07/07/26 - May & June ’26 Website recap
Rome holiday
The end of April and start of May featured the trip to Rome, where my Mum and I had a few days to explore! We stayed quite near to the coliseum, and had great weather as we saw historical sites, churches, and ate some decent food (though I did expect better out of much of it honestly - the simple foods there were definitely the best).
I also got talking with a lovely Australian, who’s been staying there… more on that later.
May
May also featured an evening watching Eurovision with a group of young adults from Church, several great end-of-week pub trips and had a few lovely catch-ups with my bestie throughout the month.
Dropout Improv Live
Early in June I had a chance to go and see Dropout Improv in London, a live comedy show featuring folks from the Dropout comedy group. Vic Michaelis, Jacob Wysocki, Jeremy Culhane and others was fantastic, and made for a great night out.
Dune
Throughout these months, I played a few board games, of which a stand-out was my first time playing Dune. To date, I’ve only seen the first Dune film, but watched a couple of videos to give me context and ideas on how the game plays. This was tricky to get the hang of at first, as there’s a lot of moving parts, but the experience has definitely cemented the game as being one of my favourites! After a last-round alliance switch-up, my allies and I won the game by beating out the other two alliances and taking all the key regions. We’re hoping to play again next month!
Steam Deck
I finally reached my savings goal to buy a Steam Deck, despite the recent price hike, and had it arrive earlier in July! I’ve been getting it set up with games from my Steam and Epic libraries, as well as a variety of emulated games, which have made it a great portable. I’m hoping to make it a mainstay for playing smaller games that don’t necessarily need my PC, like a new favourite that released: Mina the Hollower!
I’ve not logged a massive number of hours in the game yet (9.4 as of time of writing), but it has been fun as well as tricky. I tend to brute force things rather than go away elsewhere ro level up and get stronger, so entering Septemburg earlier than I probably should have has caused me trouble. Shocking, I know, but I’m honestly not that great at most action games.
Besides this, I’ve played a few hours of MGSV, which has brought my total hours in-game to over 200, and I’ve been trying to get better at Hitman’s ‘freelancer’ game mode, which is tricky without mouse and keyboard controls!
Church Young Adults
I’ve also been in charge of organising and preparing food for the weekly Church Young Adults group. The menu has included deconstructed burritos, pasta salad, cheesy broccoli pasta, chickpea curry with baked sweet potatoes and niçoise salad.
K
Most importantly, that Australian woman I mentioned… K and I talked a lot over text and video call through May, and we finally had a chance to meet up in June. It was pretty late on the Saturday evening that she arrived in from seeing friends in Dublin, so our meal outside Buckingham Palace and walk back to her hostel was followed by a dash to get the train back home.
As I was a little later starting again the following morning, we went to the later 11:30 service at All Souls church at Langham Place. We then made our way to Shakespeare’s Globe theatre to watch a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was excellently done (though my poor knowledge of the area had us a little lost on the way, and we unfortunately missed some of the first act).
We had a lovely walk along the Thames in the direction of the Tate Britain… though realised after a while that we were walking in totally the wrong direction, and turned around after crossing at Tower Bridge. Having not eaten much, I was quite low on energy by the time we reached the gallery and was honestly a bit concerned that I was going to ruin the day by being so hangry.
Reaching the gallery with about 20 minutes before closing left us enough time to have a brisk walk around (though it’s definitely worth another visit sometime), which we then followed with a great meal at a pub nearby. It’s pretty hard to beat a really good cider-battered fish and chips.
10/10, will see again :p
Sweden holiday
I went on holiday with some of my family at the end of the month, spending a week and a half in Sweden. The first few days were in Stockholm, where we stayed on a boat-hotel called the Mälardrottningen. It’s located pretty much right in the middle of the city, so is a great spot to be able to explore from.
Sights
We had the opportunity to go into (the lobby of) Mojang Studios, which was beautifully decorated with Minecraft props.
Fotografiska
We also visited Fotografiska, a photography museum. The ground floor was well laid out with work from British photographer Martin Parr, which was lovely, but heading up to the first floor, we found a massive exhibition hall full of AI animations.
It’s hard to explain what a massive juxtaposition this was. Downstairs was a space displaying the work of a real artist, who has dedicated his life to his craft. There was even a space downstairs for emerging photographers, with work by Joakim Müller in a dimly lit space. But upstairs, next to another exhibit that I was too furious to pay attention to, were the displays of “AI-image artists” that were a complete falsehood.
There was even a display about imagery from WWII, which was using AI generated images to try and create what it would have looked like on the front lines if cameras had been able to get in there at the time. Of course, the photos of soldiers on D-Day were fake. None of them actually existed.
To me, the beauty of photography is that it captures real moments in time, where things actually happened. To present real artwork alongside faked moments, manipulated by machines to appear real, or to be so fantastical that they are beyond real, is a disgraceful forgery and a real slap in the face to anyone that appreciates art, in the form of photography or otherwise.
I was extremely disappointed and was left with a very sour taste, especially for a place that we paid to enter.
Downtime
Some of the downtime we had on the boat gave me a chance to start replaying Metal Gear Solid 3 on the steam deck. I love replaying this game, as it’s one that I always learn new things about as time goes on (I’ve just learned that some uniforms provide special benefits, like the desert tiger preventing suppressors wearing out, or auscam reducing damage taken to 2/3!)
One of the only frustrations I have about it is the way that several controls are bound to the PS2’s pressure-sensitive buttons, which makes it a little irritating to properly do things like CQC. I have figured out a way to get around this by using the back buttons to control the through the emulator, but it’s not consistent and can be a little wonky.
Dalarna county
For the second portion of the holiday, we rented a car and drove up north to Dalarna county. The area moved from being an open metropolis to a sea of trees, as we traveled along winding roads through dense forests.
We headed to an area north of lake Siljan, which led us through through Rättvik whilst it was celebrating its classic cars week. There were a truly massive number of old American-style cars, most of them looking like they had just pulled up from Radiator Springs.
I got a few videos of them filling the roads, causing massive amounts of congestion in an area that clearly wasn’t used to their number, noise, or pollution.
Most were in pretty good condition, but we were shocked to see a good number that were really about to fall apart, be it from rust or from not-so-careful use through the years.
We ended the holiday with a few final days back in Stockholm.
Games played
- Mina the Hollower
- Hitman: World of Assassination
- MGSV
- MGS3
Shows watched
Music listened to
- The Great Divide: Noah Kahan
- God Must Really Love Me - Tori Kelly
- you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love - Olivia Rodrigo
- Don’t Tell The Dog - James Marriott
