Rambling Musings
Letter to a Scrabble enthusiast
“Sometimes fate just plays a strange game of Scrabble with you”
Pawan Mishra
It was around Noon and with the sun, our radiant ball of life giving energy, warm and high in an almost cloudless sky, my son and I decamped to our local park for a picnic breakfast of bacon sandwiches and home-made chocolate chip cupcakes, and a silly card game we’ve played since the beautiful and smart young man sat opposite me today was a mere pup in a school uniform. I won at Yahtzee, winning from far behind with a last gasp Yahtzee that saw the young man slink into himself and double over akin to Neo in The Matrix. “Hate you” were the only words uttered from the flesh and bones opposite me now, morphing between dimensions. I beat him at Tri-Ominos too (think dominos but with triangular shaped tiles) but all of this self-regarding nonsense, whether now and here in the writing present, or a few hours ago beneath a magnificent sun, means nothing. For my son won at Uno.
He always wins at Uno.
And we’ve got the scorebook to prove it.
Following today’s 2–1 defeat (I won Game 3 with exactly 100 points to 0, a whitewash of sorts but it mattered not) the beautiful young man and card shark in the Jaws t-shirt leads our lifetime score by 483 wins to 339, yet these are only the recorded scores of the past eight or so years and we’re talking at least another three to four more spins around the sun that went unrecorded too. 800+ games over a 8 year period equates to some easy mathematics and some eye watering averages if you calculate the number of points needed to win nearly 500 games over a near decade of playing recorded games. So I don’t particularly suggest you reaching for a calculator.
The results may well surprise you.
What does all this have to do with Scrabble I hear you screaming as you pluck another 7 tiles from the bag and studiously look at the board and try to use a Double Word Score? Not a whole lot now you come to mention it, but take your time in placing your word, we’ll get there. You see, during my loss, yet again, at Uno to my beautiful son, I raised the topic of our lifetime scores and asked him if he could remember all the times and places we’d played this silly card game. He correctly stated here at home, Ironbridge, Shrewsbury, Stratford-upon-Avon and he even remembered our games in London. An admirable and factually correct response, especially so when remembering our times in Stratford and London, but I wanted to correct him further (but didn’t) by stating we’d played Uno on numerous train journeys (to and from the places named above) as well as the far more important and pleasing tangent this had now squirted from within the confines of my tiny, game playing mind. Yes we’ve played innumerable games of Uno in Ironbridge, but I couldn’t help but fondly recall last summer’s picnic breakfasts in toy town when we played all summer long and when I lived there: well we needed no excuse whatsoever to join the tourists by the oldest iron bridge in the world for a bag of chips and a game of Uno. Train trips to Shrewsbury or Stratford and twice to London were a veritable feast of games of Uno, but the pleasing memory once more is that we found a spot in a public park for a silly card game beneath a blazing sun. Whether it was Hyde Park in London, a public park in Shrewsbury or a riverside park in Shakespeare’s Stratford on a sweltering summer’s day, we took time out for a sandwich and an ice-cream, and a silly game of cards. We played some hands of Uno during a power-cut recently, the buzz and hum of “normal life” entirely and pleasingly absent.
We whispered.
We kept saying how quiet it all was.
He won. Of course he won!
But you can’t put a price on how precious these memories are.
From this tangent I danced to another and, as the astute regular readers among you will have noticed, my second article in a row containing the theme of Scrabble. My son won’t even entertain the thought of a game of Scrabble and so it’s three years and counting since my last game, and a rare defeat I wasn’t allowed to forget in a hurry. From there, another five years into a murky past and a barbecue and game of Scrabble on the riverbank in Ironbridge when my companion famously announced “We won’t be together to do this again next summer, will we?”. For once, she was correct! Memories eh? Bittersweet affairs or dominant victories as the sun set on yet another relationship, sorry, evening by the riverside. I still have someone else’s Scrabble board (can’t remember who) and I still have a Travel Scrabble set gifted to me by my sister (can’t remember when) and if I was a more accomplished writer I’d now pen a paragraph on how when opening either of these boxes the ghosts of the past appear demanding a re-match for all the defeats inflicted on hot summer’s days when Ironbridge was a world away or even when I used this famous toy town as a staging post for a Christmas Day leap of faith before yet more glorious summers playing Scrabble, and watching the soon to be Uno Champion running through water fountains and leaping into his paddling pool.
But there are no ghosts in those boxes and I seem to have a recent tendency to write gibberish articles without a true beginning, second act or denouement. But what the hell eh? I’m sure normal service will resume sooner or later. I just miss a damn good game of Scrabble. Oh I know I can find one (of many) in The Matrix, but it’s just nowhere near the same as playing in real life. Seeing my son’s face as I finally (finally) win a game of Uno is as priceless as the memories of drunken games of Scrabble at Christmas, playing in my first ever garden with the first love of my life or putting that future card cheat of a son to bed, throwing some kindling on a fire, and winking at his beautiful mother that her luck was in, our son is safe and asleep, and I have exciting plans for the evening ahead in front of a roaring fire…
A game of Scrabble!
You can’t put a price on silly memories such as these.
Thanks for reading, much appreciated.
The book below is my latest offering and does have a beginning, a middle and an end, much like the other 15 you’ll find under my name on Amazon if you’re interested:
