My first day off in a bajillion years, plus three old machines I found

I know I haven't blogged properly for a few months - despite me telling you I wouldn't be on for a while, I still thought I'd be back to normal by now. But bear with me, I'm nearly done with my whirlwind of never even having time to read Puddle Lane books on the toilet. I am STILL sorting out my house move, but (please god baby jesus and all the cows in the stable) we will get the keys this week. Also, my new job requires me to do a lot of overtime, so recently I've been doing a million billion hours a week. For example, I've just done 47 hours in 4 days, and I am knackered most of the time. Anyway, I have lots of stuff to write about that I've picked up these last few months, and hopefully I'll get my shit together in the Autumn and finally do a podcast, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time.

Before I get onto the main topic of today's post, I want to mention that I'm compiling my own bucket list, although it's a bit shit at the moment. It doesn't contain cliched crap like 'swim with dolphins' and 'take salsa lessons', as I am not a fictional woman in an advert. This is what I have so far -


Buy something off Price Drop TV and get my name on the bottom of the screen

Get my Jerry Beads (this one is probably impossible, sadly)

Do a podcast (I don't mind if it's crap, which it will be)

Learn to sew properly and make myself a dress

Go to a waterpark (haven't been able to in recent years due to illness)

Complete WonderBoy in Monster World for the Megadrive

Go to the Edinburgh Festival


I'll add more as I think of them. Anyway, last week I had a rare couple of days off, so I went to Anglesey to see my dad. On  the way back, me and the mister stopped at Rhyl for the afternoon, which was very exciting for me since I'm a bit weird. I kept spotting old, knackered arcade games I hadn't seen since I was a child with a mullet - proper games that cost 20p, and where you can sometimes win tickets to spend on tat from the prize shop. Incidentally, we won 107 tickets which we spent on a lucky bag containing JLS stickers. I feel so blessed.

Shoot Away! Well, Shoot Away 2 to be exact. This was in every single arcade ever when I was a kid, always tucked away in some grubby, peeling corner. I never saw anyone playing it, except I must have done once because I know that it's a clay pigeon shooting game. Look how they've successfully captured the feeling of being an inbred English aristocrat in a muddy field on a Tuesday afternoon. I wish I'd had a go actually, but we were busy eating chips at the time.

Sonic Blast Man! This is a bit of a cheat since this machine is named 'Return of Sonic Blast Man', but it's my blog so there. I used to play this a lot as a teenager but I was always rubbish at it. The thing in the middle would stick up, and you had to punch it as hard as you could. I always used to get some brilliant failure messages such as "Your face has exploded, please insert coins".

Generic egg machine! These were fab when you were feeling a bit swish and had 20p burning a hole in your pocket. You pop a coin in, and the bird spins round before shitting out a prize for you. This machine is called 'Cheeky Chick', even though it goes on to say that the bird inside is a duck. I will let that one slide since I love these things so much. Joy of Joys, it still cost 20p a go - I'd fully expected to find a modified version that now cost a quid, so it was a nice surprise to find one little corner of the world that hadn't been completely tainted by greed.
As luck would have it, I had one 20p left in my purse, so I popped it in and the duck shit out a plastic egg for me. Inside the egg was a yellow ninja! We added this to the JLS stickers, the plastic key ring that said 'Winner', and the plush chilli with an angry face, and headed home feeling like kings.