Scrabble – derrickjknight

Word Games

Sam, Holly, Malachi, and Orlaith visited again this afternoon.

Observed by Holly, and assisted by Sam, Orlaith enjoyed a game of Scrabble with me.

Although we were playing with a proper board and tiles, when my granddaughter tired, she decided she wanted to pause the game. If that isn’t twenty first century speak, I don’t know what is.

Jackie and Malachi played word games on Jackie’s laptop.

After this Mal was invited to make a selection from my library. He chose a Folio Society Sherlock Holmes collection.

We then dined at The Royal Oak. Jackie and I each enjoyed gammon steak with two fried eggs, plentiful chips and salad. The others different choices were equally good. Holly and I both drank Malbec, Sam’s beverage was Guinness, Jackie’s Diet Coke, with lemonade for each of the children.

Sir Garfield Sobers

A growling has emanated from the car in the last few days whenever Jackie has applied the brakes. I could have understood it had it come from passengers, especially when she put her foot down heavily, but it definitely came from the vehicle, and only when the pedal was gently caressed. We therefore decided to have the problem examined by Wells garage in Ringwood. Jackie has found this firm, recommended by Helen, to be reliable, efficient, reasonably priced, and offering friendly service.

We drove to the garage this morning and left the car there whilst Bill drove Jackie to the Eales’ home in Poulner, to which I walked. This took me along Northfield Drive at the end of which I turned right and on to Southampton Road which leads to The Mount, where Helen and Bill live. Not having made this journey on foot before, I needed to be pointed in the right direction. It was then almost straightforward. There is, in Poulner, a Tudor period house which has been for sale for a very long time, it seems since soon after it was built. It serves as a very useful landmark, so when it came into view I knew where I was. I thought.

I am used to travelling in Jackie’s car. So I knew that I should walk past the house, continue for perhaps a quarter of a mile, turn around, go back past it, and take a left turn just before reaching Southampton Road again. This, therefore, is what I did. (In fairness, that only happened once, but it reads better as if it were a regular occurrence, especially as that really is what I did.)

Today’s rain was unrelenting. The car’s brake pads needed replacing and would not be ready until late afternoon, so it was quite pleasant to stay the rest of the day with Jackie’s sister and brother-in-law, chatting and playing Scrabble. Helen gave us a good salad lunch with her crusty home-made bread which reminded me of the smell of muslin-covered dough left overnight in my grandmother’s glazed earthenware mixing bowl.

The Scrabble led us to discuss the debacle of the on-line version which has been corrupted by Mattel, and the fact that many of the original players are moving to the more traditional Lexulous. Helen and I are both what the Daily Mail has called silver surfers. She has yet to try Lexulous which I recommended to her.

Before lunch, while Jackie and Helen were making plans for the sisters’ forthcoming camping weekend, Bill and I chatted in the sitting room. Inevitably we spoke about sport, and he told me of how he acquired his treasured Walter Hammond four-star cricket bat. That is his story, so I won’t steal his thunder, but it did remind me of how I secured Frank’s trophy. Frank was a friend of the family in Newark. Quite coincidentally, because Louisa met her husband after our friend had returned to Jamaica, Frank is Errol’s uncle.

Having spent his working life in England, this warm and friendly Jamaican and his wife Pansy decided to return to the land of their births when they retired. I wanted to mark this with a suitable present. It had become a tradition for Becky, Frank, and me to visit Trent Bridge for one day of the Test matches, so I had a good idea of a suitable subject. But what would be the most apt gift?

Art on Glass in Bridge Street had, for many years, displayed in its window a perfect engraved portrait of probably the greatest all-round West Indian cricketer who has ever lived. This was on a delicately coloured green glass which had been imported from Canada. That was it. That was Frank’s present. Not the right island, but never mind, I thought.

I asked the proprietor to sell it to me. The answer was a definite no. The situation called for tactful persistence. I explained why I wanted it. He countered with the fact that this was the original of three he had made. One of the others was auctioned at a local Country Club by the subject, who himself retained the other. This of course made it all the more desirable. I must have looked suitably crestfallen. It has always been my policy to rely on people’s good nature, rather than try to beat them into submission. The man offered to make another. He was not prepared to do it on anything other than the Canadian glass. That would take a little time, but we had about six months. Well, the suppliers constantly let the craftsman down. As we got nearer and nearer the departure date, and as my visits of enquiry became more and more frequent, I all but gave up hope.

Two weeks before the due date, the artist also gave up on the glass. He announced that I could buy the original. Frank was able to return to his native land with the very first copy of a most unusual portrait of Sir Garfield Sobers.

Back home this evening Jackie produced cod, chips, and mushy peas followed by bread and butter pudding for our dinner. Good traditional English nosh.

Cock Of The Walk

The Scrabble controversy featured on 29th May continues apace. A multinational petition has been embarked upon on Facebook. Old stagers are leaving in droves. The UK’s Daily Mail has even taken up the cause. Mattel don’t seem to be able to sell their advertising space, because the only ads that do currently feature are those inviting players to ‘play without interruption’ by buying ad-free packages. How cynical can you get?

