Cribbage (men only need read this)

I had forgotten what a bad loser I was. As a teenager, tantrums having lost at table tennis to my Dad were a fairly regular occurrence. Both the losing and the tantrums were a regular occurrence, at least until I went to university, where two hours a day with table tennis bat, reversed my fortunes.

I can rationalise this as a determination to improve, an unwillingness to give up, the striving necessary to make it to the next stage, and of course, all these were part of my genetic make-up, for which my Dad is 50% responsible.

My Dad will testify to numerous examples of Junior Hawker throwing things around, on being given out lbw at cricket, at being dealt a bad set of cards at bridge, or even worse, being dealt a fantastic hand of cards, and then not getting the chance to play it.

A number of broken squash rackets, not all of them mine, testified to the poor character of the now “Swiss Based and Totally Rational” Colin Hawker. A missed shot, followed by racket abuse, not on the soft grass of Wimbledon centre court, but the unforgiving concrete of the walls of Walton-on-Thames squash court, and another squash racket bites the dust.

And who would not sulk on being beaten at monopoly 12 times in a row, especially when you have Park Lane and Mayfair and the opposition only has old Kent Road, but manages to skip merrily over every danger, for at least 672 rounds, collecting £200 each time?

But all that is past me now. I am calmness personified. Serenity rules. The assembling of IKEA furniture is allowed as the only exception, as this is not a sport, but a military campaign. The screwdriver-marks in the plaster will testify to this. Apart from that, I can take defeat “like a man”.

Furthermore, I now consider myself sufficiently mature to regard winning and defeat with equal indifference. Indeed, the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling, is my own personal mantra in this respect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94

But then in May, Cribbage came along……..

Kevin, my son-in-law, has a great deal to answer for. I am sure that it was his idea to play. After all the Cribbage board had been sitting there for months, just asking to be used. “How about a game of Cribbage?” “Oh yes”, I foolishly and innocently replied, not realizing what demons were about to be released.

I thought I knew the rules of Cribbage, and regarded myself as an adequately good player. One hour later, all illusions were shattered. You have to understand that it was not my lack of skill, but that I had really bad cards and everyone else must have been cheating

I was not content with one night of ritual humiliation, Hazel and I continued playing for the following week. How do you cope with managing only 2 points with your own hand and the box, which in bridge terms is the equivalent of being dealt a hand with one Jack and nothing else higher than an 8? And how is it, that I never got 15 in the play (for “2” points). This conspiracy is a throw-back to my table tennis. Nights of humiliation at the Cribbage table continued, until Hazel took pity on me, and let me win.

“Don’t do it”, says my Dad to Hazel. Don’t take any prisoners. It’s good for his character.

No mercy there.

The Red Bicycle

This is a photo of a Red Bicycle. We shall call it “The Red Bicycle”. The Red Bicycle is chained up to a metal fence in a main road, near to the Station in Thalwil, where we live. I say “main road”, but traffic density here can probably be favourably compared with a country lane, I walked down recently in Liphook in Hampshire, as my son will testify.

Back to “The Red Bicycle”. We think that it has been chained there for about three months now. It is 300 yards from the station entrance, and there are other bike stands nearer. There are no other chained bikes nearby. It is not exactly a meeting point for chained up bikes, where chained up bikes can have a quiet chat over a coffee. No – this is a very lonely Red Bicycle, at least when it is chained up here.

This raises a number of important social and philosophical questions.

Firstly, why hasn’t it been stolen? It is a very nice Red Bicycle. It clearly doesn’t belong to anyone. It might be lonely and anyone stealing it, would be doing The Red Bicycle a favour, as well as adding back into the economy a valuable resource, which, at the moment, is lying idle.

Why has no one reported it to the police? There is no notice on it saying “Reported”. Perhaps someone has, but the police have better things to do, and anyway, it is not doing anyone any harm.

Perhaps, it is a work of Art. Some sculptor may have laid out 100 life sized bronze statues over the Austrian mountains; so perhaps, this is one in a series of Red Bicycles, chained to various fences, near to stations in Switzerland. It could be part of the modern art exhibition that is taking place in Basel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/30/antony-gormley-austrian-mountains-statues

It is always possible that it is a Swiss version of candid camera. Someone has chained it there and now lurks in the nearby undergrowth (not much of that here), and takes films and photos of passers-by, as they look and ponder. All that is missing is for the Red Bike to be able to say “So, wot u ….. looking at then?”

But I think that the real question is whether The Red Bicycle exists when no one is watching it. How do you know it is there? Perhaps it is our act of looking at it that brings it into existence.

At this point, I think that I have exhausted the limits of absurdity and will quit while I am ahead.