Know your market

Right - I'm sitting on the bus in traffic and to my right is a father and his three young children. As a bus in traffic is deadly dull they are playing a game where one person says a list of words and then someone else makes up a story that has all the words in it.

So the father says: "canoe, tea cup, fire extinguisher, astronaut and the biggest thing in the world".

Before the little boy has even started talking I came up with: "There is an astronaut orbiting the biggest thing in the world who wants to relax so he makes some tea with water from a fire extinguisher, pours it into his favorite tea cup and day dreams about his canoe".

Feeling quite smug that I had completed the task quickly and accurately I was curious to see if the boy would do as well. Needless to say he thrashed me.

His story started off promisingly with an astronaut who was hungry. He decided to eat the biggest thing in the world. Having eaten this he then went to drink some juice, but couldn't find a glass and so used his tea cup instead. At the end it turns out that all of this happens in his canoe. He forgot about the fire extinguisher, but fixed that by being attacked by a fire breathing dragon.

The whole story was delivered with hand waving, facial expressions, giggles and lots of heckling from the others.

The reason he thrashed me was that they went on playing the game, whereas my contribution would have been so breathtakingly boring that it would have been the last round and children would have sat in silence contemplating the misery that is the daily commute.

The aim of the game was not to use all the words in as few words as possible. It was to keep the others entertained. He did that.