I discovered the bookworms too late. They had eaten through a large cross-section of World War Z and several Spanish language text books, so I could at least tell their tastes were varied. Still, their appetite wasn’t sated, which is why my sole copy of the Costa Rican constitution was also found devoured, long streaks of absence interrupting the founding principles of José Figueres Ferrer’s fresh democracy. I frowned at the squirming yellow worms. I was sad to lose the fundamental legal keystone of the tropical country I’d been living in for a year and eight months, the country I would soon be leaving, but I got on with the job. I saved what books I could and packed them in a plastic wrapper. I managed to save 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. But perhaps there were eggs in the spine.

When our bags were packed, we were ready to leave Central America. My girlfriend picked up the cat, a runt she found roaming the streets of San José, begging in its own feline way to be adopted and brought to Ireland, and caged it in a tiny jail cell especially constructed for airborne cats. We threw the books and the bags and the clothes and the cat into the back of a taxi, and left.

“I have written some OK things this year,” I thought.

* * *

A war in a Polish castle. The deputy editor of the website for which I write could not stop laughing as he proposed this idea to me. “Would you like, heh heh heh,” he said, like some rotten NPC. “How would you like to, haa haaa ha ha…” Eventually the proposal came: would I take a trip to Poland for four days and enclose myself in a 13^th century castle with upwards of 40 men who all want to kill each other through their computers? I said yes, of course.

A Ridealong. I’ve slacked off on this series of misadventures but managed to spit one out. I took a comedian called Glenn Moore into the hellish dimension of Comedy Night, an online game where players take turns to do stand-up comedy routines. I chose Glenn because I know him from university and once made him stand in front of a camera and say unfunny things. That is another story, nevertheless I felt the need to make amends. So I took him to a racist underworld and made him perform jokes.

Sailing the Northwest Passage. Games let us live out our wildest dreams, like going insane from loneliness on a cold boat while sailing the frigid and treacherous route from Greenland to Alaska. My virtual ship, the Bluster & Guesswork, was a taciturn and apathetic vessel, but we eventually understood one another.

A podcast. This is not writing and therefore unworthy of your attention. We revived the RPS Electronic Wireless Show. It’s still one of those “what have we played this week” podcasts but we try to keep to a theme. It takes a lot of work but I hope folks get some pleasure from zoning in and out to our chatter as they drive home from whatever clandestine task their handler has given them this week.

One-line summaries for a summer sale. I liked writing these. There’s an art to the TV guide blurb that I’ve long admired. Punchy entries that reduce an entire 30 minutes to a single sentence. A classic example being the entry for episode 1 of series 2 of the prison sitcom Porridge: “Fletcher and the gang are shocked to discover there is a thief among them.” I didn’t write anything as good as that, but I had my fun and that’s all that matters.

Diaries are still fun. Not content with last year’s robotic daddying in Stellaris, I tried to coddle the galaxy once more as a race of sentient turtles who lusted for a multicultural paradise. I claim moderate success.

I liked a lot of games. I liked the warring of Northgard and the double-jumping of Dead Cells. I lost clumps of my hair to Opus Magnum and grew them back in the restorative glow of Steamworld Dig 2. I punched up in Tekken 7, and was slapped down in Absolver. There are more but those are my favourites.

Some games vexed me. Rokh was the worst game I played. But there were others that left my brain fizzing for mixed reasons. Rain World‘s malicious menagerie was equal parts fascinating and frustrating. Pyre’s netball didn’t win me over, even when its horned demons did. Basically, I admire these two as works of art but I wish I had enjoyed them more as games. Then again, games are dumb as shit. Maybe it’s enough to admire the way lizards move.

* * *

There is sleet falling outside, real sleet. I have 2666 by Bolaño quarantined in a plastic bag in the garage of my parents’ home, next to some suspicious claw hammers. For all I know, the bookworms have followed me back. If I open this bag of books and discover that they too have been ingested by the hungry larvae I had once believed to be entirely fictional, I will be sad. It has been a big, burning bookcase of a year, and it would be troubling to lose another tome.

But it wouldn’t be a disaster. In a cardboard box lined with a hooded sweatshirt lined with fleece, the runt cat my girlfriend stole from the hot streets of Costa Rica lies, I assume happily, in the aura of an Irish radiator. It is possible she has brought parasites of her own.