June 17

Sometimes after lunch, I play Scrabble with my dad.  I have never played Scrabble so often in my life as I have done over the last three months. You know when you've playing it often when you are reading a book and find yourself looking at words and working out their score, or you know without thinking about it that Kappa is the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet.

Ellie is a keen Scrabble player, but Sian does not enjoy it.  What she has yet to realise is that Scrabble is a game of strategy, more than words.  She is of the thinking that if a word is long, uncommon or has deep and meaningful connotations, it should be worth more than the rest.  Actually, it's all about using those triple word scores and high point letters.  'XI' can get you thirty three points on a triple word score, but 'ASSIDUOUS' will only get you 10 on blank squares.

We decided that if a word is in the Scrabble dictionary it can be used, a decision we have come to regret sometimes as just about anything, even the most inane of utterances, like 'eh', can be used.  I do wonder if Scrabble hasn't been dumbed down quite a bit.

I was not a great Scrabble player three months ago, because, like Sian, I looked at the word, rather than where it was placed on the board.  John is quite good and often comes out with words that make two words, if that makes sense, going in different directions.

I am always annoyed when, after staring at the board for about fifteen minutes, I grudgingly put down 'tent' as my best attempt and John says things like 'I can see a 16 and a 24 - but if you want to go for 4, that's OK.'

The army is off the streets today as all civil servants have been offered a 50% pay rise and part payment in US$.  The catch is that the US$ has to paid into an account from which you can only withdraw bond cash.