Stay Positive

Another blustery day, with the wind gusting across the motorway on the exposed stretches making overtaking the large lorries a tricky proposition. The levels of traffic are back to normal too after the long summer holidays, pushing my commute time up to forty minutes or so, and longer if there is an accident or other problem on the way.

I am thoroughly enjoying This Is England:86 as a piece of drama that makes you care about things that never happened to people who never existed. It is less overtly political than the original film, but no less moving or emotionally gut wrenching. It also avoids the trap that similar dramas have fallen into of being mainly a nostalgia piece (*cough* Full Monty *cough*), by making sparing use of the cultural icons and music of the time. It says a lot that it was not difficult for the producers of the series to find authentically grim council estates and run down shops to film in - things really haven't changed all that much in the last twenty five years. TV highlight of the year, for sure.

In games news, Halo Reach didn't materialise on my door mat yesterday but fortunately there were two alternatives. Monkey Island II deluxe edition was on sale in the app store so I downloaded it for old times' sake, even though I have played it many times before on platforms from the original Amiga onwards (and still have the boxed, floppy disk version up in the attic). It has been given a proper spit and polish, and is still a joy to play, and I could sit and listen to the music all day.

Secondly was Pocket Frogs from the makers of Dizzy Pad which I rather enjoyed earlier this year. This is a cute frog raising game with the same graphical style as the previous one, and plenty to do. It's a free app with in app purchases for extra actions (as with most games of this type) but you can access all of the content without buying anything. Which is nice. I've only had a brief look at it so far, but it is certainly worth a download.