Liberty City twinned with my apartment

Grand Theft Auto 4 reminds me of my flat. My empty flat. Moving in... one 32" LCD TV (1080i, not p), no aerial, one radio, one PS3. Flat pack furniture being assembled by day, buying a kettle, carrying a fucking microwave home from Sainsbury's (made in China like everything from that place, including the paring knife whose blade snapped thanks to poor quality workmanship). By night... adventures in Liberty City. The rain. That incredible rain. The realisation that they had finally cracked rain.

This screenshot doesn't really do the game justice... for that you need the movement and the shifting patterns of light. The combination of droplets, lighting, and haze.

The game model seemed amazing, so full of features that great moments could occur as a matter of pure chance. I have read reports of people who, by chance, heard New York Groove on their car radio right as they drove across the Liberty City Bridge thing modelled on the Brooklyn Bridge into "Manhattan". My moment was of realising that I was out of money and was going to have to do my first contract hits to pay better weapons for the bank job mission. I made the decision at night. It started to rain in the darkness. As I walked from my stolen (thieved) car to the phone kiosk, lightning flashed and thunder rolled while the rain exploded from the sky. Unforgettable.

Pop Goes the Weasel always seemed to be in my head. It always seemed to be playing in the Perseus tailors. I had it in my head as I did my own shopping for clothes and household items at Beatties, my local department store. I actually included New York Groove on a compilation CD I recorded for my girlfriend who was living at some distance. The first time I ever put computer game music (I know, I know, it didn't originate in GTA4, but I heard it there first) onto a CD. I didn't receive any negative comments about it either. My girlfriend didn't comment "well... the CD was OK, but what was that computer game shit on it?" Well, OK she's my girlfriend so maybe she wouldn't say that. But then, she lives in a capital city, so maybe she would... Ha, in time, with subsequent CDs I went on to include David Whittaker's Alien Syndrome music... just 2 minutes of it... And still no complaints from her! Love.