I fully intended to write regularly while I was in England. I did have a lovely time visiting with one of my best friends in all the world, and I definitely worried over nothing. The hotel I stayed at was quirky and fun and just steps away from the High Street and had a nice little Chinese restaurant directly across the street. I found some keepers in the £1 bargain bins at a record shop in town, as well as an interesting little book about the beginnings of BBC Radio One. We had a few really nice meals out as well, but spent the bulk of the time up in the attic, listening to music, passing the aux and the Dutchie, and watched the New York Stock Exchange crash live in real time and 4K.

My friend surprised me with a gift of a reproduction of the classic Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer! The Spectrum was that "computer over there" that I was never able to experience growing up in the States; we received it's greatly inferior sibling, the ZX-81. This model from Retro Games, Ltd. has some of the best-rated games from Crash Magazine built into the unit, with the ability to load other games and programs via USB, as well as the BASIC interpreter mode. It was the computer that introduced a lot of people behind the Iron Curtain to home computing, through bootlegged units. The Spectrum really was a phenomenon, and it's lovely to own a working physical version. I also bought their Commodore 64 reproduction several years back, and they're both quality products.

Coming back was difficult, knowing what I was coming back to. I hope this visit isn't the last one I'll be able to take out of the country. It's absolutely insane how everything has been turned upside down and lit on fire here in the US since the end of January. But that's a post for another day. It's Friday, it's the weekend, last night's radio broadcast went off without a hitch and sounded great.

I did allow myself one final indulgence before putting a kibosh on non-essential purchases: I bought an Anbernic Cube XX, just before the stock already in the US ran out, and I'm really glad I did. I think this is the perfect unit for running Pico-8 software. I still love the RGB30, but this unit hits the sweet spot. Having multiple operating systems to choose from is nice, as well. I have so much love for a gaming platform with tens of thousands of games which are free and a low bar to entry to coding fun, small, lo-fi games.