Sauntering Vaguely Downward

"Daddy, daddy, you have something on your head."

The children and I evolved Misdreavus whilst we were enjoying lime & sodas and salty peanuts at the pub.

Mismagius turned out to be rather disrespectful.

[Screenshot of a rainbow around a Pokéstop at Parkrun.]

I wish to shoehorn in this screenshot from our Pokéhunt at our (not so) local Parkrun, so a brief Pokégo progress update:

• I finally caught a Shuckle! Sadly, it is not a good one, but I will walk it as soon as I've got enough candies to evolve Quilava as I don't have much faith that I'll ever see another.
• I'm Level 35 and slightly-more-than-a-half. It feels like progress has been happening more rapidly over the past month. I'm guessing this is at least partly due to the Friending process. I mean, if you pop a Lucky Egg just before becoming Ultra Friends with someone, you get 100,000 XP for the pleasure. That's not to be sneezed at.
  
• I love that Pokéfriends make an effort to send me geeky Pokégifts. Thank you. I try to reciprocate with gifts I know people will like.
  
• My only regret with my Pokéfriends is that I'm never physically close enough to anyone to trade.
  
• I have solo-raided with the children. Somehow it's more fun with them? They like battling in the gyms way more than I do. It's very cute. Keiki: "Can I foyght?***"

I have impending end of holiday lethargy. There are dozens of things I should do before I go back to work, but mustering up the will to do them is a herculean effort. I've just about managed bashing down the laundry Everest to a mere foothill, rearranging the wardrobe, essential shopping for the children, non-essential shopping for the children, and (with the bloke) figuring out what to do with the gigantic crop of courgettes which flourished during two weeks of neglect. So far, lentil & courgette dal in the slow cooker has been achieved. Tomorrow I'll make zucchini bread*, and courgette and potato soup to put in the freezer. I can probably fling the overgrown runner beans into that as well.

We got the car thoroughly cleaned. I had washed the children's car seat covers** after the mountain pass puke-a-thon but the full sparkle-shine service made it feel like even the faintest trace of vom had been banished.

In practical terms I'm fairly sure we're ready to go back to the usual routine. I can't shake the feeling that as soon as I go back to work, I'm going to be able to magically prioritise all the other things I should have taken care of whilst I was off, except I won't have time to do them.

* I still can't bring myself to call it "courgette bread". It just doesn't sound right.
** By hand because Center Parcs lodges don't have washing machines; all hail the cleaning power of Daz.
*** This is my attempt at phonetically spelling the Midlands pronunciation of "fight", which somehow has an "o" in it.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my usual bus on my usual way back to my usual Place of Sleep in London. As usual, I was busily spinning Pokéstops and occasionally popping a ‘mon into a gym as we pootled slowly through the traffic.

As we passed a couple of friendly gyms, I noticed that someone else, someone whose handle I recognised from almost two years of playing along the same route, was simultaneously adding their Pokémon to defend them. And I thought to myself, this person is on the bus with me.

There were only twelve people left on the single-decker bus. Fortunately, I had chosen a seat which gave me a good view of the exit doors, and I snuck peeks at people’s phones as they disembarked at the remaining stops. No dice.

Until we got to the terminus, which is where I disembark. Four people were left on the bus. I pretended to be hunting around for something in my bag so that everyone else would have got up by the time the bus stopped. It paid off. I surreptitiously scanned phone screens and the unmistakable PokéGo map jumped out at me from the hand of a middle-aged blonde woman, whom I was tickled to discover looked nothing like her in-game avatar.

Now, friends. What do you think I did? Did I bounce up to her in cheerful American fashion, introduce myself and reveal my shared love for the game? Or did I, in the fashion of my adopted country, almost work up the courage to squeak a timid hello in the hopes that she wouldn’t quite hear me and then scuttle off to the nearest friendly gym to pop in another ‘mon before I dashed to Place of Sleep?

In “this game keeps introducing small but important changes that maintain my interest” news, Pokémon Go seems to have adopted an almost continuous rota of themed events, based on Pokémon types and lasting weeks at a time. It’s helping me to complete my medals, as shown above. The only remaining silvers I have are Steel and Dragon, and if I keep tracking down Arons, I should have Steel into gold by the end of the month. Alchemy!

Completing one’s Pokédex is, of course, a never-ending task. Being a solitary player, I was never going to be a fan of raiding, so I’m very happy that the Field Research provides a different mechanism for collecting legendaries. Thus, now I have Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno.

( +3 screenshots. Pretty birds. Pretty birds. )

I’m on Step 6 out of 8 in the Special Research. The sticking point is the “Battle in 10 raids” task. I’ll get through it, but it’s going to take me a while. Not that I mind!

How are my fellow PokéGo players doing?

The fabled Beast from the East, about which the UK newspapers have been emoting for days, finally seems to have arrived in the West Midlands. Prior to this we had been thinking it was all just a lot of Hysteria from Siberia. But now, in addition to the cold which has seen the canal freeze over, we have the snow to match.

In far more significant news, I have, at long last, bagged myself a Lapras in Pokémon Go. It hatched from a 10 km egg. I was so happy. I've waited a year and a half for one of these.

( Lapras )

Other things I'm enjoying:

• The PokéGo map and catch screens reflect the current weather conditions, and the snow effects are rather lovely.
  
• I seem to be getting a much better ratio of 2 km/5 km/10 km eggs. It used to be that I always had eight 5 km eggs and maybe one other. Now I have almost equal numbers of the three types.
  
• My Rock-type badge went gold, and my Pikachu badge went silver with the latest proliferation of the party-hatted versions.
  
• Have acquired 300+ Wailmer candies. Getting There.