Jungle Freedom Fighters

Oli bought me Elden Ring for my birthday in 2025. I played it on and off. Kept forgetting important stuff and basically rocking a magic build which is pretty good at keeping you away from trouble but not so good against bosses.

In March I set myself the goal of getting better at the game.

It was when I read about a rune farming trick where you shoot the bird and it runs off the edge of the cliff and dies and then you rest at the site of grace and it respawns…repeat, that I started improving massively. Suddenly runes don’t really matter and you can spend some time farming runes and levelling up your character and weapons. The entire game changed!

It took me a looooong time to kill the Fire Giant, it took me even longer to kill Mohg and I didn’t even get a percentage bump for killing him, but then I started powering though the game with help from Claude. This game is so god damned big that you really do need an AI agent to suggest tactics and where to go next.

This was after some epic boss battle – can’t remember which but whilst Oli was off on his second ski holiday of the year I managed to beat the Elden Beast and finish the game. According to Sony only 10% of players do this. Quite impressed with myself.

I’m now on my second play through and absolutely loving it.

The wedding weekend finally arrived and Emma and I zipped down to Bath for the event. We decided to splurge a little bit this time and book a suite in the Royal Crescent Hotel and Spa. I cannot stress enough what a pleasant experience this was. From the moment we pulled up outside it was an outstanding experience. The Concierge came running over to carry our bags and drive the car away. Some people arrived just before us so we checked in a bit later, but in the meantime the staff had taken our stuff up to our room. The suite itself was absolutely top notch and as a bonus we could look out of our bedroom window over to St James’ Square where I used to live [ actually just off it on Park Rd I think ]. We went out for an explore of Bath and had a couple of afternoon drinks before meeting up for dinner with Michal and Maria.

Breakfast next morning was superb. Then we made use of the spa and I’ve never felt so much like James Bond in my life. The spa swimming pool really was like something out of a Bond movie. After the spa we got ready for the wedding and ended up with a bit of time to kill so we stopped off in the hotel cocktail bar. I’m running out of words to describe how fantastic the hotel stay was but the cocktail bar was absolutely out of this world. Beautiful beautiful place. We didn’t want to leave and go to the wedding! Anyway, after my morning of feeling like Bond I was perusing the cocktail menu and they had a Vesper. After chatting to the bar tender it seems the recipe for the Vesper was from the book rather than the movie. It had to be done!

The wedding itself was perfect. Such a great time. We had some pohotos outside and you could look across the valley to see the place we were staying. Met some excellent people, drank some fine wines, ate some great food, then fell asleep and all the stag lads gethered around and took a rather excellent photo.

An absolutely marvellous weekend from start to finish.

As part of my Parish Council work I organised a litter pick. Because I’m mean I roped in Oli and Violet to come help. We split into two teams to cover the surrounding area and between us all picked up 19 bags of rubbish. My local area is now much tidier.

This tractor has been a proper pain in the arse. Every god damned year I’m having to repair something on it. This year on the first outing there was a horrific clattering noise from the blades when I started mowing. It seems I managed to shear some pins off the blade mounting and the blades got out of sync and started bashing into each other. Not cool.

In the past I’ve always jacked up the tractor and got busy underneath it but it seems my jack is broken and leaking fluid so it didn’t feel very safe being underneath quite a heavy mower doing repairs. To minimise the risk of me being decapitated by a collapsing jack I bought a new bit of kit.

It’s glorious. Truly fantastic. Repairs were made with two new blade mounts costing £8 each and the mower is back in business.

Just a quickie, I took my tofu in batter cooking skills and upgrade it to chicken. Was equally fantastic.

Josh, who has featured in this blog many times, is getting married. He decided to have his stag-do in Munich….in February! We thought it was going to be wooly underpants and a big jacket type weather. Turns out climate change had other plans and it was a glorious weekend, especially on Saturday, but I get ahead of myself.

I initially booked my flight with EasyJet but that flight was getting in quite late and all the London boys were arriving in the afternoon, so I booked another flight with Lufthansa and then upgraded it to Business Class so that I could go to the lounge rather than hang out with the unwashed masses in Manchester Airport.

