How Hard Can It Be? by Jeremy Clarkson

Author:Jeremy Clarkson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Humor, General
ISBN: 9780718156749
Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
Published: 2010-10-25T17:31:41.429828+00:00

The world will never be safe until Scrabble is banned

News from the dusty bit at the back of the toy shop. In the past twelve months, sales of Trivial Pursuit have tripled, Monopoly is 13 per cent up and Scrabble is twenty-three times more popular than it was in 2007. Naturally, the sort of people who like long walks in the fresh air see this as an indicator that Britain is reverting to traditional family values and that instead of going out at night to sniff glue and stab a policeman, the nation’s children are all at home in pinafore dresses, whittling chess pieces round the fire with Mum and Dad. They see the resurgence of the board game as a good thing.

I’m not so sure, though. Take Monopoly as an example. To begin with it’s good fun but, like the banking and property system on which it is based, there is a flaw. It never ends. You go bankrupt so you borrow money from your mum, who has loads. Then you go bankrupt again. So you borrow more money from the bank. And then, when there is no more money left in the box, you write out an IOU and keep on borrowing by which time it is Thursday, everyone is bankrupt and you have realized that unchecked capitalism doesn’t work whether it comes in a stock market or in a box. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not, there will be a ‘bad loser’ around the table who will land on your hotel in Northumberland Avenue and in a hysterical rage will burst into tears and throw the board, his dog, your iron and all your dad’s houses into the fire.

In theory Scrabble is much better and yet it, too, is flawed. Well, it is for me because I always end up with seven vowels. So while my opponent is writing ‘underpass’ across two triple word scores and claiming it’s a game of skill, I’m getting five for ‘eerie’. Again. And they are looking at me as though I might be a simpleton.

I have a similar problem with backgammon. So far as my wife is aware, dice have six faces all of which feature six dots. I, on the other hand, have only ever thrown a two and a one. Even without a player coming the other way, it would take me about eighteen months to get all my pieces to the other side of the board.

To eliminate the element of luck, I always suggest chess but this doesn’t work either because the only person who knows how to play in my family is my son, who’s twelve and consequently charges around the board on a wave of testosterone, endlessly leaving his queen in silly places and then mocking when, out of kindness, I pretend I haven’t seen the danger it’s in. Or that he’s just moved his castle diagonally or that, for the past two hours, he’s been one move away from checkmate.

In fact, playing any game with children is hopeless.

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