Cat on a Hot Tin Knife

Nobody had to go to work today so I got up at a sensible time in order to max out my 1 hour screen time allowance before anyone else was awake, so I could play the innocent and have another one.

But then there was acting and Jof went off to have her hair changed and I have acting homework which is only to print out a picture of a painting (life imitating art?) so we can make up a giant storyboard and act it out, no biggie.

On the way home the town was filling up again for the FA Cup match against Bournemouth and there were Police Vans and Riot Cops and Police Horses and Cats and Dogs, but no matchstick men. This meant we had to park miles away.

I did my 2K run because fitness stops for no man and I was just looking forward to an afternoon of playing video games when Jof Had An Idea. Because of her unique position in the wider business community, she knows everybody and there is this one chap in Old Portsmouth who has opened a video game arcade in his basement using his world-class collection of vintage arcade games and elderly boxes that go buzz and tweet and their boxes say "The new game for the new decade" (1980's) and show families dressed in 1970s clothes looking overjoyed at the latest 8-bit technology.

But first, we killed a cat with an SAS-style survival knife, the nice ones with the double-sided blades. This one was delivered by post to Bud in 1986, consternation for the house-master at the breakfast table (we are talking boarding school here). You've just gotta do this every so often, but today, it was because one of the special chocolate things we got Jof for Xmas was too big. Now, you and I know that for a registered chocaholic, no chocolate item can be too big but this is a solid moulded cat and once you've bitten the head off and gnawed the legs a bit, you just can't get your teeth around the torso, and you're left with this massive lump with cannibalistic tooth grooves.

So we determined that the best solution was to slice the cat with a red-hot knife, an approach that has worked for us in the past. We also bought her a new one to take her mind off the imminent demise of the existing one.

And we drove to Spice Island where we had to look the game place ("Game Over") up on Jof's phone because it can't attach a sign to the Grade 2 listed building so we couldn't find it. It is indeed in the cellar down some steep steps and the domed roof is fun and it's full of old tech and apparently the council want to borrow his collection for the museum and it's definitely way more than the Science Museum in London has got because we googled my old blog post from last year and showed him the image of the cabinet.

We all played about 6 different things in our hour (£3 each) and met Jack W from my old school and the SEGA was funny, Jof nearly died laughing at the 8-bit fighting dude who punches and kicks at headless purple guys and zombies and swooping dragons and dogs that jump sideways and when you kick enough blue dogs in the head, you evolve into a werewolf and meet the electric statue which morphs into a big bloke covered in ears and he throws heads at you until you die.

We never did make it past head-throwing geezer but we did laugh a lot. Jof even had a cup of tea there and you can buy Pokémon badges and sweets and cans of soda for a true gamers experience.

The gamers of yesteryear must have had fun with good old space invaders and the digging rabbit game but the little buzzing boxes were pants. A van had blocked us in which made Jof very angry indeed but when we got home there was a message from Ben asking me over for a sleepover so what can you do?

I showered and left home, that's what. Life cannot get any better.