INKY SQUIGGLES

Throughout the pandemic, one international location in particular haunted my imagination : South Germany. While locked down, I took advantage of my daily exercise allowance of a single socially distanced outing in my local area. However, while I'm lucky to have access to abundant pretty, green spaces, my hometown is also a place where noteworthy sheep regularly make the front-page news. Like everyone else in the world, I craved a change of scenery – so I turned to the immersive worlds of books, films and adventure games to transport me from my somewhat fertiliser-seasoned surroundings. And, with its majestic forests, fairytale castles and melding of medieval and modern locales, the setting of FMV adventure game  Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within  gave me the perfect fantasy fuel. Better yet, it was rooted in reality; this was somewhere I might actually go someday – as fellow adventure game fans  AdventureGameGeek and IPKISS4LIFE had before me. So, as soon as international travel

Spot the difference. Embracing the four-eyed life I'd been wearing glasses for around twenty years, after a short-lived phase in early secondary school of 'forgetting' my pair in an effort to look cool. Somehow the penalty -- squinting in vain across the dining hall for familiar faces -- seemed worth it at the time.  'You really need to wear these at all times,' my horrified optician scolded me after I casually revealed this. And so I came to terms with the fact that some things -- like seeing where I'm going -- should probably rank above others -- like whether my glasses clashed with my outfit. Eventually, I even grew to like my glasses, assimilating them into my style and routinely opting for their familiar comfort over the hassle and waste of contact lenses. So when the time came to refresh my pair, which had -- quite literally -- seen me through multiple job and house moves, a postgraduate course and a pandemic, I took the task seriously. I spent hours combi