Not mine.  All not mine...

I did something I’ve not done for a while at the weekend.  Not even at recent Christmases.  I played a board game.  It wasn’t planned, certainly not given the wealth of activities available to us in the digital age.  In fact I was forced to go 'old-school' following a convoluted mix-up involving a games console and a dopey brother.

Outside it was raining comme vache qu’il pisse and yet I needed to entertain The Boy somehow.  I had been through the entire back catalogue of “Dad’s Interesting Facts Vol. 1” including "Notable Things About Newts" and "How Bridges Are Built", and having been beaten twice already that morning at FIFA 11, had nothing left in the tank with which to amuse a ten year old.

‘We could play Monopoly?' he ventured.

'Bless you, sweet child' I thought,' looking upon him as might a Victorian parent ‘and your glorious innocent naivety.  We shall indeed seize this fine opportunity to enjoy this traditional electricity-free pastime and – more to the point - I shall enjoy asserting my ultimate superiority and male dominance as I tutor you in arts as only one with years of painful experience can.  Prepare to learn!'

I was hoping this to be my chance to school The Boy in everything from basic arithmetic to macro economics and fiscal stability, alongside the need for a sharp business acumen and unsentimental killer instinct.  In short, I saw this as the moment to equip him with everything he could need to survive in a merciless and unforgiving world. 

‘I’ll be the boat,’ I insisted, certain in the belief that I would dock around two hours later in the promised land of milk, honey and a great fat wad of toy cash, content that I had instilled in The Boy a truly valuable lesson – one that he would carry with him throughout his days, and maybe even relay to his own children in years to come.

Yet things did not turn out quite as I had envisaged.  Five minutes in and he had all of the ‘prestige’ sites in his portfolio.  Shortly after this, Pall Mall, Vine Street and Piccadilly Circus fell under his domain, the respective cards nestling next to his growing collection of £100 notes.  Somehow, I had only Pentonville Road and a fiver.  Five more minutes and the phone rang.  It was the Queen, asking The Boy if she could borrow ‘a ton’.  Back on the board, I threw a double four and took an unwanted trip to Covent Garden.

The Boy surveys his empire

‘That’ll be £720, please...' he sniffed, nonchalantly as he passed the £5,000 in capital mark.  Reluctantly, I coughed up as his pile of £500 notes sat there grinning at me.

By this time he owned most of the properties and the utilities, together with all of the stations, which of course stung me for £200 each time I landed on them.  And boy, did I land on them.  Not only this, but I must have ‘Advanced to Mayfair’ four times in as many circuits, the money from my dwindling coffers serving only to bolster his housing empire with each lap of the board.

The Boy traversed everything from mild amusement to wild euphoria as he reached each successive triumph and realised he was establishing an unassailable lead before a measured sense of calm arose, with him safe in the knowledge that he had his poor old Dad whipped.

After that, he decided to name his high denomination bank notes, and feigned hurt when he had to part with 'Angus', 'Michael' and Geoffrey' on the rare occasion that he picked up a hotel maintenance Chance card.

Of course good fortune played a part. He seemed to have more birthdays, enjoyed more ‘bank errors in his favour’ and won more crosswords and beauty competitions than I thought possible, but he also seems to have a natural knack for throwing just the right number of doubles. Perhaps he has the luck gene that has sadly evaded me, and for this I should surely be happy – and perhaps paradoxically consider myself lucky.

At this thought, I chuckled whimsically as I mused on life's well-documented propensity to imitate art. Or Waddington Games, at least.  But my patience was running thin.  I was sure I used to like Monopoly.  But now I was also out of cigarettes. This was a bad time to be losing - and losing so heavily - to my progeny.

A sorry state of affairs...

As the statistical chance of not landing on one of his properties diminished, and my metal boat tossed on the tempestuous seas of financial fortune, a little bit of me died inside. The Boy even took pride in loading up the less-than salubrious Old Kent Road (and its shabby counterpart Whitechapel) with hotels.  I've never been so pleased to be visiting jail in all my days, if only for the brief respite it offered from his incessant rent demands.