For some time now Jackie has been feeding not only the garden’s bird population, but also a fattening bushy tailed rodent. Consequently she has placed a squirrel baffle on the feeder post. The idea is that he shins up the post, bangs his head on the concave perspex dome, drops down again, staggers to his feet, shakes his head like a silent movie character, and shoots across the garden to his refuge in a distant silver birch. This morning he did seem somewhat confused as he sat on the doorstep scratching his head and eyeing his chomping rivals with the longing expression of a Tiny Tim gazing into a butcher’s shop window at Christmastime; his empty paws then going through the motions of clutching at the food.

MacPenny’s garden nursery in Bransgore has a much longer history than that of Aviemore which I featured yesterday. The small outlet bought from Marcia Ashley-Corbett by Douglas Lowndes in 1934 has been developed and stayed in his family ever since. The exhausted gravel pit added in 1951 has become a magnificent eight acre mature garden, dubbed by Jackie ‘a garden down a hole’. With eight acres and a team of staff you can do so much more than in Aviemore, and the Lowndes have. The rhododendron and Azelia season was a good time to visit. Numerous other plants abounded and many trees towered above us on our trip today. Shade-loving varieties were in their element. Rustic footpaths and steps made out of logs take visitors through what is another National Gardens Scheme attraction, this one open all the year round. No doubt the prolific plant nursery that hosts this feature has a reciprocal arrangement with the reclaimed gravel pit. The stock looked good enough to have possibly supplied Aviemore.

A couple of gardeners working in the lower level shrubberies, pruning and resetting edging, told us that during the winter we would have been up to our waists in water. The area still looked magnificent, with more, in the shape of normally marginal yellow irises, to come. The soaking they must have had was clearly beneficial.

On our departure those leaving the car park were treated to a strutting performance by the resident faverolles cockerel as he led his harem across the gravel, past the potted plants, to the safety of a scratching area.

He made sure his hens had a clear passage as he signalled to all visitors to keep their distance. He must have known what we were having for dinner.

Jackie produced chicken jalfrezi and a milder curried chicken with savoury rice followed by sticky toffee pudding for our evening meal. I finished the Chateauneuf du Pape.

Sorting The Sheep From The Goats

On 24th May last year, I mentioned Worldwide on-line Scrabble. It was just before then that Becky had introduced me to this phenomenon. There is a very companionable network of people of all ages and nationalities who enjoy this game. It is possible to have numerous contests in progress at any one time because those on the other side of the world from each other do not all play at once.

Through this medium I have enjoyed more than 3,000 games and corresponded with many new friends.

Alfred Mosher Butts, during the Great Depression was a jobless American architect who invented and developed the game as entertainment for his own family. Like my friend Mike Kindred, the games inventor, he made the prototypes himself. This pastime first saw life commercially in 1938, and by the time of his death in 1993, was popular the world over. I wonder whether he ever imagined how it has developed with the assistance of the World Wide Web. A real board, tiles, racks, pencil, paper, and even dictionaries, can now be dispensed with, as we sit pressing keys.

The on-line facility is administered by Facebook, and has, until an arbitrary date last Sunday, been a free service without advertisements. On that day the plug was pulled on all our existing games, 53 in my case; the statistics of our performance were wiped out; and most importantly of all, we were no longer able to play with some people with whom we had formed long-distance corresponding relationships. Overnight we were presented with a newly designed board with strange-looking icons, and a set of statistics, for all except three players, starting from the new date.

Some people may not be bothered about stats, but the more competitive of us enjoy trying to improve, or just hold onto our positions. I personally don’t mind starting this from scratch, but do want it to make sense. After only four completed games, Becky’s highest word score is 88; her highest game score is given as 85. For those who don’t know the game, a word is part of a game. Becky’s are not the only set that don’t compute.

There is a facility for starting a new game with a friend. I merrily put in the names of some friends I had been playing with for months. They were not known. On the other hand, a row of Facebook friends, many of whom do not play Scrabble, was presented to me as containing potential opponents.

So, Barbara, if you read this, please understand I will not rest until I have found you again.

For many years Chambers Dictionary has been the standard one for use with Scrabble. Not since last Sunday. The only rather good improvement I have found is that it is now possible to play in a number of different languages. Once you have realised that the standard one in use is American. Most of us, of course, didn’t think to check that. Our first games therefore rejected many familiar words until we sussed it. And of course, it is not possible to select a different reference source during the course of a game. Even the British English dictionary has changed. The chosen one is now Collins.

There are a number of spritely young things like Barb and Christian around on the circuit, but most of those, like me, who have enough time to spend playing Scrabble, are a little resistant to change. It’s not that we are stuck in the mud, as I am sometimes when I venture into the New Forest, but just that our memory sticks are a bit full.

