Everyone makes mistakes, especially when they are tired or stressed. But when you are living with a brain injury those moments can become more common.

Take a recent friendly game of Monopoly I played with James and his parents. I have always liked Monopoly, but I don’t get uptight about winning  or not. I’ve never got a strategy and just go with the flow. But I was actually doing fairly well during this particular game, without making too much of an effort. (Leicester Square was proving to be quite a cash cow for me.)

We had set up on the dinning table as it’s more comfortable than playing it on the floor. But it did mean that when your character piece was on the opposite side of the board it was a little difficult to reach. So we would help each other out and move one another pieces when the player couldn’t reach. Just as well that in Monopoly the pieces are distinctively different. Other board games often have the same shaped piece but in different colours. I think that is harder to remember which piece represents which player and leads to mistakes.

We each had specific reasons for which piece we chose:

James – The race car (He’s a man in his prime and his car is pretty important to him.)

James’ Dad – The iron ( He does like the top hat but this time he went for the iron as it’s easy to pick up.)

James’ Mum – The boot (It tickles her sense of humour to be “the old boot”.)

Me – The Dog (I’m animal crazy so it just had to be…. Plus it tickles my sense of humour to be “the b****”.)

All very clear. If I gave most people a test at the end of this article to test if they remembered who had which piece, the success rate would be pretty good.