Risk

At half-past nine yesterday evening I got a phone call from Lee who wasn't, as I’d thought, careening through Easterby with wacky friends, but was in The Bridge with his friend John, who’s doing History at Christminster Uni. Did I want to come out? No asking necessary, for I’d donned my coat and hurried out into the downpour within minutes, much to Dad’s surprise.

I got soaked on my way to the pub and I staggered into the warm glow to find Lee and John with Egleyites Andrew Boyd and Adrian Barlow. Andrew is going to Ecclesley Poly, and Adrian to do a History degree at Cambridge (“I was forced into it”).

Lee’s friend was stocky and leather-jacketed with brown curly hair who pronounced ‘th’ as ‘f’ (“fanks”) and is OK. He isn’t anything like Lee. I was quite surprised, and I suppose I’d expected someone more visibly ‘arty’ than down-to-earth John. We moved to a crowded pub down in Farnshaw and then got fish and chips and went back to John’s house on Edgestow Road.

His Mum was away, so he brought Campaign down from the loft and we played that until half-past three. Risk followed, and in a mammoth five-hour game I built up an empire spreading from the Americas across Europe and W. Africa, before John won. It was light outside when we finally stopped.

I stayed at John’s until four o’clock this afternoon and left with Lee after we’d played another game of Risk, Escape From Colditz and an art auction game.