Now why has this happened? The cynic in me puts it down to commercialisation and the profit to be made from advertising. Yes, the games are now interrupted by advertisements. Ah, but you don’t have to have them. You can pay for your games to be ad-free. Either way, a profit is made. Q.E.D. (For those who didn’t have the benefit of a Jesuit grammar school education, these three letters at the bottom of the proof of a theorem, stand for ‘quod erat demonstrandum’, or ‘so it has been proved’).

Having spent far too much time trying to get my head around this novelty, I walked the Football Green/Bull Lane loop. The tinkling of bells in a field just after I entered the lane, heralded the presence of what I thought were rather small goats, the kids almost obscured by buttercups. I watched, fascinated, as these horned creatures enjoyed the pasture. Pondering about the collective noun for goats, I thought it must be a herd, but on the other hand, perhaps it was a flock. This uncertainty helped me with identification, for, further up the hill, a woman was sweeping her gravel driveway. I asked her. She confirmed it was a herd. ‘Have you seen some?’, she asked, sounding intrigued. ‘Yes, in that field’, I replied. ‘They are not goats, they are sheep, Soay sheep. They are prehistoric’, was her clarification. I thanked her. Well, they did all have horns.

Jackie produced a tasty liver and bacon casserole dinner followed by dutch apple pie for our evening meal. I finished the Carta Roja with it.

Payback

Last night I finished reading Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. This is a book which Judith Munns ‘loves’ and which Rachel Eales studied for GCSE. In 1960, when I gained my English Literature A Level, five years before the trial of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, nothing so explicit would have graced the curriculum. In her new introduction to this year’s Folio Society edition the author pays tribute to Orwell’s ‘1984’, to Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, and to Bradbury’s ‘Farenheit 451’. All are futuristic novels based on social control and spywork.

The difference with Atwood’s book is that it focusses on the lives of women. I found it thought provoking, flowing and brilliantly written. As a man I can’t say I loved it. This is because I found the treatment of the handmaids as sexual objects purely for procreation rather than any legitimate enjoyment most uncomfortable. Maybe one has to be a woman to ‘love’ such a book. Was your spelling of ‘Tail’ deliberate, Judith, or not? Either way, I can fully understand it.

When the book came out the USSR was in the last throes of the communist grip. There will always be people in such a regime who will break the rules. Human nature and the desire for freedom of expression, however severely repressed, will come through. There is a fireman in Bradbury’s book who preserves the literature he is meant to burn, and the Handmaid’s Commander collects forbidden reading material; belongs to a sex club (exclusively for the bosses and important trade connections); and plays Scrabble. At great risk to them both the Commander involves the Handmaid in all this.

Margaret Atwood could not have known that by the early 21st. century it would be possible to form Scrabble friendships through the medium of the internet with people all over the world. Yet it is through the game of Scrabble that the Commander chooses to initiate the emotionally intimate relationship he craves with the handmaid he is meant mechanically to ‘fuck’ in his wife’s presence with neither pleasure nor verbal communication.

The humbling thing about Worldwide Scrabble on Facebook is that it is played in English. People I am currently playing whose first language is not English are from The Phillipines, Singapore, Japan, Greece, and Nigeria. And they are all capable of beating me.

On this warm and sunny morning of a day which soon became so hot and humid as to be oppressive I set off earlier than usual to walk to Colliers Wood with the intention of exploring the park on the High Street discovered yesterday.

In Sainsbury’s I joined a queue at the checkout behind a woman with what looked to be a whole week’s shop. As I only had a bottle of wine I was taking to my friend Norman for lunch I began to feel I’d probably joined the wrong queue. So quick and efficient, however, was the person on the till that I complimented her on her efficiency. She was a youngish woman with a slight African accent and tribal marks incised in her cheeks. She had a very modest yet humorous response. Only then did I realise that she was sporting a badge proclaiming her as ‘top scanner of the week’. She joked that she didn’t know how it had got there.

The visit to Wandle Park will have to wait. This is because I got diverted in conversation with the ganger of a team working on the Wandle Trail. I have reported earlier the marked difference between the amounts of litter on this trail and in Morden Hall Park. This morning there was a whole gang working at clearing the litter, tidying the undergrowth and, where necessary, weeding and clearing the river. Their leader, Mr. Everoy Naine, born in Jamaica in 1968, who came to this country when he was seven, was passionate and eloquent about what he and his crew were doing. He is employed by the London Probation Trust to manage a crew of volunteer offenders attached to the project called Payback. Everoy was keen on the actual task they were carrying out, proud of his workers, and wholly committed to giving his charges an opportunity. One young man was involved and interested in our conversation and I told him I had done my first (approved school) after care work in 1966. This impressed them both and it was then that Everoy said he had been born two years after this. His young charge gave me his name and would have been happy for me to have used it, but we agreed that his privacy should be respected.

On the tube to and from Neasden I began reading Colin Dexter’s ‘The Remorseful Day’.