We have dispensed with the need for LittleBear to ask either how far we've been, or how far we've got left, or what time we'll arrive, as he's just as capable as I am of seeing the screen on the Satnav and determining these useful tidbits for himself. Which is unfortunate when we would much rather assure him that, "it's not far now, really," when in truth he can perfectly well see the looming threat of an hour and a half's delay on the M6.
My friend Tigger gave us a splendid game for the car that is actually called, "Are We There Yet?" but unfortunately, the need to read the cards renders LittleBear rapidly car-sick, and I'd rather deal with a fractious boy than a vomiting one. So we have to reserve that particular game for when there are sufficient additional passengers that we can play without LittleBear doing the reading. Or BigBear, who can't cope with it either. Or GrannyBear, who can't find her glasses.
We've tried playing eye-spy. We've tried listening to recorded stories. We've tried (and please spare me this ever happening again) me telling stories. We've tried listening to music. We've tried playing twenty-questions. Any and all of these, in varying combinations, have usually managed to pass the time on even the longest of journeys.
Now we have a new form of entertainment. We have not succumbed to any kind of gadget, device or screen. We have not sedated LittleBear. We have not invented a teleportation device.
We have this:
 |
| It keeps me quiet |
That's right. A list of letters and numbers. I could just leave it at that, and allow you to attempt to work out what manner of game LittleBear has lit upon, but I'll put you out of your misery.
We attempt to "collect" as wide a range of Scrabble scores for car numberplates as possible. Because, obviously, having introduced LittleBear to Scrabble, the first thing he did was memorise the scores of each letter, followed rapidly by learning how many copies of each letter exist in a standard Scrabble set. There are therefore strict rules to the collecting of numberplates, most notably that a numberplate is only valid if it can be formed from a set of Scrabble letters. No double-z thank you very much. A Scrabble set only has one "z", so you can only have a numberplate with one "z" in it.
This game has led to some interesting observations...
- getting only low scoring letters in a numberplate is surprisingly rare
- trade plates are very exciting, as they allow you to score zero, having no letters in them
- we now feel disappointed if someone has gone to the effort of a personalised numberplate and have not either minimised or maximised their score. Why have only one letter and let it be "K", scoring five points, when you could have "E" for one point? Other people have such strange priorities.
- Z and X seem to crop up peculiarly often
- there is a disappointingly low occurrence of the letter Q
Because I'm me, and LittleBear has to get it from somewhere, I now find myself pathologically incapable of not totalling up the points score of the numberplates that I see. I feel a frisson of excitement if I get a thirty-pointer, or anything below five-points. I can't help myself. I'm not entirely sure who relishes this game the most, me or LittleBear. It certainly keeps me occupied on long journeys.
Footnote
The good news is that LittleBear has invented a new permutation upon this game, in which the colour of the car can mulitply the score, as a coloured square on the Scrabble board does. A dark blue car - triple one letter. A red car - triple the whole score. A pink car - double the whole score. A light blue square - double one letter. It's doing wonders for LittleBear's mental arithmetic.
No comments:
Post a Comment