On the first night we went to the Bier Halle in Munich and had a fantastic time.

The next day was absolutely glorious. It was going to be the best day of the weekend weatherwise so a plan was formed to got to the Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm. First though Dragan and I went for breakfast and then Michal got himself together and we headed into Munich Old Town.

After some beers in the square watching the clock do its thing with the glockenspiel and the dancing statue things we walked over to the beer garden in the sunshine

Then a quick pedal bike tuktuk thing for me and Josh and off to the restaurant we all went.

The next day, Sunday, was a bit rainy but we ventured into town and had some early beers. Josh disappeared off to get the dressing on his wound changed. The last two trips I’ve been on with Josh has resulted in him being hospitalised. The boy is a menace. Whilst Josh was away I tucked into some Currywurst, with my beer.

Following the beers we went to a Karaoke bar where I absolutely murdered Dream On by Aerosmith which inspired me to set myself a 2026 challenge. More on that in August. I don’t think the lyrics had even begun before I ripped off my top and flung it across the room. German beer really is that good! Thai food followed and then Michal and I went on another mission. Then to bed and a frighteningly early start flying back to Blighty. Upon landing in Manchester I decided I hadn’t drank quite enough for the weekend and met Charlie and Ellie along with her cousin in Manchester for more wine and then home to sleep. Took me a good few days to recover from the trip.

After all the effort that I put in. All the testing with Jaz and Violet, all the dragging the “kennel” up and down the garden, the cat that adopted us [ Moses/Pickle ] is finally warm and dry

but not looking entirely happy about having his own house.

I think he just hates me.

Those who know me will know that I like a bit of Tofu when I’m doing Asian cooking. I always used to just cover it in a bit of cornflour and fry it until it was good and firm and then mix it in with a sauce.

But I always had a dream. I always wanted to make the tofu into tofu balls like you get from the Chinese takeaway when you get Sweet and Sour Chicken. Well my dear reader. I finally got off my arse and googled how to do it. Ten minutes later…et voila

Seriously – just check that shit out.

I went the whole hog and made my own sweet and sour sauce to go over tofu balls. It was amazing. I didn’t get a picture of that bit. I was too busy eating. Definitely making it all again and it’s even got the point that I was drooling over a deep fat fryer at CostCo the other day.

You all know I’m fond of laying in bed in the morning and having a good old wordle. Well this was just too good not to screenshot and post about…yeah, that’s how empty and vacuous my life really is.

My fellow wordlers will get it

My goal was to buy a new inflatable thing for the Xmas front garden dumb ass nativity scene. I didn’t quite get my crap together this year in time to get one but managed it after the “scene” had been taken down. Please be kind and welcome the Xmas Hippo into the fold.

Oli always does a fine job of buying me Xmas gifts. This year he excelled by combining two of my favourite things, chess and drinking.

He bought me a chess piece [ Queen ] decanter which I filled with Diplomatico rum. It’s not quite that full anymore.

As an aside, in the past I could quite happily sit there drinking wine whilst playing Oli at chess and still win. He’s improved. Now I daren’t play him if I’ve had so much as a sniff of wine.

After all my work installing the lighty-uppy-arcade-buttons the day finally arrived. We drank Bucks Fizz from early morning. We moved onto wine. We ate turkey and ham and potatoes and vegetables with stuffing and gravy. We devoured trifle and then eventually made it down to my office.

Usually the annual Tetris-Off is myself and Charlie. This year Oli joined in with us….and annoyingly won.

The competition was all about score. Since we’re going for score the tactic is absolutely to get a “Tetris” when you clear four lines in one go. Oli, being the gung-ho, shit or bust, little turd that he is, absolutely went for it. His stack would get so close to the top but then he’d manage to pull off a Tetris and get the game back under control. It’s not really that we can blame it on fluke as we all had a warm-up game first. In the warm up it went Oli, Me, Charlie. Then we had the proper tournament, and it went Oli, Me, Charlie. So, pretty consistent stuff and unfortunately Oli takes the 2025 Tetris crown.