All you have to do is pick up the sticks | Day 56/100

Today the husband and I were invited for a lazy New Year Sunday roast at a friend's house. While I wish I could dedicate this whole post to how tender the roast beef was, how perfectly crispy the roast potatoes were, how indulgent the cream leeks and bacon tasted, along with the several other side dishes, and a heap of delicious red wine to accompany it, sadly that's not where this story is going.

Instead, I wish to write about the really old game that we played, that I'd never played before and got way too competitive at.

You may have heard of it: it's called Pick Up Sticks, or more traditionally, 'Mikado'. According to the oracle that is Wikipedia, it got it's name from the highest scoring stick, known as the Mikado which means "Emperor". Interesting. It's also interesting that after reading the rest of the Wikipedia page, we in no way played the game right. But hey, it was a Sunday. We'd eaten a HUGE meal, drunk lots of red wine and so if we wanted to play by our own rules then we would.

The gist of the game (as we played it) was to remove as many of the wooden sticks from the pile without disrupting or moving any of the other sticks. If you did, then you has to leave the stick where it was, or randomly replace it. Manage to get hold of it without moving anything else and you keep the stick and get another go. In the proper game different coloured sticks have different point values, but we simply played that whoever managed to get the most sticks by the end of the pile, won.

Like I said, it was Sunday.

Anyway, I managed to get off to a good start, removing all the easy ones so had a three stick lead. But then our host managed to get the magic Mikado stick, so it was game on!

Honestly, I have never felt so tense about picking up an over sized cocktail stick as I did when playing this game. I had to wipe my hands dry of nervous sweat before each go as I tried to ping, swipe and manoeuvre each stick out of the pile.

My three stick lead quickly diminished, but luckily for me I have stupidly small pixie hands with little fingers. And I'd cut my nails that morning, which I definitely think gave me a tactical advantage. I managed a run of (carefully) grabbing 3 or 4 sticks in a row, thus giving me the lead. Ah, the satisfaction of winning a game you've never played before. Yes. I felt smug. I felt smug and skilled at how well I managed to pick up sticks. Because in that room I was the best stick picker upper.

What a claim to make!

Sadly, after my 11 stick victory no one wanted to play a second round and returned to more eating and red wine guzzling. All in all, a good Sunday.