Board game weirdness

As a kid, I think my senses were a lot sharper than they are now- my imagination as of yet unencumbered by the repetitive, number crunching, tick box hassle of the adult world-and able to fly through fantasy lands that far surpassed the measure of this realm, in every possible way conceivable, with a lot more ease-and a little less baggage.

I was often caught daydreaming, at primary school-something that always went on my report, at the end of the year : 'must stop daydreaming'-which I enjoyed with relish, if the truth be told.

I look back on my years, in primary school, with predictable warm nostalgia-and seeming to last infinitely longer than my experience of other institutions.

It was only really playtime, lunchtime, writing stories, art and reading, that I particularly enjoyed: swimming on Fridays-and cricket, which I was largely hopeless at.

The rest seemed to be an unnecessary drag-and I spent much of my time either looking for ways to waste time-or do the things that I wanted to do-rather than the lessons; an awkwardly independent streak, that was partly the product of laziness-partly the desire to escape the hum drum, I guess.

It's weird, because as much as I loathed school and embraced the holidays like an insomniac does shut eye, I can't remember being particularly excited by the last day of term-and the opportunity of bringing in board games. The positive was that I didn't have to do math's-a subject that I loathed with a passion-or anything else off of the curriculum that would have bored me senseless-or filled me with anxious dread.

I think it was because I didn't do well with participating in groups, at that age-and no one seemed too enthusiastic to play what I brought in-not that I brought in anything pants wettingly amazing, so I couldn't blame them-though I had some really ace board games, as a kid. I just didn't want to loose the pieces, more than anything, which was a definite possibility. So I seldom took them in.

For some reason, most of the time I'd just take in this game that was a straight forward rolling the dice-moving the counter-sort of thing.

By far not as adrenaline inducing as snakes and ladders, by an means-well, not that I think, anyway. The simple fact is that I don't recall ever reading the instructions-if there were any-or actually playing it with anyone else at all.

It was a small game; compact- as in the board would fold once and you could easily fit it into something about the size of a child's lunchbox.

There were five counters that looked like chess pieces-the pawns-and were either red, blue, yellow, green or white. They followed a path of stepping stones that snaked through the most uncomfortably illustrated boardscape you can imagine...

If anything, I spent longer staring at the board-than I did attempting to coerce anyone into playing the game; hours passing my eyes over the weird illustrations-that I was hypnotized by-and that sort of resembled a cartoon of child nightmares, but pastelled in earth tones-and populated with weird looking kids with horns and vampire teeth-giving me the chilly feeling that they weren't really kids at all...but something a lot darker...inexplicable..