Setting the scene...

This is the first entry I've made to this blog in just short of 3 full years.

It began as a way for me to document a project to build myself a 'bartop' style M.A.M.E. Arcade Cabinet with the self imposed constraint of a £50 budget.

That's the cabinet, the controls, the computer - the whole thing for under fifty quid.

There were a few bumps in the road, I had long delays waiting for MDF and then waiting for a PC - then I was forced to move house at short notice.

I filled a lot of these gaps in progress by writing about obscure - but excellent - games I found while curating a collection to go in the finished machine. It was this part of the blog that seemed most popular with readers.

The two parts of the blog ran on, supporting each other, until early August 2014.

And then, for reasons I honestly can't fathom, it all stopped.
A year ago I moved house again - but there's still a two year space prior to that where I did absolutely nothing to a cabinet that was well on it's way to completion.

Since moving the majority of my time and money has gone into the house and garden. As things have gradually become more organised around the place the in laws decided, a month or so ago, that it was high time we relieved them of the last few of our possessions they had cluttering up their garage.
This included my partially build cabinet.
It, among other things from the purge, was piled at the back of the spare room waiting for the loft-conversion to be completed.

Earlier this month I had a couple of friends to stay for the weekend, the spare room clutter was temporarily hidden in the main bedroom and the M.A.M.E cabinet found itself squeezed between my wardrobe and the bed.
The guests came and went but the cabinet stayed where it was - completely in the way - obstructing my morning routine by it's very existence.

I was at a loose end on a sunny evening recently and found myself looking at a small section from the top of cabinet and noticing that the speaker holes I'd made were not in line with each other.
I took it outside and soon enough I was digging a piece of MDF out of my wood store (an old outside toilet) and remaking the section.
Even as raw MDF it looked good, simple but effective.
I found somewhere online that provided a small free sample of speaker fabric and temporarily attached them inside.
It looked very good... I wonder what it would look like painted...
For the next few sunny evenings I found myself sitting in the garden, painting, sanding, re-painting various components of the cabinet just to be doing something outside.

Curiously, organically, the £50 M.A.M.E. cabinet project had come back to life!