...Must Come To An End

For many of you that remember my blog posts before I lost British Bandicoot last year and had to re-construct it, will know the story behind Polyrhythm and I. For those who don't, here's a brief recap.

One of the many old Crash Mania logos (and personally, my favourite)

Poly plays the N.Sane Trilogy adorned with Crash stuff back at the game's launch.

Between 2005 and 2011, in particular, I was a member of HPZr's Crash Mania forum. The forum eventually became the Crash Bandicoot Forum under fellow moderator and then admin, JumpButton. I moderated the forum and eventually joint administrated it before finally stepping down to general member status in 2011 (due to some bad stuff in my life more so than the disagreement I had with a member called Bandicootmask, at the time). However, before stepping down, Polyrhythm joined the forum back in 2008 just as I started university. As was standard for me to do back then, I'd greet new members with welcome PMs, but I wasn't aware Polyrhythm, or Poly, would reply so enthusiastically. It turned out we had many shared interests, not least of all Crash, and I had just started at the university she wanted to go to. I studied English with Creative Writing, but she wanted to go into Illustration. One thing lead to another and eventually we found we liked each other very much, meeting in person several times until 2012, where I moved in with her and her parents following that bad patch in my life. Come 2015, we'd moved into our own place and married.

Poly's white chocolate surprise to mark 10 years together

Recap over. Cue February 2019 - we hit 10 years together since officially being together. I can't even begin to go into the detail of how much our relation has meant to me. After all, I doubt I'd even be here if it wasn't for her inviting me to move in with her back in 2012 (things got that bad, folks). She even made some cute Crash Bandicoot related chocolates for our 10 years together - white chocolate with strawberry interior... certainly my favourite!

You may have noticed some past tense being used here. It is with regret that I announce our long-term relationship and marriage is about to come to an end. At the start of May 2019, Poly announced her desire to separate after no longer having such feelings for me, primarily, and thus we are to go our separate ways in the coming months. Evidently, this has been devastating for me.

The past month has been mostly dealt coming to terms with that and the practically of what comes next. On the plus, I finally found out the birthday present she had gotten for me but had kept a surprise since March - a Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert in London that I'd been wanting to go to for years. After all, the Final Fantasy series is one I love very much, in particular the music, even if it doesn't quite match my dizzying love for Crash Bandicoot. In fact, Nobuo Uematsu's (You're) Not Alone was played at our wedding whilst signing the register, along with Josh Mancell's The Great Hall when leaving. So in many ways, the trip acted like a coda to our relationship.

Distant Worlds! Me! A terrible camera!

The next step will involve me moving out. I can't afford our current place by myself, but Poly can. June is going to be one heck of a busy month what with Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled due for release and all this apartment hunting/moving. So, what that means for British Bandicoot is that the start of June may be a bit quiet up until CTR's launch. Not ideal, I know, but until things get sorted I may have to ease up on the Nitro-Fuelled news and Band Cramp chapters (haha) until the release.

So it seems that all good things must come to an end. Here's to you, Poly, and the last decade of my life.

CTR Nitro-Fuelled's New Cover