Slitting throats and pickpocketing

I said I’d never do it. It was something you done when you were younger and shouldn’t really be revisited. Something that should be left in the past. I’m married now, for goodness sake. I’m supposed to be grown up. Such things are supposed to be behind me. I considered the idea of going back to it all damaging, anti-social and near embarrassing. Unfortunately, however, it’s happened. I’ve become hooked again.
I spent my entire Saturday afternoon, shoddily dressed, staring at the television, swearing occasionally, twiddling knobs and pressing buttons on a PS3 controller.
It was a lazy day yesterday, my head aching following a mini night out on Friday, when we ate in Glasgow’s Thai Fountain, under the supervision of the wine watching waiters and waitresses, and then enjoyed a few drinks afterwards on our way to the bus home.
Ka was out on the Saturday afternoon for lunch with the girls and I was left to my own devices for a change. The device in question being Kenny’s PS3.
My brother left me in charge of his beloved shiny black box, along with a large pile of games, before he went off to Oz. I begrudgingly took the machine off him, believing that I’d maybe just watch the occasional Blu-Ray on my twelve year old tv (does Blu-Ray even work on non HD televisions? I’ve no idea).
My PS2 lies unloved on one of the bottom shelves, under the ten tonne Sony tele, and has done for some time. I bought the PS2 at some point in the far and distant past, off the back of a lorry, from one of the women in Mum’s work. I’ve no idea to this day where she got it from. As far as I am aware my Mum, and this casual sales lady, never worked with lorries, or had much to do with lorries in any way, so where the lorry, and it’s hind end, came from, I’ve no idea.
Anyway, after begrudgingly buying the PS2 I bought, or received, a grand total of five games through the following years. With the exception of that, the most I played Playstation was when Kenny would allow me to lose to him at FIFA (apparently the computer was a better competitor), or whenever Chaz had a beer and Playstation night, most of which, for some reason, he made sure I was never invited to.
For just under a year now the shiny black box has stood at the side of our living room tv and instead of looking hip and ‘with-it’, has been gathering dust (or at least it would have done, if Ka was not such a fabulous housekeeper).
Until now. Now, I’m hooked.
Whenever Ka is out, whenever she’s in the bath, whenever she’s busy in the kitchen (where she belongs) she’ll hear the familiar opening greeting tones of the PS3 machine as it’s lights turn to green and the familiar wavy, graphic curls across the screen.
So, on Saturday, as soon as Ka closed the front door behind her, the PS3 button was pressed, the welcome tones rang out and the curvy welcome graphic was back on the screen, loading the machine’s interactive menu. Before long I was darting around the streets of the Holy Land, slitting bad guys throats, climbing tall towers, rescuing women being wrongly accused of thieving, struggling to pickpocket suspicious looking characters and generally being rather wonderful. A superhero in the brutal age of the Crusades.
Just as I was racing into a new town on my stolen horse, my mobile rang. Chaz interrupted.
Chaz, being the seasoned pro, when it comes to PS3, was supposed to be coming round to help me out with ‘Creed’ as he’d completed it two or three years previously. Apparently he’s now got the third ‘Creed’ game, received two Christmases ago, still in it’s packaging. Good for you and your packaging, I thought, just tell me how to successfully pickpocket this grumpy, old git with the beard will you?
As it turned out, my attempts at pickpocketing were far superior to Chaz’s, who got slaughtered on more than one occasion. He’d perhaps lost his touch, either that, or there was a reason the third ‘Creed’ game was still in it’s packaging.
It turns out you’ve got to press the circle button, and keep it pressed, otherwise the mark, swings round, accuses you, and shouts for the city’s guards to run after you and eventually either slice you to death or chase you into the canal, where you swiftly drown, because, it turns out, the assassin can’t swim!
I couldn’t believe that part. An assassin that can’t swim?! Ridiculous!
How does this supposed assassin then come up on to the beach and remove his rubber swim suit to reveal and perfectly ironed evening suit underneath, just in time for cocktails? (Saying that, I’m not sure they drank cocktails in the Holy Land during the Crusades… probably against their religion or something… whereas slitting somebody’s throat was perfectly acceptable).
Anyway, Chaz soon got bored of watching me struggle to climb the city walls and before long we were back in ‘Motor Storm’ again, a game we discovered from Kenny’s pile a few weeks back. Once more we were racing through the ridiculously bumpy terrain and mountains of Monument Valley. Throughout the game you get to race in seven different kinds of vehicles which range from bikes and buggies to racing trucks and rigs, all with different handling and capabilities. All crazy nonsense, of course, with massive, twisting tracks, vehicle boost controls, incredibly over the top crashes which involve bits of vehicle flying everywhere and pilots, mangled in crumpled rally cars or flung over mountain ledges. Slow motion replays illustrate exactly how you’re pilot meets his glorious maker before magically coming back to life in a fully regenerated, roadworthy, vehicle at exactly the point on the lap where fate conspired against you. All the while Bobbie Gillespie, and Primal Scream, blasts through the television speakers at you along with the growling of your engine, the explosions, the squelching of the mud under your tyres and the horns that signal the end of a lap, some of them sounding suspiciously like the horrendous winds of the vuvuzelas.
Anyway, the horn was soon sounded on my PS3 fun as Ka arrived home and, after around an hour of watching the tv in the bedroom, I eventually allowed her into the living room and turned the shiny black box off.
That was it for one day. My fun was over. After that it was boring old Saturday night tv. I had been hoping that the boring Saturday night tv would be enough to send Ka off to sleepy land on the couch, and me off to the Holy Land again, but it wasn’t to be. Hopefully Kenny stays in Oz for at least another year, that way I may just get to complete my mission as disgraced Assassin, Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad (just as well, I'm writing that and not pronouncing it).