So woke up with a hell of a headache. So went down to breakfast and had an espresso followed by a double espresso. Then had one of Jamie’s big fuck off flu pills. I was fairly buzzing. We drove the couple of miles to the Asterix park. I must admit I wasn’t expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. The maintainence may have been a bit lacking, but the attention to detail was very good. We had a good tour of all the coasters. Weather was a bit hit and miss. There were several showers. Had a light lunch and then did a few re-runs. Did the steel coaster again and then queued for the front row on the wooden coaster, wow that was a good one. Picked up the usual shot glass and fridge magnet combo and then drove back to the hotel. Had a very long nap. Then went out to dinner. There was a steak house within walking distance. So that’s it for this part of France. Tomorrow is mainly a relocation exercise.

So once again I dinned alone for breakfast. Not that I eat by habbit, but I had exactly the same as I’ve had for the last couple of days. Packed suitcase and then we ventured into the parks for the final time. Did a couple of rides, got front row on both Rocking Rollercoaster and RC Coaster, so worth going back. Eventually we picked up the cases and then made our way to the station. Met by an ignorant Frenchman at the car high place and eventually found a rather battered Peugot 308, in a horrible brown colour and it’s Diesel. So whizzed it round the carpark a couple of times to get used to it then hit the open road. Not that we had far to go, it was only about 40Km. Found the hotel easy enough. It’s Enzo based, so has a Ferrari in the lobby and lots of tables made of engine parts. No restaurant, so we hopped across the street for my second Mickey D’s of the year. It has a bar with no draft beer. Still it’s about two minutes from the park we are visiting tomorrow and it looks like the weather may hold. So couple of beers at the bar and an early night I think. We had a nap earlier. We are both really hammered sleep wise though, it’s now kind of cought up with us.

This is the second attempt at this as the first one fucked up and deleted everything.

So after last nights fun of Jamie having two cocktails and then skipping all the way back to the hotel room, then falling on the floor just outside the lower ground door. Got to the room, he was laying on the bed eating Oreo cookies. I had a shower, by the time I got out he was in bed snoring away. We have two very large beds, nice to spread out a bit, especially after all this bloody food. All we’ve seem to have done so far is eat and queue.

So I got up this morning and had breakfast and went for a stroll. Came back and eventually Jamie got up and we headed to the Movie Park. We first went on Crush’s Coaster. This is the one which usually has a giant queue or is broken down. Thankfully it was the former and that was an hour. Did the Tower of Terror. And then it was time for lunch. Yet another three course meal. This time I was supposed to be a mouse, don’t ask. Then we did the Studio Tour, which like it’s host, Jeremy Irons, is beginning to show its age somewhat. Did the new RC ride in Touy Story land and then the Rocking Roller Coaster. Did ToT one more time and then it was time to head back to the hotel.

Had a bit of a nap and then it was time to eat again. This time it was in Cafe Mickey. Okay, so the food is only about one up on a Harvester, but here you get to have a selfie with Goofy and jump with Tigger. Afterwards we ended up in the bar again. The food may have all been paid for, but my bar bill has been about eighty quid.

Tomorrow we leave the security of Disney and head North, to the ass end of nowhere and a very French theme park, probably in the rain.

So the alarm went off at 9AM. I was somewhat rudely awaken before hand though by bloody kids running up and down the corridor and banging doors. Anyway, it’s Disney, so I guess it’s okay, it wasn’t like it was 3 in the morning. Then it’s just all the pissed adults going back to bed running down corridors and slamming doors. Anyway, I went and got breakfast, Jamie didn’t. It was certainly less of a ‘bun-fight’ in this hotel than when we stayed in the Cheyene. Still full of bloody kids, but I could get to the yogurts without killing any of them. Oddly the coffee machines oozed out something, it certainly wasn’t coffee though. It seemed to be some sort of syrup. Anyway, went back to the room and Jamie had emptied his bowels. Talking of which mine seemed to have responded fairly well to the dose of Immodium, I’d stopped producing a hole in the ozone layer and managed to pass out something fairly solid. It was thin and snaked like, but sort of held together, a bit like a Stephen King novel. So with our bottoms sorted out we headed to the main park. Can’t remember the precise order of rides, but I think it was something on the lines of ‘Pirates of the Caribean’, followed by a couple of coasters. Space Mountain is closed for a refurb, which is somewhat annoying, but never mind. We did pretty much everything we wanted to do by about lunch time. So we had lunch. This was one we actually had to pay for. I had a salad. Actually I’ve been pretty good. I’ve had no fried food at all. It’s all been pretty much chicken and salad based. After lunch we meandered round for a bit and did a few more rides. We ended up queuing for ‘Big Thunder Mountain’, took about forty minutes. Now on my quest for fantasy threesomes behind us was a nice blond guy, probably in his early twenties, about six foot, three stone, bright white t-shirt, turned up everything, and a bloody i-Watch. Okay, bit of a ‘hipster’. Not a hair out of place, bleeched on top. Anyway, I said to Jamie he had potential. He didn’t agree. Said he was ugly. Okay, so he had his faults. For a start, he was somewhat too hairy. I can imagine inviting him back and then saying, ‘Hi, before we start. Do you mind if I get some Inmac (Veet) out and then may be go over you with a lint roller after wards?’. Plus he looked rather brittle. You can imagine shoving it in a little too vigourously and his pelvis splitting. Plus he was in the queue on his own. Shame. I hope he had a few friends somewhere around the park. I can very much relate to that, probably the first dozen or so parks I visited and indeed my first trip round the world, I did on my own. And it can be a very lonely experience. Best shared, it’s a lot more fun. We went back to the hotel and picked up cameras and hoodies. Headed back to the park and had a bit of a posh meal at a nice restaurant there. Bottle of wine, straight to the bladder. Played a few more games of ‘Buzz Lightyear Astro Blast’ and then watched the evening show. Very good. Kind of makes the projector in my lounge seem rather insignificant. Walked back to the hotel, picked up iPads and then headed to the bar. Which seems somewhat dead this evening. Lovely waitress got me my beer and Jamie cocktails. We’ve been here half hour and it’s cost me about forty quid. As they say, ‘You only live once’. James Blunt has just come on the tannoy, I’m kind of regretting that once.

