The brief break in Woolacombe is over, but my leg is still in agony (but only when I stand still) to remind me of my adventures.
I had a stopover in Cheddar before heading off for the next leg of my holiday.
Andy played me at Fifa 2003 on the PS2 and whooped my ass big stylee (as I believe a young person might have said two years ago).
To be fair to him he did initially let me be Germany, whilst he was a team from the lower reaches of the Spanish second division. They were rubbish so he was only beating me by score-lines of 3-0 (I missed a penalty) or 3-1. I could cope with this.
Then he said I was good enough, so he was Inter Milan. I switched allegiances to France. Now the games became somewhat more one sided. His cocky swagger I remembered from the tennis match returned. The crowing. The humiliation. He won 6-0 and then 8-0. His ruthless obliteration of me was a bit over the top I thought. He didn't need to walk the ball into the net. He didn't need to laugh at me as I failed to dispossess him, or to use his goalkeeper to run upfield to have a punt at goal.
I got angry with him and told him he was being childish and stupid. I realised immediately that I was being childish and stupid and also hypocriticial. Although I had given him a few more chances at backgammon and occasionally made a very risky move in order to give him a hope of winning, I had been similarly brutal.
I said he should take into account that I hadn't played the game before. He quite fairly observed that he hadn't really played backgammon before. I had refused to bet with him on Fifa 2003 because of my novice status. He again made the comparison. I told him he had the freedom to refuse the bet (to be honest, a novice can win at backgammon through luck and that isn't possible with Fifa 2003). But my protestations stuck in my throat.
As it happens I had always intended to give him money for his victory to make us even (taking into account his tennis victory) but it surprised me how despite this there was a teenage part of me that couldn't cope with the scale of the inevitable defeat.
I guess there's a 15 year old in us all that never quite leaves us.
Everyone remarks that me and Andrew are very similar.
I just hope his 15 year old nephew will one day whip his arse at some unimaginable game of the future (I think it wil probably be set in space, but beyond that I don't know).
Perhaps he will handle his defeat with more grace than I did. Or possibly he will go with the option that I contemplated (and rejected in favour of walking out the room), and punch him in the face, before then running away before the young buck can punch him back.
