new year – Pete's Blog

Well that was nice. We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. But the festivities are over. The decorations are coming down today. I’m on boring but healthy eating and Dry January. The couple of days of snow have turned into grey rain. Time to start looking forward to this year’s adventures, and that starts with the narrowboat.

At the moment many of the canals are closed as the Canal and River Trust do their winter works. We probably won’t be able to set off on our long summer trip until March. But we are missing the boat and it is sitting in Staffordshire waiting for us. The engine is serviced, the cooolant replaced, the central heating leak is fixed. The bottom is blacked with bitumen and has new sacrificial anodes. And the roof has ben stripped down and repainted. So it is ready for visitors in its marina.

Next week I plan to go down and get it set up. During the winter we take off linen, crockery, foodstuffs so they need sorting out. The water tank needs bleaching with Milton. The fuel tank needs topping up. The heating systems need checking. And there are some bits and pieces of DIY to do.

Then for Mandy’s birthday towards the end of January, we plan to spend a week or two on the boat. We may not be moving yet, but it will still feel like coming home. There is something about being on a narrowboat that we just find relaxing.

I can’t wait.

Over Christmas we had guests and played quite a lot of games. Charades of course, a tournament of a card game called “sh*thead”, funny rummy, dobble and more. But the only proper board game we played was this Lord of the Rings version of Risk – and even then we ran out of time to finish it.

When I was growing up we played a lot of board games. I was one of four children and over board games we learnt how to be competitive while still friends – most of the time. In particular with my brother Michael, we would spend long afternoons over Monopoly, Cluedo, Wembley, Flutter, Battling Tops. Each Christmas our parents would buy us a new game to share and it became a Christmas morning favourite after Church to play the game while our Mum made the dinner (different times).

When I first met my wife Mandy, we also played a lot of two person games – backgammon, othello, pass the pigs. We have a cupboard stacked high with games which these days are gathering dust. I am not sure why we don’t play them. We still play cards when we have people round. This week we learnt a new card version of golf, where you have 9 or 18 holes (rounds) to minimise your strokes (points on the cards). I guess when we were growing up there were no computer games, and only three channels of black and white TV. I am also aware that I am really speaking for myself. There are millions of dungeons and dragon players across the world that would laugh at my comments.

But I do miss board games. Perhaps I can persuade Mandy today to choose one of the dusty boxes from our cupboard, and we can return to our usual arguments over the rules. For the avoidance of doubt, there is no rule in Monopoly that says all fines should be put onto free parking and picked up by the next player that lands there – even if it is a good idea!

I wish you a very happy and game-full New Year.
Pete

Tag: new year

Itching to get back on the boat

Why do people not play board games anymore?