It’s been a nice day. I kind of savour these and hope they balance out all the shit days. Hopeing for another nice day tomorrow.

So this morning started rudely at 6AM. With Anneka Rice, she was on the radio, not mysteriously appearing in my bed. I was in the spare room again, almost a week of sleeping on my own. Nothing wrong with the relationship, just that when Jamie has a cold he snores like a train and flailes his arms everywhere, it’s a dangerous place to be. So anyway, had cereal and coffee. Did last minute packing of items I didn’t really need. Mother arrived at just gone 7AM. I gave her her twenty quid, she had a glint in her eye meaning should could now eat, or buy some tat she didn’t need. We made it to the airport in good time. Checkin was instant. I had a coffee, Jamie had a bacon burger, no way I could face that. My bowels were already quite dodgy. Nothing in the solid stakes but I could sell off gas at competitive rates against the North Sea. Went to the gate, ass played me up again, last on the plane. We’d been auto-allocated the emergency exists. The seats that is, we weren’t sitting in a door. The flight was uneventful, that’s kind of how I like them. We picked up our bags and went to the train station. It was actually the wrong train station and I’d bought the wrong tickets. We got the RER rather than the TGV, but as it happened, due to the schedule of the TGV we were near enough better off on the RER anyway, plus we saved a whole five Euro’s. It was a nice leisurely two hour near enough journey, with one minor change before we were in the carpark at Disney. Hotel check-in was fine. We were given a room in one of the annexes, I didn’t expect much from a Disney hotel, I wasn’t disappointed. The bathroom resembled the one I’d just ripped out of our place. There’s ‘rustic’ and there’s ‘ancient’, this was defo the latter. Anyway due to the time we decided to go down to ‘Downtown Disney’ and have lunch. We got a really good deal on half board, the only problem being we now had more food vouchers than anyone could possibly consume in four days. So we went to an American diner. I ordered a salad, and chicken wings. It turned out to be almost a bucket full of salad, it contained such oddities as avacado, but no cucumber. The wings were all off chickens that had been in a concentration camp, so they didn’t add a great deal. I then rounded it off with cheesecake. Total cost, bugger all. It was over 75 Euro. I’m collecting the receipts and see how much free food we can cram in in four days. Afterwards we walked round a few shops. In one of them was a very cute blonde boy, must be about 19, everything in the right places. Wearing a ‘rainbow’ Mickey Mouse. Jamie says, ‘See anything you fancy, apart from the boys?’.

Went back to the hotel room. Jamie fell asleep, I ended up watching safety vidoes with Timon & Pumbaa. I learnt about how to cross the road and not to overload mains sockets. Jamie eventually woke up and then joined me on the bed. He started playing with my bits, Pumbaa would not have approved. I drifted off to semi consciousness and imagined having a threesome with that blonde guy. Just as I was getting into the spitroast scene (see, I do envolve Jamie in my odd fantasies), Jamie announced that, ‘By god you are hard’. I did ask if he wanted a bum, but he said that probably wasn’t a wise move after consuming that amount of hash browns. Anyway, a quick blowie and I’d shot all up the wall. I do hope we see Mr Blonde again….

Had a shower, then it was time to sample the evenings entertainment, which tonight was ‘Buffalo Bills Wild West Show’. It was a dinner show with watered down crap beer. Actually it was very entertaining. The horses were amazing. The humans weren’t bad either. I’m not really into Indian (squaw rather than turban) guys, but there was certainly one there I’d quite happily make a foursome with. Impressive show. To be honest we weren’t really expecting much of the food, but it was fine.

And that now brings up pretty much up to date. We are now at the bar. Which costs a fortune. It’s taken about fourteen hours and a little bit of alcohol to actually get into the ‘holiday spirit’. Plus an Immodium to sort my bowels out (more news on that tomorrow I’m sure). But during the dinner show, lots of Bison jokes started to come out, “We’ll get one, but only if you can do the dishes in it.” And then something about Sonia’s trumpet, which turned out to be a joke on a patato, tuber, get it? Okay, it was shit, but it’s been a long day. Tomorrow we will venture into the actual park. I’m sure it will be fun. Probably.

