I’ve let Grand Theft Auto take over my life, and it is good to see it all coming together, but more on that in a bit.

Firstly, I’ve gone and got a song STUCK in my head, with no hope of getting it out! The latest Sony Bravia ad, with all the plasticine rabbits, has the Rolling Stones song “She’s like a Rainbow” playing as they make their way across New York. It’s been on TV for a while, but since I managed to download the song off You Tube I’ve not been able to get it out of my head. It happens like that every now and again, doesn’t help that it’s a brilliant song. It’s made me want to check out the album that it came from (Their Satanic Majesties Request) as the only Stones stuff I listen to is mid-70’s songs.

It’s also been the soundtrack to a rather fine weekend, weather wise. The first real taste of summer came on Saturday, and what was I doing? Working. What I noticed as I made my way through Nottingham was the amount of people who’d decided this one fine day meant it was time to get the summer clothes out. There were plenty of people walking around the square wearing shorts and t-shirts, or in the ladies case anything skimpy! I can understand why people are like this here in the UK, we aren’t renowned for our long hot summers, so I suppose you have to take your chances while you can.

Saturday night and I was having dinner in town to celebrate Iain’s birthday. He wanted to try out Nando’s. He’d not been there and was quite keen on trying their Extra Hot chicken. Luckily, common sense prevailed and he instead went for the Hot option, after a wise piece of advice from Carter over the long term affects it’d have on his mouth.

Nando’s is nice food, but they seemed to have staff problems at this particular one. I ordered the Chicken Fillet Burger with chips and spicy rice. When it came over to me, the waitress managed to spill a few chips from the plate onto my lap and then onto the floor. After an apology, a manager decided to give me a free portion of chips to make up for the four I’d lost. Result! 

Now, GTA. Over the weekend various videos have appeared on the Internet from people who’ve got the game already. They look incredible, and over the past few days have grown in number. I could provide loads of links to various people who’ve uploaded videos, or indeed some guy who is showing a live link of him playing GTA on his 360, but instead I’ll be the good citizen and not encourage it! From watching the videos, it made me change my mind from not just wanting the game to wanting the game RIGHT NOW! 

Vijay had told me of his intention to go to Tesco’s late tonight to pick up the game, and I was thinking of asking him to get me a copy, but then remembered that he was off Tuesday and I was off Wednesday, so no chance of me getting the game until Thursday. I then hit upon the idea of getting up early today and going into Nottingham to try my luck at all the various game stores. There are quite a few in Nottingham when you think of all the places that sell video games, but I’d been sure to check out the indie stores as the chances of them having stock were more likely than Game or Gamestation, who I’m certain are both already sold out.

I went to Forbidden Planet on Friar Lane, just across the road from where my bus stops. It’s primarily a comic book store/one stop shop for everything cult (Doctor Who, Star Wars etc.). They also sell video games, and have a fairly good and reasonably priced section. I wandered in there and asked the guy if I was too late to pre-order the game, he gave me a puzzled look and explained that they had in fact got loads of stock. Whenever people buy games they rarely think of Forbidden Planet, he said. He pointed to copies of Mario Kart and Wii Fit behind him as a case in point.

So, pre-ordering was a piece of piss, nothing like the long drawn out process that I was expecting. But what good is a HD game if you don’t have anything HD to play it on? Well that was the problem I faced earlier this week. I bought a cable for my PS3 that enabled a component signal to be turned into a VGA signal and through to my VGA only Hyundai monitor. It was the only possible way of getting HD on my monitor, as there is no HDMI port.

After a great big failure, I considered the options. I couldn’t do GTA justice and play it in shitty SD! Which is why I’m now currently using a new Samsung 20″ Monitor/TV with HD. After convincing Argos to let me have a store card, enabling me to pay off the monitor on a Buy Now Pay November deal, I’m fully ready for the next generation of gaming!

It’s amazing what lengths I’ll go to for things, isn’t it…