I am presently in the land of Eng-.
Visiting Cheltenham after 15 years away is weird. So much has changed. The Disney Store is now an HMV. Hagen-Dasz is now a FreshBake (or whatever that's called). GAME moved to the other side of High Street. Regent Arcade is MUCH thinner. Tesco's interior is totally rearranged - I see now what BritGAF means about it selling games and such, but I swear up and down it didn't in '99. My brother finds it totally insane that the games section is literally naught but Sony and Microsoft, that Tesco must be mad to not want a piece of the Smash Bros. action; I think it hurts more to know just how badly Nintendo had been selling here to warrant no longer carrying it.
London was okay. Shitload of walking, though. Definitely got sunburned. Still, got to see Wicked for the first time (despite being all too familiar with the music thereof), which was nice. The day after started bad (Tube delay made us late for the Thames tour bus down by the Eye; they let us on to the next boat an hour later - or would, if there weren't problems with the intercom in the lower deck rendering the boat a safety hazard that needed prompt repairs, meaning said next boat was cancelled). Still, found a nice pub that did amazing cheesy garlic bread, did a double-decker bus tour (where I got said sunburn), FINALLY got a later boat, and capped it off with a ride on the (mildly overrated but still beautiful-view-enabling) London Eye. Shame we wound up back at the hotel so late, though (10PM, and without any dinner, egh). Also had some embarrassment at the local Tesco Express, thinking I'd given the cashier 60p when I'd only actually given him 30p. That one's going to bother me for a while.
Something else kind of funny... I was getting tired of being on the Tube and various buses while in London the three days prior, as those had a tendency to throw me off-balance a lot. However, seeing my aging father driving this rental stick shift is more frightening; lots of stalling out followed by sudden acceleration, drifting left ever so slightly on the motorways... frightening in more ways than one; there's the obvious reasons, of course, but Dad's got cataracts, had colon cancer, and fears he has the onset of dimentia; I worry that some of that is being exemplified here.
Anyway, I saw Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing physical copy for the PC at WHSmith. It's nice how you all have so much better support for physical PC releases that we do these days. I swear that one was digital only in the US, console versions notwithstanding.
