WillWybrow.com

The Pokémon Village Fête 2009 was broken when I went to Liverpool. The tent in the shopping centre had been put up wrong and wouldn’t support the hundreds of people that’d be walking in and out and through it. So I didn’t get to partake in any of the cool stuff they had available, only the Regigigas download.

Then I found the money to take a day trip up to the Westfield Shopping Centre in Derby, and everything changed. It had already been running in Derby for a few days, so there was no chance that it was going to go wrong or not be on. I arrived and used one of the magical Westfield interactive signs to find the shop I was meant to be heading for and lo — there it was. The set up for the most fun day in the history of days out.

In the front-left corner was the Pokémon Training Academy, where kids gathered to be shown the basics of the new games. Along the left-hand side was the Village Green, where you could get your face or hand painted, and get given balloon models of Pokémon. In the far-left corner was the Photo Station with the huge Pikachu. Along the back wall was the Pokémon Cinema where Giratina and the Sky Warrior was being shown. In the far-right corner was the Trading Card Game table where the lovely PokéGirls were playing a whole load of cards in short, three-prize games. I forgot to bring my decks so I didn’t sit down and play, though I did watch. Along the right was the Regigigas distribution and supposedly a Pokémon Ranger and Mystery Dungeon showcase, though the systems actually all had copies of Platinum in them. And finally, in the near-right corner was Pokémon Battle Revolution on the Wii and a raffle ticket system for assigning groups of four players to mini tournaments. There were a lot of event Regigigas being played on the day, and an equal amount of Action Replay Arceus. Some people have no morals.

I met some really cool people and saw a few of the staff I’d met before. I played against good teams, bad teams, teams full of legendaries and teams of well-trained non-legendary Pokémon. I acquired a shiny Golem and a shiny Uxie, and gave some people things they wanted in return.

I got my promotional freebies and had a decent laugh with one of the staff members who insisted on quizzing me on the games and making up the answers when I didn’t know them. Everyone was great and I had an incredible time.

Token lunch at Subway, of course, and I took a quick look around the huge shopping centre in the morning. To round off the day, I met Keziah for a quick drink in the ever-popular Caffé Nero before walking back to the station (I found my way pretty easily; been doing really well finding my way around places lately) to round off an excellent day’s fun with a pleasant train journey home.

Brilliant.

Well, it looks like early indications suggest that the Wybrow Award for Best Supporting Role in a Holiday Day Out for this season might be going to CJ and Nick Richard for their work in Liverpool Day.

Late entries are looking unlikely in the face of the advancing close of the entry period, and CJ and Nick have edged out their biggest competition, Chris Orr, by a significant margin.

If the experts’ predictions hold true, CJ and Nick will take the joint prize from Francesca Bull, whose sterling efforts down in Basingstoke during the previous holiday period earned her the award last time.

We now go live to our awards correspondent, Bill, with his views:

Well, as you know, this holiday’s themes have been Triumphing over Adversity and Long Distance Collaboration. What we’ve seen this afternoon is an incredible debut performance by Nick, with CJ’s solid, dependable brilliance prevailing over all the difficulties they both faced in this gruelling trial-by-fire. If they place first this holiday, as we all by now expect, it will have been well earned and well deserved. Back to you in the studio:

As you can plainly see, we are in very little doubt of the brothers’ success this time. The small and dignified handover ceremony will be due to take place in just a few short weeks, hardly time for latecomers to prepare and deliver anywhere near a performance of this calibre. CJ and Nick will, I’m sure, be patting themselves on the back this week for a job well done. And, as usual, we offer our commiserations to Chris Orr, who currently stands to take second place.

Ok, here I am at the Pokémon Village Fête! The tent is empty at the moment, but I expect people will arrive and fill it up soon enough!