A childhood revisited
Posted on Thursday 18th September 2008
Our trip round the Midlands has come to an end today. For the past couple of days we have been staying with friends in Kettering after the 5 days in Leicester. It has been a nice way to round off the house-guest part of our holiday, and involved a couple of slobby days – just what the doctor ordered, or should that be requested.
While there we were invited to relive an aspect of life in Britain that global warming has made too rare – the simple pleasure of tobogganing. This is something I haven’t done since age 6 or 7 on the farm my parents kept their horses at. Since then I don’t remember it snowing sufficiently regularly or intensely enough to create a suitable snow cover. Fortunately modern technology has come to the rescue and created an enormous cold room, complete with ski slope. Since we weren’t in the mood for broken limbs, the order of the day was flying down the piste on sleds.
In amongst that we also had an opportunity to try out a Nintendo Wii. This device has been heavily marketed and I did wonder what all the hype was about, however having tried it for a couple of days Regan and I are utterly hooked. This console is radically different from every other in having a motion responsive controller. So rather than just sitting down and your thumbs doing the work, you are able to get very physical, and competitive, during games like tennis. One of our own is on the agenda shortly after our return. How to pay for it can be worried about later.
Tomorrow we will be heading into London to meet up with a couple of mutual friends, an old uni buddy of mine and Regan’s cousin. This will be our last opportunity to do catch-ups as we fly out on Sunday – better make the most of it!
