whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside

So Young Ben and I were playing chess the other day and I tried to get him with the old four move Fool's Mate. "Do you think I am only five months old?" he chuckled contemptuously and proceeded to destroy me with his Latvian Gambit. When you teach someone how to play a game of any skill, you know that the first time they beat you is the beginning of the end. Your own victories will become rare after that until you reach the stage of a "pity" victory. At that stage it is time to start playing a different game.

I speak from bitter experience here with three sons who show no compassion when it comes to beating their father at anything and I don't expect any different from Ben (not that I would want it any other way)

I have written previously about our family holidays in Rothesay and it was during evenings here, with no computers and only a small black and white television, that our game skills were honed. This was where my sons were introduced to the delights of dominoes, various card games and some games which I think my dad made up as he went along and altered the rules to suit.

Games such as pitch and toss which did nothing for the skirting paintwork, shove ha'penny and my own personal favourite which we just knew as "coins" or "matches" where each player has three coins, puts his hands behind his back and brings forward a closed fist with either 0,1,2 or 3 coins in it and the object is to guess the total number of coins produced by all players. My dad was a master of tactics here and introduced "bluffs" where he would scratch his face with his "free"hand leading you to believe that he had three coins in his closed fist (when in reality he had left coins behind his back) or even the "double-bluff" where he actually did have three coins in his fist. Watching my young sons take this in and try to introduce their own tactics was a special time

I notice that my sons still use the "rock/paper/scissors" game to decide certain major decisions in life such as whose round it is, who is going in the shower first and probably some decisions that it's best I don't know about.

As years went by in Rothesay we became more civilised and prepared and would actually take board games with us. I recollect fondly the joys of Connect 4, Battleships and Guess Who. "Does your person have glasses, red hair and a beard?" ..."Yes"..."Is it Sue?"

Being a football family we obviously also had Subbuteo but there was not really enough room for that which resulted in major on-field casualties. Some players were broken and put back together again more often than Steve Austin (that's The Six Million Dollar Man not the wrestler). These poor chaps ended up looking more Jimmy Johnstone than Peter Crouch but some just never played again after being knelt on from above

Then as the boys grew older we would progress to Cluedo, Monopoly and the horrendous Risk or the more sophisticated Balderdash and Pictionary but in truth I think we were always happiest with coins behind our back or throwing them at a wall

In rainy days in Rothesay the old Panini Stickers Books were also a Godsend (strange that a devout atheist would use that word, maybe there's hope for me yet). These could prove expensive however, when you had three sons each with their own sticker book and 32 teams at a World Cup with about 20 players per team that's a lot of stickers and you had to keep buying them until all books were complete even if you had 14 Terry Butchers by that time, we still needed that Egyptian defender whose name I cannot remember. Hopefully by the time Ben starts doing Panini Stickers Scotland might actually be back at a World Cup

Anyway I am off to brush up on my baccarat skills. I haven't taught Ben that one yet and I need to beat him at something while I still can