“Good grammar is essential, Robin.”

“You owe your life to dental hygiene.”

Wednesday! Wednesday was my designated don’t-go-to-the-gym day, so I took a gammon joint and made a mega pot of stew with it. That sorted dinner for the rest of the week and one day’s dose went in the freezer, and there was gammon left over for sandwiches too. Good eating on one of them.

The rest of the evening was spent playing, and finishing, Batman: Androgynous Andalucian. Thank goodness I don’t have to come up with any more stupid subtitles for it.

So, an action game, using checkpoint saves, that’s not only good but that I finish? They are rare beasts indeed. And whilst it’s an action game, and ostensibly about duffing up thugs (as opposed to making thugs up the duff. That would be quite a different game), it doesn’t overdo the fisticuffs. You never reach the “how many have I not-killed? Isn’t that enough?” stage, because each round of biffing is spread out by the stealth/predator sections and exploring to find all the secrets. The fights – that I never got particularly good at – also don’t get frustratingly hard, except perhaps Bane. The times you have to fight two big beasties at once, with plenty of thugs besides, do veer dangerously close though.

I might have removed the Poison Ivy section, if it were up to me; it only adds some annoying stationary plant-spore baddies and some backtracking. The section’s not that long, though, and ends with a reasonable enough boss (a non-rubbish boss fight? Inconceivable!), so never mind.

All told, I enjoyed it a lot. Especially the Predator sections with gun-armed thugs, where you could plan your takedowns (or haul-ups) from the shadows or the rafters. Clearing an entire room without being spotted is satisfying, especially if you manage to take out baddies in various different ways; sneak up behind the first, string up the next, boobie trap the ground and blow up the third, and then glide-kick the final one, perhaps.

Oh, finally, the solution to a work problem I was having (keeping track of materials “used up” in production) occurred to me whilst I was brushing my teeth, just before 2am. The art of working… Without working.