If you know me you know that my time off tends to be measured in hours rather than days. But this season of my life is so difficult that I decided to block out Friday and take a rare entire day off.

I was hoping Thursday would be somewhat relaxing as I had a hair appointment in between work appointments, but my hairdresser was training an apprentice and honestly I had the worst head massage I’ve ever had in my life, like some kind of medieval torture.

Which is sad because that’s the bit I normally like the most. Apart from when my hairdresser says “you’re really laid back,” which never ceases to entertain me considering no one else I’ve met in my life would ever think to describe me as easy going in any possible way.

I think this is because I know nothing about hair and really couldn’t care less, but compared to other clients they have who are super fussy about the way every strand falls, I look very chill. (I should learn at some point because every time they say the word “layer” my brain goes to either Photoshop or cake, and I don’t actually know what a layer even is in the hair world).

Back to Friday. We were thinking of a last minute weekend break somewhere sunny, but honestly there wasn’t the brain space or energy to figure that out, so we settled for a day trip instead.

To Birmingham, which is generally not most people’s first choice for a day trip. And especially so when we discovered, too late, that the Reform party was there for a conference. (No, this is not going where you think it is, I didn’t buy any milkshakes and I’m not writing this from prison).

Anyway, I started the day like I do many other days – a 5km row and checking my emails. After which I realised that it didn’t really look like a day off so far, so I finished “Four Thousand Weeks,” ate some lentil chips and played on my iPad for a bit until it was time to go.

Our first pit stop (sorry) was to the F1 Arcade. I literally didn’t know it existed until one of our customers recommended it to me a while ago.

It’s a really big space – pretty quiet but I bet it gets rammed on race days since it has a big screen – with tons of tables for food/drinks and also lots of driving seats (? I don’t know what they’re actually called). And yes you can have table service to your car, which I guess makes it the opposite of a drive thru?!

Also, the food was genuinely great, which surprised me a lot because normally with these kinds of places the food is usually a “if we must” secondary thing, and it really wasn’t here. I had a chicken Caesar salad, but there were burgers and flatbreads and a bunch of sharer plates and things.

The tech integration was really good. You can set up a profile and earn coins to trade in for stuff, and you can choose the difficulty but not the course or brand. Oh, and there’s also a completely separate game which was a wall of lights where you can test your reflexes and compare them to F1 drivers’, but we didn’t do that.

My first race was a disaster, but I learned three important things (all of which are actually one thing which is: you’re not playing Mario Kart, Jenni):

1) you do actually have to brake;
2) crashing into other cars is bad;
3) the bit at the beginning that warns you in very large letters to take the first corner gently can and should be ignored.

Oh, and also I learned that if you ignore 1) and 2) and spin out you will never, ever catch up ever again. EVER.

Anyway, I learned fast from my massive initial failure and won the second and third races. (Which is not that big of an achievement considering we were on rookie difficulty, but still an improvement).

Speaking of improvements, I have a lot of questions/suggestions for F1 in general, like “do you really need so many corners in a game/sport where you want to go as fast as possible?” and “why are there no helpful items to pick up on the track?” and “why can’t we drive on the beach/in space?”

Anyway I’d definitely recommend it because it was a lot of fun. I also love that I can collect coins and trade them in for things (both on a personal level and a marketing level), so I’ll definitely go again.

The next stop was Lucky Claw. It was our second visit there, and it’s tucked away up a couple of flights of stairs in Birmingham’s Chinatown, which also happens to double as their Gay Village for some reason. Anyway, it’s one of my favourite arcades despite the fact the variety of machines isn’t huge – as the name suggests it’s mostly about claw machines – because it advertises a “20% successfully rate.” And I love a good successfully rate.

Also, it’s the only place I’ve ever been where you can play claw machines featuring packets of cheese and onion crisps and prawn crackers. I kid you not. I don’t know what a packet of crisps pulled out of a claw machine is like, but I imagine it’s similar to if you jumped up and down on a packet before eating it.

I was curious about this though so I had to win one. It’s ramen, but you can just eat it out of the packet because you don’t need to cook it…?!

A bag of toys later (which I’ll be donating to either a charity shop or the local hospital), I was Lucky Claw’d out, so we went to find somewhere to have a drink. On the way we passed a cute little second hand bookshop, where I handily donated the book I’d finished on the way to Birmingham.

We ended up at a bowling place near the train station, which actually turned out to have all kinds of different games, from darts to beer pong to something that involved giant screens on the floor. Which is good because bowling isn’t my first choice, especially not after doing a 5k row, walking across half of Birmingham, and then climbing about six flights of stairs on, shall we say, not the best day of the month.

Weird fact about me: if there is a neon blue food or beverage on the menu, you can guarantee I’ll order it.

Anyway after that it was definitely time to go home. Where I checked my inbox, decided to run away from 51 emails, ordered some food from Persian Empire, and played the Port Royal dice game with Joe. Which I lost, badly.

After that I finished up my 10k steps and then we watched another episode of Dexter: Resurrection (which, in my tiredness, I initially typed as “Insurrection” and they should definitely also make that version).

Saturday is a normal working day with bookings, and then Sunday we have friends coming over so it’ll be working from home around that. But I’m already feeling a bit happier from today, so it’s all good.