Challenged by my 11 year old granddaughter to our first ever game of chess, I was happy to go lightly and just match her skill level, until about half way through the game when she quietly says, “Gung, you are not as dumb as I thought you were.” Instant reaction! Suddenly my intelligence had been questioned and an uncontrollable slaughter ensued. Two quick, brutal moves and I am, a little too enthusiastically, yelling, “Checkmate!!!!”  just to confirm that I wasn’t as dumb as she thought. I guess you can’t blame her for thinking that though, as it is more than likely the result of years of grandparental silliness.

Her revenge came quickly when that night we sat down to play the card game Sequence, with her and her sister aged seven.  Sequence is a simple game of luck and skill which involves making sequences of cards on a prescribed board. Bad Jelly and I won the first game easily as the girls learned the rules. Then, over the next few nights we lost the following eight games. It even reached the  stage where the youngest would announce to her sibling, “We can win this in three moves and there is nothing they can do about it,” while I stared at the board at a complete loss to guess their next move, let alone the next three. Eight bloody one we were thrashed, causing unbelievable damage to both grandparents’ egos. I am not sure we will ever fully recover. So from now on we have committed to only playing games that are fair, using a simple rule that involves only ever playing ageing, slower thinking, less scheming, adults.

Apart from Sequence, what a great summer we have all had! Fishing, swimming, reading trashy novels. Wonderful long evenings to share with family and friends. Late summer nights toasting marshmallows on the fire with the grandchildren. Memories.

I often think how lucky we are to live in this wonderful part of the world and be young enough and fit enough to share it with our grandchildren. Just a few weeks ago we had a couple of the youngest staying with us who wanted to learn to drive the small dinghy and outboard. “You can’t do that,” I told them, “until you have learned to row the boat first.” Undeterred, they donned life jackets, tied the dinghy to a long rope, pushed themselves off and taught themselves to row back, over and over again. Within an hour they had rowing mastered and were proclaiming they had earned the right to learn to use the dinghy with the motor. Just one of those magical grandparent moments. Spending  summer with them was so good I had to drag myself back to work three times before I could finally settle to the exciting new year ahead.

And what a year we have planned. In April we expect the release of the new Emma J Shipley collection of fabrics and wallpapers, Wilderie. Meantime we are (hopefully) off to Europe again to seek out new exclusive designs for our clients and will later visit the USA, Germany and maybe China in search of new home automation technology. A very busy first six months, with so little time available to polish up our chess and Sequence skills.

Here at Redgraves Home Fabrics we have spent more than 60 years helping clients create the home environment they imagine with beautiful curtains, blinds, upholsteries and accessories. Many of the products we sell are exclusively imported for our clients and not available elsewhere.

Call us today for a consultant to visit and help with your window furnishing needs and check us out at www.redgraveshomefabrics.co.nz