Wyn Drabble says one common wet-day activity was staying inside and looking longingly out the window. Photo / NZME
Wyn Drabble says one common wet-day activity was staying inside and looking longingly out the window. Photo / NZME
We musn't grumble about the weather because January was kind to us - but a wet long weekend was still rather disappointing.
Waitangi Day under a red traffic light was a comparative non-event so it was a bit of a fizzer all round.
So, what do we do on bleakindoor days and how does that compare with what we used to do in our early days?
I drove to Wellington and back on one of the wet days. I enjoy driving but this was a full window wiper day so not as good as usual. It gave me time to reflect on the rainy days of yore.
One common wet-day activity was staying inside and looking longingly out the window but that wasn't a lot of fun so sometimes we turned to the game of pick-up sticks (also known as pick-a-stick, jack straws, jackstraws, Mikado, spillikins or spellicans).
In case you led a sheltered childhood, I'll explain it to you. A bunch of sticks of different colours (think gaily-coloured kebab skewers) was dropped randomly onto a table or other surface and each player in turn tried to pick up as many sticks as possible without disturbing any other sticks in the process. As you can imagine, this led to countless hours of family friction.
More senior family member: STOP THIS, YOU TWO! STOP IT AT ONCE!
Once you made the mistake of moving another stick, your turn was over and the next person tried. The sticks had different values according to colour so the goal was to amass the highest number of points by the end though sometimes the end came prematurely because of the family friction and the risk of potential skewer stabbings.
How about a nice stress-free game of cards? Good idea but invariably there was at least one card missing from the pack so the game wouldn't work.
Wyn Drabble.
Scrabble was (and still is) a fabulous indoor activity but it needs to have strict time limits set or players get bored and pine for the excitement of looking longingly out the window. An egg-timer is good for keeping the game moving.
I hope you don't end up on Old MacDonald's farm – left with five vowels: E I E I O.
Scrabble is not necessarily friction-free. There can be disputes about whether something is a real word or whether something is an acceptable word. There are websites you can visit to rule on these disputed words but, to avoid tension, decide on one ruling source and stick with it.
Alternatively, you could just prod offenders with one of your gaily-coloured kebab skewers.
Another activity I remember was making rats' tails (though its technical name might have been French knitting). It involved some wool and an empty cotton reel with four tacks hammered into it.
By manipulating the wool around the tacks, you produced a long knitted tail which, once finished, could be rolled up to make a teapot stand you would soon throw away for the simple reason that it was awful. Okay, let's just forget about French knitting.
If you could do proper knitting, you could make Peggy squares. At least these, once sewn together into blankets, served the purpose of providing warmth for the needy.
So, rainy days weren't all beer and skittles in the old days but being prodded with a pick-up stick was probably preferable to the modern option of playing games on your phone all day.
But I suppose that depends on your age. Anyone for pick-up sticks?
• Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.
