Checkers

Or as it is more usually known now - Chinese Checkers. There are many commercial versions of this game but I have always called it Checkers because that’s what my great aunt called it. This was her board, handmade for her when she was a child, so it must be more than a hundred years old.

Whenever we went to visit Auntie Annie, out would come the card table and Checkers. She loved to play and was unbeatable. She left it to me when she died, in memory of the many, many games we played together. Even Gordon got to play when he came with me to visit her when we were in College.

So it’s no wonder that, when I introduced Checkers to the two girls this weekend, they found they could not beat their grandparents! It is a game of strategy, the aim being to get your set of pegs across the board to the other side as quickly as possible and the only way to be quick is to create hopping paths over other pegs on the board. It takes a lot of concentration. They did enjoy it anyway and soon got very good at it.

This morning we saw the three of them onto the Leeds train from Appleby Station. They changed at Leeds for a London train and then to Sevenoaks. Everything was on time and they soon made it home. We have had a lovely few days.