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The Clarke Cup and new technology

Jan9

You know how if you spend too long in the house on your own not talking to anyone you can go a bit mad and have odd ideas? Amazingly this also works when you are married, and just the two of you stay in with no contact with other people (apart from Big Brother). Yesterday was the inaugural "Clarke Cup", an indoor sports day comprising of five disciplines; cards, Scrabble, darts, pool, and backgammon. And I won it!

This was Clare's suggestion, engineered in such a way that she thought she would win (ie there was no drinking round, or speed web browsing, or ironing), but some sort of luck was with me for the first round - best out of nine games of Blackjack. FIVE NIL! The wind was knocked from the wife's sails at this early stage, she was sure it would be a gimme to set her up confidently for the rest of the tournament. Sorry lover! I don't think there's any skill to this game. It's not casino blackjack btw, you might know it as Switch, 2 means pick up 2, black jack means pick up 5, etc.

Next was Scrabble, Clare's been playing a lot and probably should have won this one, though I JAMMED home by 2 points at the end. I don't want this to be too much like "great Risk campaigns I have known", so I won't go into detail. Oe came in very handy though, you might want to memorise this word list.

Now we get onto the games of genuine skill, and I found myself sadly lacking. Watching all weekend fired us up with enthusiasm, but I just wasn't getting my numbers. I was Andy Fordham to Clare's Wizard Whitlock, there was a tear in my eye I can tell you. Best out of five games of pool though, and I was back on top, not a very convincing win, but a win all the same, I am the champion and no mistake. There was no need to play the backgammon, and I feel no need to record the score here anyway, it's just a game of luck. Hmph. Next week I can exchange a game, that might be the one, though maybe I could do with more games of luck and less of skill... I don't think we'll add it in, but here's a list of alternate Monopoly rules... I thought everyone played the free parking rule for a good while.

The scores are recorded on a spreadsheet somewhere, though expect me not to mention it again until I win. If I do a double I will try and get a real trophy, if I win three times in a row I'll see about getting it engraved.

Didn't get up to much else at the weekend, more telly watching, shopping, housework, blah blah blah. To compensate for eating chilli for four days in a row, on Saturday for a change I cooked a monster mexican feast - fake chicken and vegetable fajitas and all the side, very nice indeed! The social calendar is starting to fill up though, I'm going to need some good fresh excuses not to leave the house, any suggestions, please post a reply.

Lots of new technology annouced at CES, Idiot Toys is good at this sort of stuff though, so heed their words on 8GB Sony Memory Sticks (great for the PSP, when the prices come down), A Sony VAIO for the front room, and the rest of CES.

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