Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Walking back across the Jane Coston Bridge (“A perfect location for protest banners”, but I didn’t tell you that) I caught sight of the vast expanse of roofs (rooves?) of my housing estate. Good god its ugly, a sea of red nothingness, just the same for what seems like miles. I feel ashamed to live in such a lifeless, historyless place.

The boot fair over in the Cowley Road park and ride car park could get quite addictive – todays finds were the pretentiously titled “Dr Who – battle for the universe”, a simple looking board game (3.50 complete), and “Speculate”, a share trading game (1, share price markers missing but otherwise complete). So, less than a fiver and I’ve got two more fully fledged games.

Indeed, Speculate looks like an interesting game for understanding some of the dynamics of the stock market, it was published in 1972 so it doesn’t cover modern markets, no derivatives or futures, and it deals rather heavy handedly in sectors rather than shares themselves, but its a reasonable trade-off given the level complexity that is possible with what is essentially a card game.


3 comments

  1. I feel ashamed to live in such a lifeless, historyless place

    The estate I grew up on was like that. Horrible.

    I really shouldn’t get back into the habit of going to the boot sale hunting for 80s My Little Ponies.. it would be kind of nice but getting up early on a Sunday is just too much hassle..

    • It was more a question of “Its 10am on sunday, I’m bored, what can I do?”…. and they’re quite good fun in a good-grief-theres-so-much-tat sort of way. Probably the most efficient way of buying board games I’ve found, as long as you’re not too fussy about which one you want.

  2. My analysis, too, from having seen their contents. Still, even 3.50 isn’t bad if we can get an hours entertainment out of it.

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