1: I AM CONVINCED I am having a mental breakdown of the worst type... How this happened I have no idea. But I somehow have found myself not only watching but looking forward to Murder She Wrote, which comes on between 2 and 3pm weekdays on BBC1. Once the series is finished I shall seek immediate psychiatric help.
2: NOW HERE is a blast from the past. Clickonthis to see a map of my favourite computer game of yore, 1984's Jet Set Willy ~ sequel to Manic Miner. The blurb goes something like this: having found loads of buried treasure in Manic Miner, Miner Willy buys a huge "haunted" mansion (haunted by machines, not ghosts)... whatever was happening to the mad professor the night he disappeared?... blah blah. 
You can only play the game properly by cheating it for infinite lives, falling great hights without dying and fixing a bug that meant when you entered the attic the entire game went haywire. Have a look at the map if you like. It is emblazoned on my subconscious. Perhaps this is telling (or not) but my favourite room was right at the top of the megatree, called "Out on a Limb" ~ ;->...
Now this brings back memories:
Here is the entire game played on fast forward, maybe with a "sprite innoculator" (ie it's cheated so the baddies can't kill you).
Bear in mind before you laugh at the crap graphics, this game somehow squeezed over 80 screens into less than 48 kilobytes. It took nearly 5 minutes to load off old fashioned cassette tape!
I love old country houses, so as you can imagine, I loved this game:
And this is what the gameplay was actually like:
If you really want to, you can download and play the game here. Or play online here. By the way, it's a very good game to play for those of us without lightning reflexes. Though I suspect, just like Marmite, you have to get a taste for something like this when extremely young otherwise it probably makes no sense to you at all!Before y'all leave showers of comments, have a look at this beautiful fuzzy terrier:
