Su Doku

On the train journey back from the beer festival the other week, I endured the smalltalk of a guy who said he had a number of illegitimate children. He proceeded to attempt to impress me with his "philosophy" of refusing to impregnate women of his own race because he regarded them as his "sisters" and presumably wouldn't wish upon them the hardship of single motherhood.

His contempt was matched only by my own for him and my disdain remained firmly under control, despite my inebriated state, only to be eventually replaced by a more publicly palatable facade of sheer indifference for the fact that the next endeavour of conversation was his proud ownership of a BMW...

Whoopee Fucking Do!

However, with the "sister" in the same part of our carriage intensely reading, his observation and susequent exclamation was "Su Doku"... He was racist, sexist, irresponsible and stupid but he did enlighten me to the existence of Su Doku, so he had just 1 everso tiny redeeming quality...

Since then I have thought little of this term, this concept; Su Doku. Admittedly I neither knew much nor cared at all for this apparent phenomena. Until yesterday, that is, when my stepmother presented me with a gift - a Su Doku puzzlebook.

I awoke in the early hours of the morning and glanced at the first page, trying to fill in the blank spaces, failing miserably and putting it down to weariness, and slipped into a fitful slumber.

After sunrise I sought the eraser and started afresh... logically and correctly marking down the placements of all the missing numbers, completing the puzzle and winning the prize of simple self-satisfaction, ameliorating my own mental alertness in preparedness for the day ahead.

And now; on to other more important things, more numbers, more empty boxes to be filled in... 132,069.75 is a BIG number, wouldn't you agree?