Copyright scotsman
I thought I’d given up on humanity. Then I was on a family holiday, and they unleashed the Uno cards. The sense of togetherness was beautiful. We were uniting, across all age groups, from six to fifty-something. The ever-present phones were cast aside, for a blissful hour or so. It’s strange to think that, after all else has failed, Uno might actually heal the world. Let’s send a pack to Trump. Anyway, apparently, board games (and card games are included) are having a moment. This is thanks in part - various press releases have told me - to the BBC television series Celebrity Traitors, which has its final on November 6, with merch including its own game, available just in time for Christmas. I’m totally into this trend, though I told a small fib about Uno. I was observing, not playing. You see, I’m a first timer, and getting your head round instructions, when it’s dusk and they’re in small print and you haven’t brought your reading glasses, is virtually impossible. I could not see that tiny ant writing without a microscope or a floodlight. It was also pointless, asking another human. They’re all experienced Uno-ites. I’d had a wee drinkie or two, and I could see the withering irritation as they tried to explain the game to me, trying to use a basic language created for imbeciles. “But what is the aim?” I kept asking. Nobody seemed to know. I know my face was doing that gormless thing it does. Anyway, after I’d secreted myself in an UNO-btrusive part of the room, I could admire everyone’s bonhomie. There was no inter-generational competitiveness, or gloating from the eventual winner. That kind of behaviour is probably the reason why, when I was growing up, we rarely played board games as a family in the Soutar household. My dad was super competitive, and would want to win, even if he was playing a six-year-old. We stopped wanting to play football in the garden with him. He couldn’t do a gentle to-me-to-you tap, it had to be booted as hard as possible. If that meant taking a small child’s head off, so be it. He was also very clever. Too brainy to play games against. I only played Scrabble with him once, and it was devastating to any sense of worth I ever had. Anyway, apart from that indispensable classic, as far as games go, my cupboard is currently bare, as we moved house and had a major clear out just four months ago. We don’t even have a pack of cards, though the only game I’ve ever known is snap or scabby queen, and I can’t remember the rules for either. The single board game we thought worth keeping was Dog Bingo. I bought that a few years ago, in a desperate attempt to find something that would suit everyone, from granny to the youngest, as something to occupy us when we went on our annual holiday to Arran. There were a couple of limbo years, when one or two of the girls would huff off if it looked like they wouldn’t win, but I’ve persevered. Now we’ve reached the sweet spot, when everyone joins in. I enjoy the role of being a caller, when you can say Chinese crested or munsterlander, rather than two little ducks. It still hasn’t been installed in any of the children that the winner should not be the one to tidy everything away. They’re always quick to vanish whenever a game is over. I’m always the tidier-upper, even if I am the reigning champion. Before the house move, we also got rid of a lot of the retro charity shop games I’d amassed, to entertain the kids during babysitting stints. The Buckaroo went, as did Bed Bugs, which is the noisiest game known to man. It involves picking up jiggling plastic lice using giant tweezers. That’s how Rentokil does it, apparently. It takes them a while. These sort of games are from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties - the heyday of these activities, when there was nowt else to do. Back then, my favourite was Guess Who?, which trained us to pick criminals out of line-ups. We also loved botched surgery game Operation, and, of course KerPlunk! When we got older, there was the quizzy joy that is Trivial Pursuit, which was released in 1981. Its original questions included, “What is the actual colour of the sun?”. The answer is white. And that’s a brown wedge of pie for you. I always loved Monopoly - aka the best selling board game in the UK, ever - though my sister and I would always fight over who got to be the Scottie dog. I didn’t know, until now, that this is one of the only surviving tokens on the board, as most of the others have been long replaced by more crowd-pleasing characters like a cat and rubber duck. We didn’t have any problems with the red hotels, but those little green house pieces would always travel, like suburban caravans, and be found down the back of the sofa or in the cutlery drawer. Connect Four is another classic. I feel like I am an unbeatable mistress of the red discs. I never got into the bestselling Cards Against Humanity, which came out in 2011, or 2006’s Bananagrams, though I am intrigued by them both However, probably my favourite classic game of all time is Pictionary, released in 1985. Whenever I play, I feel that my four years at art college were not spent in vain. Despite being a fan, it’s been years since I owned a set. I feel as if I’m ready to invest. I also might get my own pack of Uno. Just let me read the instructions in my own time, with specs on. Read more: “I moved to Leith three months ago and this is what I’ve learnt about Edinburgh’s ‘coolest’ neighbourhood” Read more: “I’ve got loads of money, but nobody in Scotland will take my cash” Read more: “I knew my Edinburgh house move would be expensive, but this cost is shocking”
