It was great to be able to spend Father’s Day weekend with my Mum and Dad. My Dad received two special presents from me. The conventional present was the set of wooden and metal logic puzzles. These days, one feels obliged to help stave off dementia. The less conventional gift was a request for him to preach at our church. A treat for him, I’m sure you’ll agree.
My own children played their own blinder. Somehow, my two-year-old and four-year-old both figured out how to use Amazon and considered it a good idea to get me an excellent handheld console with about 160 or so classic arcade games on it. There was nothing not to like about the gift. How did they know? I guess we will never know.
Anyway, having eaten a terrific roast dinner for lunch, my dad spent half the afternoon playing with his puzzles and the other half asleep, as I’m told you do when you get old. I spent the afternoon faffing around on Super Mario, jumping on mushrooms and diving into pipes, and a pinball game that was troublingly addictive. Ah, the 80s (and, to an extent, early 90s).
My first ever console was a ZX Spectrum that used to run on cassettes. We upgraded that to a NES (duck hunt, with the plug-in gun, was something of a classic). We then traded that in for an Amiga and an abundance of floppy discs. The last console I ever owned was an original XBox. I sold that a while ago due to a lack of time to play it. I don’t think I have ever played a single gaming app on my smartphone. This little handheld thingy might be a menace. I suspect it was a ploy by my wife to stop me working in the evenings.
I literally have no way to end this. I began this stream of consciousness and lost track of where I was going with it. It’s my day off tomorrow and I’m pretty tired. Anyhoo, that was Father’s Day in the Kneale household. Enjoy.