Oh, Grow Up! (The Digestive Issue 3)

Hey, have you read The Digestive yet?

What is it?

It’s the bitsnbobs weekly digest.

Hey, cool – issue three right?

You got it, and what a week! I finally – after three weeks of twisting and turning – get in front of Martin at the top of our Fifa World Cup Fantasy League!

What a childish attitude!

Martin lives down the road and turned up in my garden one day on his bike and introduced himself – no mean feat as to get to that point he had to cycle up a small mountain and down a very long dusty track.

On another occasion, across the dinner table, he inquired innocently, “Do you play chess?”

I do, or did – my chess partner had moved digital and I was/am an old fashioned wooden pieces and board gal.

I had once, wandering the streets of Amsterdam, come across a chess café, strolled in and asked if I could get a game. The barman said, “hang on” and went and had a chat with a bearded serious fellow in the corner. “He says he will play you for a 100 guilder”, this was pre euro, and I nervously laughed, “oh I only play for fun.”

“Well he says otherwise he’ll play everybody in the café”, there were about twenty of us, and so we set up boards in a circle and he walked from table to table making his moves as we sat and pondered.

For a second I managed to get him to slightly break stride, ended up winning two rooks for my queen before being, along with 19 others, crushed.

A couple of months later I saw his name in an article – he was the Dutch champion.

The experience was humbling but I still like to sit at a table so Martin’s question sparked a few months of intense rivalry that had both of us getting our text books out of the cupboard again.

One day I saw a group of youth huddled on a street corner excitedly looking at something so I wandered over and peered in. they were passing playing cards from hand to hand , some beautifully illustrated with clouds and lightening, forest and ocean.
Intriguing.

A week later I passed I toy shop displaying a poster with some of the same imges so I entered and asked what it was all about.

“It’s a card game,” replied the eloquent chap behind the counter.

So I bought a pack. “You need two packs to play,” he added, so I bought one for Martin.

It’s always good, when learning a foreign language, to find something you love doing and trying to do it in that language. The game – Magic – came with a rule book the size of a small novel and we would sit late into the night with a big dictionary trying to work out what to do – and this wasn’t Monopoly.

“What does piocher mean?.........”

What has all this got to do with The Digestve?

Nothing.

The week was really about Pinky and Perky – not two pig puppets singing falsetto but two behavioural scientists – I think, and a blackberry that's not there.

I thought you said it was about being top of the fantasy league?

Oh – grow up!!