Sixteen Thousand Steps
Sixteen thousand steps. That’s what the Apple Health app tells me, on the shiny new iPhone that’s been in my pocket all day long. Nearly thirteen kilometres. That’s about the size of a day out and about with my younger children. And you wonder why I’m not overweight, given that I typically sit at a desk all day long.
To be honest, today wasn’t ordinary at all. The girls wanted to go to rugby training, and our car’s engine has been misbehaving, so rugby was a bus ride, and a couple of miles walk away. I distracted the children on the way with breakfast in McDonalds, and again on the way home with lunch at KFC. Hardly healthy, I know, but I was in full-on-distraction mode.
After rugby training, the afternoon was spent wandering around the shops – buying new school bags for 13 and 14, new running shoes for 14, and an armful of video games from the used game store. The girls finally have their copies of FIFA to play in their rooms.
Oh – I forgot all about that story, didn’t I (it played out on Saturday afternoon, but I’ll tell it anyway). My other half acquired two copies of FIFA 17 on E-Bay, and had them posted to our local supermarket via “click and collect”. As soon as we got the collection notification via email, I wandered into town with Miss 13, who has been waiting to play FIFA all week (she’s football mad). All went well in the supermarket – we fed our details into an iPad on the counter, and were told a staff member would bring our parcel out to us. Only that’s now what happened at all.
We stood waiting for perhaps ten minutes, while nearby staff took an interest in us, and apologised. Finally a flustered looking lady turned the corner at the end of the nearest aisle, and seemed to offer a more formal apology. In the hour between the video games arriving in the store room, and our arrival in the story, they had gone missing. You can think what you like – I think they were stolen by staff in the store room. Of course I have no proof.
She issues us a refund, and a gift voucher for more than the value of the games that had been lost – which Miss 13 seemed pretty happy with – until I wouldn’t let her spend it on chocolate.
“You can’t spend that amount of money on chocolate!? You would need a wheelbarrow to carry it home!” – this did nothing to dissuade her form the idea.
So anyway – after returning from our epic shopping and rugby adventure late this afternoon, we sat down for dinner together, then went our various ways to play video games. This is where I admit to picking up a second hand copy of GTA 5 – which half explains my total absence from everything over the last few hours. It turns out leading a pretend life in a video game as a collection of entertainingly dreadful characters is quite addictive.