Taking the piss

Until last week I was an Ebay virgin, never had an account, never bid on anything, never sold anything. Cap'n Marvel opened an account in 2005 but had never used it himself either. I decided to go on Ebay to search for a boardgame from my childhood - Take The Brain (Zoe I hope this little farce brings a smile to your sad lips). I apologise for the profanity but I'm a tad miffed.

It all started at Christmas., bored with TV I started a jigsaw one night and really enjoyed the peaceful time in the kitchen, Cap'n M joined me after a while and we just spent a pleasant evening working and chatting together. I wanted to do another one but didn't have any in stock so we started playing our meagre collection of boardgames instead.

Finding games that just 2 people can play is a bit of a trial. There's Scrabble of course but I'm completely pants at it and always get royally thrashed by the Cap'n which I find annoying because here I am a relatively articulate, well-read, bloggist with a huge vocabulary while he buys newspapers only for the cartoons and has never willingly read a book that has a bigger word to picture ratio in it.

We have a lovely set of wooden board games like Ludo, draughts, chess, snakes & ladders but I wanted something a bit more fun and started to reminisce about Take The Brain which I used to play for hours with my brother. To be fair it's quite similar to chess but the pieces have more wacky names like Ninnies and Numskulls making it more appealing. I've wanted this game again for years but had given it up for dead long ago, my parents must have given away our games before I left home - little did they know they were sitting on a goldmine.

Anyhoo the Cap'n suggested I do a search on the the internet which had never occurred to me (I know, duhhhhh which way did he go George ...) and lo and behold there were 3 or 4 for sale on Ebay! I went for the one with the lowest bid and longest time left because it looked to be the one in best condition.

For about 2 days I was the highest bidder and was pretty chuffed to be getting it even if £8 was a little steep for a 36-year old boardgame.

And then a bunch of complete wankers came along and suddenly the price shot up to £30!

Little did I know that I was engaged in a battle of wits with a bunch of twats who I envision to look like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons and we're fighting for what is evidently the Holy Grail of boardgames.

To make things more interesting someone also posted that they were selling another Take The Brain for the buy it now price of £34.99. I was torn, the buy it now copy was quite tatty - and 35 quid - but I could end the suspense.

I really wanted to get the better game (nothing like a bit of competition to sharpen your desires - kerrang, I've fallen into the Ebay trap) so I decided to wait until the last minute so I could get my final bid in. I had until about 6:50 pm on Saturday, if I could get the winning bid submitted at the very last moment, Take The Brain would be mine!! Unfortunately we usually go out to do our food shopping on Saturdays at about 6pm so I couldn't see my plan through - instead I took a gamble that normal people aren't sitting in front of a computer screen at that time on a Saturday night so I plugged in my final max bid of, wait for it, £40!

Boy was I ever wrong.

As soon as we got back I rushed to my laptop to find that the other bidder had beat me by 1 penny! That fucker, within a minute of my final bid, had started plugging in figure after figure until he revealed what my final bid had been. In less than a minute he beat me by a lousy penny. To add insult to injury the buy it now version had also been snapped up. Grrrrrr!

If anyone has this game please let me know - I'll make it worth your while :-)