I’m going to lay my cards on the table straight out - as well as beginning the gaming metaphors - and confirm that I was a bad loser at board games as a child. And so I stopped. Unattracted as I was, equally, to other people being openly competitive, there wasn’t much reason to start again. Except this year, for some reason I have wanted to play board games.
I still don’t know why it should be. Perhaps it helps that some of the board games available now are more interesting than the ones I played as a child. (I still hold a torch for Mine-A-Million, which allowed you to build up oil reserves, and ship them to the other side of the world. But what with global warming, and pirates taking over oil tankers, I don’t think that one’s going to come back into fasion.)
I’m talking about games like Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. And I rather like Ticket to Ride, particularly the European version where I can distract others from my losing by being smug and saying “been there!” on some of the more obscure routes. Games which are different every time, in terms of how you make up the board, keep me interested - and take the sting out of losing, or at least of not winning.
Our friends Jan and Paul are good on the board game front, and introduced us to both Settlers and Mah Jong, though we clearly need to build up more practice on games in between visits. But the real shift was going on holiday with friends in June, and playing board games most nights. And liking it.
When you are a child, winning and losing is a much bigger deal, and having siblings to taunt you, or parents to point out that you are a bad loser, tends to distract you from even trying to put a brave face on it. A couple of decades down the line, and you’ve realised that there are many ways to win and lose in daily life, and so a brief stint at a board game is perhaps easier to take on.
In the case of our trip in June, it perhaps helped to be there with a very competitive friend, who you knew would win (almost) all the games anyway. This took the actually trying to win part out of the equation, leaving you focus on banter, admiration of nice design of board game, an additional glass of wine, and so on. (Obviously, if wine had been in the equation as a child, who know how many people would have stopped being bad losers much earlier?)
But I think the real reason for it is a desire to be with people. To do something together that you can remember, but that isn’t that big and important either, so you can focus on the people too. Perhaps the addition of a nice fire, or bad weather, or large amounts of chocolate etc, add to the picture of it being a very positive thing to stay indoors and be with people you like.
And for that, I can even risk the possibility that some competition might come into the equation.
November 23rd, 2008
Social ill is a bit harsh. But it’s interesting going out for a meal in another country - particularly a European country, given the ongoing belief in the UK that we still eat worse than our European counterparts - and think you could have done better at home.
Targets on the list? France is rather good at pre-dressed salad, as was Germany, back in the spring, and both were overly salty. Top marks back to Italy, where you can generally dress your own salad at the table, although there’s still more of a tendency to add salt.
I still find salting a salad vegetable a bit strange, particularly when you could choose a tangier lettuce if you wanted more of a taste hit, but it still sits easier with me than adding cream to lettuce (my former flatmate in Poland. It was just cream. I like a cream-y sauce on a salad from time to time, but not quite in this form).
Morning coffee in Italian hotels can be a bit of a disappointment - and this in a country which is really rather rated for its coffee. Best trick is probably to forgo a hotel breakfast and get a quick breakfast in a nearby bar - which clearly works very well for the commuting population too, in many places.
We’re used to ’serving suggestions’ on packaging, those kind of pictures that help you understand what to have on a plate with mayonnaise, for example. France goes a step further, and suggests on its packets that you should actively have chocolate at breakfast time.
I know that many people need no encouragement in this area, but normally chocolate gets brought out later in the day…once something’s gone wrong…or you’re flagging at work? Maybe we have completely the wrong attitude to chocolate - maybe our days would go much better if we had chocolate at breakfast time, and mustered the will to strike much earlier in the day.
I had an unexpected stop in a French hotel recently, and they offered the usual buffet breakfast option. What was interesting was the paper serving mats on the table - like you get in fast food places here - only in France, it told you what elements you should be having to start the day.
There were 4 of them, and as far as I remember, you should have some protein, some carbohydrate, some fruit and something to drink to rehydrate you. I’m sure chocolate was included in at least one of the categories as a serving suggestion…
Does this mean that the French are constantly thinking about how to balance their diets? Is the placemat for visiting foreigners who need to shape up in this area - but need to be able to read French to do so? Or is it a sign of a country also worried about its children going the way of the fast food chains?
Final food note: restaurants in Germany put rice in pots of table salt - I think this is to absorb any liquid which might get in, and cause the salt to dissolve, or clump, or something of that kind. It makes lots of practical sense - but it doesn’t look quite as nice to look at.
Aesthetics eh? You get them where you can.
November 23rd, 2008