Two things have been dominating my brain for the last couple of weeks: moving house, and playing Portal.

Portal is… well, it’s a revelation. I know, I know; once again, I’m really really late to the party. Everyone else in the world knew that Portal was brilliant back in October, and there have been any number of Internet memes generated about it since then. If you haven’t played it yet, go now and do so. It’ll take you under 3 hours, if you’re good at gaming, or, if you’re me, more like five and a half hours, and those hours will be alternately intriguing, frustrating, creepy, and immensely satisfying.

Moving house, on the other hand, seems to take an absolute eternity, and is made of pure frustration.

The two things seem to have become inextricably linked in my brain, though, to the point where I’m having nightmares about moving vans and portals. I’m not sure why it was a nightmare - actually, I’d love to be able to shoot a blue portal into my new place, an orange one at the old place, and just chuck all my boxes through. It’d save a two hour drive each way, which would be fantastic. I’d love to be able to just step from one place to another through portals, without having to travel all the time (commuting on the Victoria line has been hellish lately, which is part of the reason for the move) though placing the portals could be tricky, and without Chell’s magic leg-protectors, I’d probably do myself an injury within a day or so.

Every time I get really into a game or web service or computer program or whatever, though, it just makes me realise how utterly inconvenient real life can be. Wouldn’t it be great if you could use Google to search reality? (I suspect that thought will keep occurring to me over the next couple of weeks, because things tend to go inexplicably missing when house-moves are happening.) Or, better, use Google to search your brain for all the passwords and PINs and other identifying data you used when you set up various accounts and have now utterly forgotten? Having to call or write letters to every company with whom I hold an account to get them to change my address or send a final bill or whatever other fiddly task has somehow become necessary is driving me insane; if only everything could be updated online, life would be great. I guess, basically, what I’m saying here is that I’m lazy, and I wish the real world could be as easy to sort out as the virtual one.

Remind me of this when, next week, I’m tearing my hair out over my complete inability to set up a wireless network in the new place.

So, that was Christmas - we’re now officially back at work, the holidays seem like a distant memory, and next Christmas is too far off to even contemplate. Did you have fun? I did. I ate lots, drank moderately, read lots of books, played lots of games, watched some truly dire telly, completely forgot all about the Doctor Who Christmas special, and sang various Christmas songs. Loudly, and not particularly well. It was fun.

One of the more notable aspects of the fun was the introduction into my life of an Xbox 360. I had been lagging sadly behind in the games console stakes, still playing PlayStation 2 games (I even got my very own copy of Fahrenheit for the PS2 as a present this Christmas, which is awesome!) but over the Christmas holidays, a whole new world of gaming opened up to me.

Of the games which came bundled with the console, I quickly learned that Forza Motorsports 2 is not for me. I can’t drive and I know sod all about cars; my favourite racing game is Burnout, because it rewards you for driving like a maniac, forcing other people off the road and exploding your car, so a game that required me to tinker about and then drive impressively was never going to win my affections. I’m sure it’s very good, if you like that sort of thing. Viva Pi