 

A broad and defiantly smug smile broke across his cherubic face as it became clear that the game was won. Despite my genuinely best efforts it seemed that The Boy now owned 75% of the available properties as well as the jail, the bank and a surprisingly large portion of my soul in some kind of devious and cruel credit default swap scheme that he had devised in order to prolong my pain.

'You don't even have £320,' he said gleefully, referring to the very 'cheapest' of his property empire, as he pocketed another £50, this time from 'sale of stock'.

'I don't even have £20', I grimaced, as I veered perilously near to his shiny new hotel complex at Pall Mall. Why are rich people such utter gits?

On the next circuit I avoided Park Lane, Mayfair (and the brown ones) by the skin of my impoverished teeth. I was a mouse, being toyed with by something that a mere eleven years ago was one of my sperms.

He took a picture of his very own Fort Knox.  ‘Shall we put it on video?’ he offered, cheerily.

‘No, we bloody well shall not’, I snapped, fearing my humiliation at the hands of a ten year old going viral would be more than I could take.

When I landed on his hotel at Whitehall he started recreating an Apprentice trailer at me. ‘You're fired’, he repeated, over and over again. Christ, I've bred a mini Alan Sugar. 'Sod off,' I retorted cleverly, as I mortgaged everything I had to pay his £750 bill.  My little metal boat was upturned, my esteem sunk.

Fittingly perhaps, it was all over when a throw of the dice took me to Mayfair, and a £2000 bill proved more than the value of everything I had.  Sweet blessed deliverance from a financial Stalin who despite his tender years had managed to manacle me to the system in a way that those who actually have manacled me to the actual system would have been proud.

To be honest I don't know what the moral is.  Aside from ‘never a borrower nor a lender be,’ perhaps it’s a warning to beware the potential pitfalls of attempting to live your life vicariously through that of your offspring, attempting to correct all the mistakes you've ever made for fear of being well and truly hoisted by your own petard.  If there's a lesson here at all, then perhaps it’s not to give lessons unless you truly know the textbook.

Or perhaps just don't be the boat...



It seems fancy boots do not help...

At least once in every man's life, there comes a time when the delicate facade of assumed invincibility is flattened by a steam train of depressing yet frankly inevitable events.


Take football.  Now I know that there are many men out there who have no interest in the game, and even I have to agree with the adage that it is 'a gentleman's game, played by hooligans'. But I love it.  Not in the same way that some at this weekend's five-a-side tournament love it - the ones who would clearly jump at the chance to mud-wrestle a bear just to turn out in their team's colours.  Those who pay to have their team's crest tattooed on their ball-sack.  Those who would emit a colourful tapestry of Anglo-Saxon abuse at their own blubbing offspring for failing to halt the run of the opposition Number 8.



a typically gangling foray into the opposition half ends in disappointment

But yes, it is my game.  The one for me.  I like rugby, very much so, but unfortunately a frame more suited to lying in a black plastic tray with all the other minty Matchmakers tends to fare poorly when ranged against fifteen mobile brick coal bunkers.


As we prepared for the first match, the nerves began to take hold. It is of course an overstatement, but it felt like we were going into battle, like those lining up against us actually wanted to kill us.  I should point out that this kind of thing is not my bag.  I do understand that sport is legalised warfare, and an overwhelming desire to win at all costs is an essential element of the overall sporting mentality, but it's a mentality that I simply don't possess.  I'd be a crap sperm.  I was really rather more keen on having a quick natter up top ahead of a leisurely contest between gentlemen, and I had no notion of the powerful, multi-faceted football-based spanking that lay in store.

How they let me in the team at all remains a mystery to me.  Once sprightly and fleet of foot with at least a modicum of ability on the ball, I suppose I would admit relatively readily that my game nowadays is based more on periods of rest punctuated by short bursts of activty. In hindsight it was a recipe for slaughter.

