Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Hooked!



I'm hooked!  Every so often a game will cause me to lose days.  The Block Game is doing it today. I had this in times past but it refused to work on Windows 7. However once I increased the memory I went searching for it and discovered it worked.  The problem is I start and cannot finish, unless I make a mistake and look away and the thing falls over itself.  
This is not new, I have found a variety of simple kids games that keep me 'entertained' for days, sometimes weeks.  The 123 Solitaire game of course is always around, but there was a snooker game I once had (or was it Billiards?) that for a period filled hours that ought to have been wasted doing something useful, like eating, sleeping or washing!  
The 'Bouncing Balls' game is also a dumb simple game that is aimed at kids yet I can spend days playing the thing!  Usually I play such games while watching TV or even the football when it gets a bit rubbish!  This keeps my fingers busy as they get fidgety if I am not typing something.  My fingers do not like sitting around and if my mind fails to invent words to write they get very annoyed, these games fill that void. 
I am not one for the larger games that feature car chases, overcoming obstacles to reach an end but my ageing sister has developed a hunger for such as these. Her grandchildren demanded the 'X-Boxes' or 'Wii's' or whatever they use and as they grew older new ones arrived, gran found these dumped on her. Both she and her man waste time struggling through obstacles when in times past folks their age would have been sitting on rocking chairs smoking pipes and knitting. Not quite sure who would be dong which mind.  They say such games keeps the mind active, so does reading a book I say but that is too much for them.  
I will stick to simple games that suit my simple mind, brain stuff is not for me.





Monday 23 December 2013

Monday's Unusual Things.



In days of yore, before they were grown in tins, pineapples were extremely expensive and found only in the dwellings of the rich.  To proclaim to the world their wealth many placed such items, in stone, on their buildings.  Here John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, presented his wife Charlotte this pavilion from which to peruse their land.  The giant pineapple allowed the world to know their wealth, power and position.  She must have been pleased!  Today she would have to pose half naked in the 'Daily Mail' or 'Hello' magazine to get such fame.


Pleeeeeeaaasssee tell me this is real and not a spoof!  Please be a car used by a UK police force somewhere for some reasonable purpose, please!  Somehow I doubt it however.... 


In Dublin, for reasons of their own, otherwise sane people indulge in what they refer to as the 'Redneck Games.'  'Mud Flop,' is clearly popular, though I would not be as close as this lot as that lass lands face down in there.  A Tsunami may sweep through the fair city after her landing!  'Big Hair,' 'Seed Spitting,' and 'Armpit Serenade,'  are apparently among the other, er, attractions.


This one is the best of the lot!  Search through until you find a gravestone that suits you, not that I want you to leave mind!  Hanging around a bit more would be good in my opinion.  This fellow failed to hang about, or rather his time expired.  Maybe he should not have waited so long, or possibly moved elsewhere?  I know not!   

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Wednesday 13 October 2010

Think!

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Today I decided to cogitate on my next step. I came to the conclusion that I required encouragement where concentration was concerned so I placed a large sign above the desk to help me concentrate. Just a moment ago I noticed this sign read 'THINJ' in large bold letters!


The futures bright......



On every occasion that I have turned on the TV to watch these games I fail to find any action. All that greets me are several past 'stars,' most of whom I have never heard of, blethering on about the Games. I want to see action, something happening, not burbling as folk try to fill time! When there has been action it has always concentrated on the English teams attempts to win Gold. This was taken to the normal BBC limit as a Scots girl fought for first place, moving into second as she rounds the bend, while the camera ignored her and followed the English lass drifting backwards into fifth! British Broadcasting indeed! Naturally the Scot continued to slip away and in the end she was third and the English first. I suspect more dirty dealing there! 
I looked for action but the most I got was swimming. Now to me swimming is one of the more boring activities, I prefer the discuss, hammer and such like. However swimming dominated for at least a week, which means the English were involved. The problem above all is the limited coverage. With trendy sets you may get a choice of channels, I have only the basic five these days, and what is covered there is very limited for the most part. Sue Barker gets very excited when mentioning the medals won, but rarely do we see other nations winning  theirs. Boasting about 'British,' and I use that term loosely, medals is understandable, but then we realise that Australia and Canada have ten times as many, yet we hardly see them mentioned? I canny wait for 2012 and the billions wasted on the next Olympics!



As my mother came from Cowdenbeath, the heartland of the Fife coalfields, I can understand something of the emotions experienced by relatives of the men trapped for so long deep under Chile! When watching a TV programme set in such a town the sounding of the siren caused my mother to react. The memory of the siren from Pit No. 7, or any other close by, would bring the town almost to a standstill while they awaited news of the cause. Often this was a small fall, trapping only a few men, in some situations it may lead to many deaths. My uncles once got themselves trapped by such a fall. There was a very long shaft that they could escape through by walking round to Pit No. 1, however Will had bad feet and was unable to walk that far. He had to sit tight until men dug their way through to him. A small incident which shows that danger lurked daily down a mine, and also that miners will risk their own lives to save another's! It is an unwritten rule that if something happens you go and help! After all, even if he is your enemy he will come to your aid! That is one reason mining areas produced such close knit feelings. That grand man Mike tells us that on the day Margaret Thatcher celebrated her 85th birthday these miners were brought to the surface. I bet she thought she had closed them all down!