So this morning I woke up fairly early again, Jamie still blocked up and sniffing so I was in the spare room again. Only have one more night apart then I’ll be forced to sleep with the sniffing shit again. He seems to be getting better though. I’m on so many drugs at the moment that a cold couldn’t get close to me anyway.

Cracked on with work. It’s odd. This SDK I was ‘asked’ to not upgrade to and work on something else instead, today I was asked how much time it would take to upgrade to it. Management were somewhat confused when I said ‘yesterday’. Good bloody job I ignored them, or it would be well over a month now I’m away. So anyway, it seemed to go to plan. Shopping didn’t arrive as van broke down, so had to collect. Decided that my suitcase was too big, so Jamie had already bought a new one, so I got one as well. We are now outnumbered by suitcases by about ten to one. Took dogs to kennels, they always enjoy going there, pulling on leads to get in. All the dogs were out in the pen. They’ll have a great time. They will miss us though, and we will miss them.

Came back and did a tad more work. Then actually started packing. Can’t believe we are actually going away tomorrow. Anyway, got most of it done. Jamie kept getting in my way, so decided to walk to the gym, do Pump and walk back. Came back and he was still twatting about. Got everything packed eventually. Probably forgotten things. Not sure I’m in the mood for a holiday. I hope that changes.

Got up far too early as cleaners were coming at 9AM. Spent the night in the spare room as I can’t handle the racket Jamie makes when something is blocked. Slept pretty well actually. So started work at 9. Bloody awful day weather wise. Didn’t take the dogs out until gone 7PM. So ended up working over ten hours, still, I’ll finish bloody early tomorrow instead. Printed out a few bits, including the boarding cards. Charged up the camera and finally got the suitcases out of the loft. Really can’t be arsed to pack. Only need two t-shirts anyway, and then, one’s going to be an emergency spare. Torture porn night, not sure I have anything in the way of porn though.

I’ve come to the conclusion that all developers are indeed pretty ugly. Sony however do employ one rather sweet junior programmer in ‘test’. Gave me something pleasant to look at during breakfast. (This was a large communal event at Bfi rather than the breakfast in bed type). Can’t talk about the conference of course, but today really was quite dull. I cut the last session short by about twenty minutes so I could dive to the station. On the way out, some kiddie came up to me and asked where the new skate park was, my fashion choice seems to work. Oddly I did know where it was so pointed him in the right direction. Journey was uneventful, car was still there. Got home and updated the firewall, which I’m not happy with, so reverted the version again. It’s crashed a couple of times recently, so I’ve popped a timer on it for the next couple of weeks so it will give it a kick every night. Took Sasha out for a long walk, then Dillon out for a shorter one. Printed out the insurance docs and found my driving license counterpart. That’s about as much holiday planning I’ve done. Still, have two days. Both of which I’m working. It’ll be fine. Or shit.

Okay, so even after last nights ‘lager fest’, I woke up bright as a button at 6AM. Didn’t really get anymore sleep. Eventually got up and was at the door of DevStation at just gone 8AM. I started the morning with black coffee and a banana. To be honest the bulk of the morning was a bit of a blur. Soon it was lunch. Soon it was time to say goodbye to the others, get ‘miked up’ and sit on my own near the front. I had two presenters before me, thankfully I knew them quite well. After about an hour and a half, the time came, the game video was running on screen, I walked up to the podium with two bottles of water and casually removed my phone and my wallet. Brought my presentation to the front screen and hit F5. A minute later and the video was over, the crew flicked over to my presentation and my mike was live. The next forty-five minutes were a bit of a blur, but it all went according to plan. No one started snoring and no one died. I made every point I wanted to make, got every gag in and finished in 44:55, I was quite pleased with that. When I finished I stood back and took the gentle applause. It was alll over. I didn’t fluff, falter or freeze. It really did all go according to plan. I really enjoyed it.

The whole day though has been marred by one thing. Bloody people carrying trays. Everywhere I wanted to go, some fucker with a tray of shit was trying to cut me up. It really was modern day frogger. No I do not want some green shit on a cracker, bring me some decent fucking food. Anyway, we had a good laugh and a few beers. I’m quite happy now. A lot of new contacts have been made. Now I can finally wind down and look forward to the holiday.

Now I can die happy. Today I reached the pinnicle of my professional career, and I have the t-shirt and badge to prove it.

So today was all a bit weird to be honest. We’d reached number one in the games charts, but I still very much had a job to do. I did two rehersals. Everything basically went according to plan. I walked Sasha, had lunch and then headed to the station. Journey was a breeze. Met up with the guys an hour later, always a pleasure catching up. We walked to a gourmet pizza place and had a nice dinner, few beers. Ged and Steve headed back to their hotel. Anders and I knocked up a sixty quid bar bill between us at my hotel, discussing essential features. Got back to my hotel and there is a bottle of champagne plus 12 months playstation plus membership, courtesy of Sony. Nice gesture. Tomorrow is probably the biggest day of my professional career so far, I really need good hair.