Scrabble for Dummies?

Have you heard the latest? Scrabble has announced it will be changing the rules to allow proper nouns to be used. Apparently this is to encourage younger people to play the game.

A spokeswoman for the company said the use of proper nouns would "add a new dimension" to Scrabble and "introduce an element of popular culture into the game".

People's names, place names and brand names will now be permitted. Shame, I say!

I wonder if text spelling will be allowed in the next 'makeover'?

Apologies for the inverted 'S' in the photo. I only realised after I'd put the board away that I'd placed the tile upside down for the photo. It's not my misuse of the apostrophe!!

Friends ...

We've had a busy weekend! On Saturday evening S got back from a week's holiday in Prague and is spending a week at home before going back to Manchester which is great. On Sunday morning A got back from a business trip to Montenegro and in the afternoon some of S's friends came down from London.

We had a lovely afternoon and evening and ended up playing games together before the young people sadly had to leave to get back to London.

It's great to be in the company of lively young people, they seem somehow to invigorate the rest of us and their enthusiams for life rubs off on us, more careworn 'oldies'.

It's good to see too that old fashioned board games are still popular with all generations and hopefully there'll always be a place for them alongside the computer games, TV, DVDs, iPod and whatever is to come in the future. It added to the fun that a lot of the questions in the game referred to people who were famous, and events that happened before the youngsters were even born!