To give our team some credit it may have been more a fitness thing than an actual ability thing, but I was out of breath within half a minute and weeping after five.  The pace was like nothing I had encountered for years, and I was soon on my knees, literally and psychologically.  Spluttering and wheezing like a beached turbot, I attempted to clatter my way through the crowd to get even near the ball.  It was of course in vain as we conceded the first goal - all five of us watching like the proverbial headlamp-lit rabbit as the ball flew past us into the back of the net.

I wanted to yell something to a team-mate, something constructive, something rousing - something sporty - but when I opened my mouth nothing came out except for some dribble and the few rubber pellets that I hadn't already ingested from hitting the Astroturf.

As the end to our opening clash approached we were numerous goals down, with no reply. I started to realise why the Romans made four into five with a diagonal cross - it was decisive and damning in its simplicity.  After a suspected infringement I queried the referee as to why he had not spotted the offence but his almost apologetic response was that he had been 'too busy writing the score down'.  Damnation indeed. But in the next game I spotted my opportunity. Our second set of opponents had a comparatively elderly man lurking in defence.  At first I thought he might just have been lost, but soon decided that it was too much of a coincidence that he was wearing the same t-shirt as the rest, and anyway, the nearest Tesco was well over three miles away.  

'Aha', I thought, 'if anyone is ripe for the taking then it is the gentle-looking grey haired fellow over there.  I shall simply stand near him and seize my moment'.  

It was all coming together.  My moment of redemption.  My Spain to his Trinidad and Tobago.  My kettle to his ant.  Like a leopard stalking prey, I had carefully and cunningly selected the weakest of the bunch, and would surely triumph according to Darwinian logic.  Yet to my shame even he was too strong, and no sooner had I hatched my plan than he embarked upon a devilish run and turn of which a ballerina would have been proud, duly making me look like a grass-roller and making the score look rather a lot like 6-0.  Or something... I had lost count by then, and certainly did not possess the requisite energy to offer him a jovial 'good effort, granddad' by way of a riposte.

It was getting worse.  It now felt like my knees had gone absent without leave, and as I've never been one for taking football chatter seriously, no amount of 'pass, Dave', 'run, Dave', 'in the "mix", Dave' was ever going to cut any mustard, even had I been in possession of a full complement of physical faculties - let alone the ball.  I seriously considered lying down to hide, or attempting to camouflage myself as a goal-post.

The pensioner came up to me on the final whistle to offer the obligatory and largely false congratulations on a 'good game' but as he extended a wrinkled hand I could see the superior sneer driven by primal self-satisfaction lurking in his presbyopic eyes. He'd told me during our gentleman's banter before the contest that his lot 'hardly ever played together' where as I recalled cheerily proffering the futile detail that we 'play every week'.  Git.


Left trailing in the wake of a pensioner


With legs like jelly and a body possessing all the strength of a wet banana skin, I felt I simply could not continue. The mind was willing - indeed, the mind still retained visions of walking out to the adulation of massed ranks cheering at Wembley - but alas all the indications from the body were that a stadium appearance was more likely to be getting locked in after a drunken prank with a traffic cone, a jar of Nutella and a pair of underpants.

It's clear - competitive football for me will from now on be confined to shouting at other people.  I've always asked myself why it is that those who make it in professional football get there - and as I nurse my aching limbs and sore spine it is painfully clear that they are only to be congratulated on their dedication, with fitness having a substantial part to play.  An obvious point perhaps, but I hadn't previously realised quite to what extent this is a defining factor.  After this weekend's exertions I shall certainly think before casting aspirtions on someone pertaining to them being a 'talent-free knob-jockey' (or sentiments to that effect) for not living up to the high expectations we place on those who play for the teams we follow.  I've had a sip of competitive football - albeit at a level far below anything that makes it to our TV screens, and it was hard to swallow.  I kept going until the inevitable knock out came - and was proud of myself even for that miniscule victory in the face of adversity - but ritual humiliation by sport at the hands of... well, everybody - is not really the way I want to go. Bring on the Laz-e-Boy and the remote control...