See I’d so love to tell you that I took a trip to the moon and back, or went on holiday to somewhere utterly fabulous and amazing. The truth is I was getting on with the daily grind of life and rediscovering my love for the Xbox and party chats!

During my recovery from the ruptured patellar tendon, I was on the Xbox every night chatting with friends and playing games, well lets face it, there are not a lot of other places you can go when you cannot walk.  When I went back to work, it slid a little, and then when I started blogging it pretty much got kicked to the curb all together.

I have 3 or 4 really good friends on there, who I met just after my accident and even though I would see them on, I was pretty much just using my Xbox to watch catch up tv or Netflix. This last week or so I ventured back and it’s been really good meeting up with everyone, I’ve even been talked into buying GTA V, thats going to be interesting.

It still never ceases to amaze me though, the way guys react when they hear a female voice come through their headset. A comment was made in the party that it’s uncommon for people of the female variety to play and it is still a very male dominant environment. My response was that there are plenty of girl gamers out there, they just choose to disguise themselves as males to cut out all the bullshit.

We do joke though, as I have in the past used my voice to my advantage. Take the ‘Grid’ demo rooms for instance. After being pushed into walls, run off the track, rear ended and dented and scraped to within an inch of my life I have been known to send a message not unlike “If you wanted to get in the car, you only had to asked, no need to beat the feckin doors in.” It can prompt many a varied response, but 9 out of 10 times on hearing my voice the first reply will always be, “You’re a girl”. No shit sherlock, I am indeed, I have boobs and everything is what I want to reply, but I am a lazy typer so find that, “I am” is usually enough. Next follows a friend request, 10 – 15 more messages asking me everything from what I had for breakfast to the colour of my underwear and them trawling mercilessly through my games list, exclaiming in disgust that there is no Call of Duty on there. Ultimately though, they usually leave both my car and I alone, meaning I can complete at least one circuit of the track.

I’m now extremely selective about who I add to my friends list, because I’ve had stalkers. Bless them, they have no idea what I am  like at all, they just fall in love with my avatar and my voice, despite the fact that I tell them I am probably old enough to be their Mum!!

I like having a console where I can interact, however in some cases it can also be restricting. The reactions sometimes make me shy away from game chat and these days I usually only go into parties with friends.

It hasn’t however affected my sense of humour. Trials Evolution is one of my favourite games, and even though it’s taken a while I am finally starting to get better. I figured it was time to add the following tag line to my bio:

If I crossed the line before you in Trials Evolution, you just got beat by a girl!

Game on!