in both quantity and size they took up until we actually started moving house. We’d always said we wanted a games room/office and there was nowhere to do that in the old house. So when we went looking for bigger houses, this was a deal-breaker. This and it had to be big enough to accommodate JC’s arcades…

We were struggling to find bigger rentals who would be happy with the cats; so we took the plunge and started looking at buying places. To cut a long story short, a house big enough for arcades meant an old semi-detached but that meant no room for a games room. So with that option out, we opted for a new build. We thought we’d found the perfect house at a decent price but there wasn’t a show home to look around. A friend of a friend kindly let us look around her house that had just been built and as soon as we stepped through the door we knew we’d need a bigger boat (love Jaws). After much deposit scrabbling, we ended up in the same place with a bigger house. We then changed house again as there was a massive drainage easement in the back garden that the developers had failed to mention. So third time lucky, we settled and completed on the house that we’re in now. We then had 6 months to wait until they actually built it, which gave us 6 months of imagining time.

The office was going to be -the priority- after we moved in. A hallowed place where the collector’s editions would reside alongside gaming PCs and other cherished collectables. We thought we’d be able to do the bulk of it in February half term but we always had the Easter holidays as a back up. Many trips were taken to Ikea, not just because I love Ikea and their magical hot dogs, but for office inspiration while the house was being built. We planned and listed out what we were doing and what was going where. A lot of thought and consideration went into every detail…. Ladies, gentlemen or however you may identify, I give you the state of the fabled office as of 26th December 2019 (having moved in the Christmas of 2018…):

Double bedroom sizes room full of boxes almost to the ceiling.
The office aka the games room… aka the box room aka the room of doom. So much stuff in a double bedroom sized room.

August 2019 onward, I blame the puppy for a complete lack of time and energy. Also, a lot happened personally January – July 2019. These factors combined with my fibro and the fact we both work so much all the time, meant our fabled office stayed in our imaginations and was never realised.

Photo of partial xmas tree to left with puppy laid down looking up at it from the right.
This furry little blighter (@rcpemcorgi on Insta if you’re interested) is one of the main reasons for stuff not getting done in our house. Here’s his first Christmas.

That is until, the winter holidays 2019. This was our chance, our moment to shine and put our grand plans into action. We kicked it off with a trip to Ikea on Boxing Day. Now, not to brag, but we are experts at the game of ‘how much can we fit in the car’ or ‘Car Jenga’ as we’ve named it. We stand there smugly in the loading bays watching couples have arguments, people having fits ripping stuff out of packaging and leaving people behind to go unload at home and pack to come back to pick people back up. I feel I need to clarify, we don’t just go and sit at Ikea in a weird kind of way watching people – we do only go on legitimate stuff buying trips to Ikea. Boxing Day 2019 was the day that we surpassed any achievements of previous Car Jenga and took it to a new level:

I’m not sure that we can top this Car Jenga. We were playing at the expert level of ‘let’s try not to put the windscreen or side window through’.

We ventured back the next day and the day after. Each day becoming more smug until we hit December 28th. There were two things that happened that fateful day that changed the course of history as we know it. Firstly, we ordered Ikea donuts for the first time -oh my word- they are epic. I wish I’d have know that every time I’d ordered hot dogs – so many missed opportunities! Secondly, you shouldn’t get too smug with Car Jenga. Yes that’s right, we were the wankers in the loading bay who couldn’t fit all of our shit into the car! We had to do the walk of shame back to the lifts and arrange delivery for my desk. In our defence, it would have fit into the car if it hadn’t have been for the stupid boot hole being 1cm too small. Yes… we took it out of its packaging and everything, it still would not go. We can laugh about it now, at least I think we can – we’ve not really spoken about it since!

I’ll leave it there for now but the chronicle continues with Part 2 very soon…