Big Pink Hairy Coconut

Warming Up

8056/20997

Phoebe got Minion Top Trumps for Christmas. Also something called Plop Trumps which she didn't like as she thought it was distasteful that it was about actual poo. I haven't yet introduced her to the greatest Trump game ever, RHLSTP Trumps, still available to buy apparently (and I have a few left that I sell at gigs - all profit goes to making more podcasts)- not sure how she'll feel about her dad being the Top Trump!

But she loves maths and she loves drawing and I think she was intrigued to work out how the game works and she decided to hand make her own version. She decided to go for fruit and has spent the last two days making the cards. She's taking her time and I think plans to have at least 40 cards, but the first 8 or so are done. The tough thing about it is she keeps asking me about size, hardness and sweetness of fruit so I can help her ascertain what score each fruit should get in each. She has also recognised that it makes the game too easy if you score everything out of 100 so she has chosen different totals for each attribute.

I am OK on fruit size, but it's quite tricky to work out if one fruit is sweeter or even harder than another without having the fruit in front of you. Is a Mango harder than a grape? Is a coconut sweeter than an orange? Doesn't it depend on the particular fruit you have. You'd really need to sample a broad range of each fruit to fully determine, because if you've only got one then it might be a bit ripe or under-ripe or just not as sweet as the average. And coconut by-products can be really sweet and the milk is different than the flesh and orange pith is bitter. It's been a stressful couple of days.

Largely Phoebe has been making her own call and she's been fastidious and made each card look beautiful. Though I am a bit triggered by the coconut picture. Is that what it looks like? Is she trolling me? Why is the coconut pink? You might say that my excised ball wasn't 100 in size, but you'd be wrong about that. It was massive.

I tweeted the pic and a few people had some comments about the scores, but everyone agreed that the production values were great and that it was shaping up to a pretty workable version of the game. And I'd rather play fruit that planes of the second world war, which for some reason was the game I had as a kid. This girl will go far. I just don't know in what direction yet. Will she choose good or evil?

Ernie is being pretty inventive too. He got a police uniform for Christmas and has worn it for most of the time. He's also turned his shyness box into a police station, where he has a table to work at and a notice board. His policeman is of course armed and tends to go for his gun ahead of his baton or handcuffs, but with the justice system being what it is, a cop really has to take the law into their own hands these days if we're going to get the scum out of society.

They do love many of the too many presents that they got for Christmas, but it's good to see that a big box and some cards and pen and an imagination and a dad who doesn't really know how sweet different fruits are, still command the most attention.