when i was about fifteen, my parents would go on holiday for little weekend trips. they hadn't had the money to do city breaks like that when i was growing up, but with my dad having become a partner in the plumbing firm at which he'd toiled for many years, they could finally do it. the upshot of this was that i often had a free house at weekends. this would later become the enabling circumstance for a lot of debauched nights with sixth-form friends in a weed haze, but that was a few years away. on one of the first free weekends i had, i invited two of my friends over (one now highly successful, the other no longer obese), and we made our camp in the living room, blocking all sources of light and securing a large stash of snacks and fizzy drinks. before settling in, we resolved to bring in a second 14-inch television so that one of us could play a game while the other two watched a pirated DVD box-set of Great Teacher Onizuka. we called ourselves the Nerd Trio and made horrendously embarrassing webcam videos, which I'm glad to report have entirely vanished. anyway, while two of us watched our GTO, the third played the newly released Fable. he was clearly in a world of his own the whole way through, and i found myself envying him; no matter, as i got to experience its wonder soon after. i'm not actually going to review the game, because that's not what this is for. but i will say that my enduring memory of Fable is that dark, sleepy, secure night with my friends, cocooned in the innocence of a nerdy youth, our total oblivion soundtracked by fable's wondrous score.