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Wednesday 23 April 2008

Childhood Games

Someone reminiscing about their childhood made me ask what did we do as kids. Until the age of ten or eleven when total football took over we had the usual variety of kids games. 'Hide and seek,' sometimes in large groups and involving hiding in many strange places, the coal box at the back was good, brings back a good feeling, 'Peevers' (hopscotch to the ignorant) was really a girlie game which we sometimes joined in using an old polish tin to push along the ground. Girls bounced a ball against the wall in a variety of different games and played with skipping ropes. Boys naturally avoided such games and those who dared to participate were clearly big Jessies. Thankfully common sense prevailed and playgrounds were separated in those days so the kids could grow up naturally and not hounded by middle class women with chips on their inadequate shoulders. 'Japs and Commando's' and a British version of beating the Germans (name forgotten) was common with the occasional Cowboy and Indian stuff. Funnily enough I started school in 1956 (oh joy) and we spent several years running around the playground singing 'We won the war in 1944!' I suppose that died out before the PC teachers intervened. 'Matchbox,' 'Dinky' and 'Corgi' cars were often bought,1/6d for the big ones and 9d for the 'Matchbox' series. Some very good vehicles there which disappeared with the passing of time, although they had changed greatly in appearance, especially when tins of 'Humbrol' paint were discovered! Marbles were often the cause of fights. A game of 'Bulls' could be as gentle as playing with 'Lego,' one of the best toys invented I say, yet the kid upstairs just did not like being bettered and a squabble would ensue. It was never me cause I was nice, but usually we got on all right.

Because there were two roads at the front we often played in the wee road in perfect safety. While the main road had heavy traffic occasionally passing by it was for the most part comparatively quiet, unlike today. I remember the fish lorry heading for Newhaven passing by. As it approached we could see it stacked high with fish boxes and waited while the lorry passed. As the vehicle rumbled on it's way the smell would follow behind like a wake behind a ship spreading to the side as she passed. Lovely, well no actually! The traffic on the wee road was minimal. Next door there was the 'Highland Queen' lorry from the man on the top flat and Dode's bakers van. That is while it was the bakers van. His habit of drinking too much meant it often changed names on the side! A small Austin 7 belonged to the man upstairs, who we hardly ever saw, and far up the road another vehicle would be parked here and there. The field opposite, soon turned into a school field, meant there was plenty of light and no-one opposite. A great place to grow up! That road also saw 'Kick the can' being played as well as the occasional failed attempts to become 'Zorro!' The small verge between the roads could be used for some games but mostly it was a kind of border rarely crossed.

In the backgreen we would use the washing poles to play 'Long banging.' A simple device to enhance the goalkeepers ability even though this centre forwards talent failed miserably here. Only later did I realise this was why I was such a good goalie - oh yes I was! - as the practice here helped. One day we went round to play with the big boys and I was forced into goal. I was wonderful! From then on until about fifteen years of age it was football every night!
We played in the field opposite for a time, then decamped to the large roundabout round the corner where we used half to play and occasionally the whole circle was used for big games and 'take ons' against lads from just outside our area. Rarely did fights intervene and 21's the winner was the norm. It became my habit, wherever we played, to come in at night at place my sodden muddy jeans in the old cola cellar. Next night I would break of the hardened mud, replace the jeans over my skinny legs and go off to perform heroics once again! If it wasn't for my eyesight and no scout ever calling on me I could have been somebody you know! We also played a football version of a 'Squash' like game by banging a ball against a certain area of wall and the next in line had to get the ball from wherever it ended up and return it to the same spot. I forget what we called it but this was good, when you won.

There came a time when this all changed. The wee road became too dangerous as wealth crept in and folks parked their cars there. Ford Anglia's and 'Z' cars appearing in the late 60's reflecting the economic growth in society, even where we lived. Football seemed to die away in the late seventies or early eighties. On the roundabout someone planted four trees, they are still there today! We had come across a 'No Football' sign there at one point and some of the boys chucked it over a fence! Not today's men. No-one plays football any more unless they go 'training' with their team. The type of football that gave us Alan Gilzean, Bobby Walker, Denis Law, Willie Hamilton and Jim Baxter has been obliterated and is occasionally seen only in school playgrounds. Now kids are coached from an early age,tenderly cared for in seven a sides, and not allowed to play to many games in case 'it has long term damage!' What rubbish! There is a story that Dave MacKay signed for the Heart of Midlothian while running from one game to another while a schoolboy. If not true it sounds it! To much care for the little darlings does not do them good.

Do they play games now? In our family the kids have far too many toys. Especially as they only have one kid each and it gets spoiled, although no more than I was to be fair. Being girls for the most part I cannot say whether their games are better than before, as they still play with dolls, as normal girls do, fight and play sweet when they want something. Boys get the guns and cars, although much more space orientated than before, more 'Star Wars' than the World War Two stuff we were surrounded by. (While the war was long over by the time I arrived, an 'accident' my mother used to say, it was still deeply imprinted on everyone's mind.) Boys remain noisy, loud, obnoxious brats as all boys have always been - myself excepted naturally, and remain the same at heart in spite of the daft attitudes so often seen today.

The good times in the past were all in our heads. We heard of 'wars and rumours of wars,' but these were forgotten when the Ice cream man's bell was heard. George had several years service round our way and saw many of us grow up. But he did not have the 'Mr Whippy' type van and looking back he must have struggled to keep himself going. In those days often the men would get out and fight it out for the round, an idea stopped when Edinburgh Corporation licensed them, George however could always rely on our support. Nobody was assaulted by dirty old men, although our folks warned us about them, mothers were far from neurotic but did keep a watch on us, and life was better. Child abuse happened but was not splashed over the papers, and if our dads found someone doing it they had the means to bring it to an end, quietly and quickly! But in spite of the overprotected habit of today, the fear engendered by the press and the PC brigade who care for themselves through their nonsense, is life more dangerous for kids than before? I don't think so, and the brats grow up just the same. If they are allowed to do so by their elders. If they go wrong it is their elders fault, yours and mine, there is no one else to blame.