Tweet
I may be a city-boy, but I'm still a fan of The Great Outdoors. I've conquered all three of the national peaks, surviving only on service station flapjacks and chocolate Yazoo. I've enjoyed failing to make campfires as much as any modern half-man. Nostalgia for the romantic bucolic? I've felt those pangs, too. I'm particularly fond of the Yorkshire Tea 50-pack because of the stone walls and green-pastel fields printed on its foil bag; it reminds me of a more innocent time. Not one that I remember personally, mind - I was brought up in Birmingham.Shigeru Miyamato, though, I reckon he had some Actual Innocent Times. I've read the stories of him moseying about his village home of Sonobe, going on mini expeditions around its local bamboo forest and into underground caves. Of course, eventually he would create the Legend of Zelda series, and people would make the link between his childhood escapades and the thrill of exploration so perfectly distilled and digitized into Link's adventures. And like anything vaguely rural and recounted it sounds just lovely, idyllic. You would not think it massively evocative of my own childhood adventures around England's underrated second city - more bamboo trees, fewer piss-smelling underpasses.
But I explored too, climbing over park gates and strolling overgrown canal paths, discovering metal skeletons of orphaned shopping trolleys in the wild, or spending some time admiring graffiti love pledges and penis sketches in those tiled underpasses (usually used for pissing). I admit, I also played a lot of video games, and spent many a happy hour sat indoors, absorbed in their simplified, skewed versions of the big wide world outdoors.
Read more…
More...