My son Ludo celebrated his sixth birthday last week and one of his friends gave him a miniature air-hockey game. It’s like the ones you see in amusement arcades, with two pushers, a puck and a goal at either end, but no bigger than a box of Cornflakes. When it was my turn to get up with the children on Sunday, I decided to start the day with an air-hockey tournament. Nothing like a bit of sibling rivalry to get the competitive juices flowing, I thought.
The opening match was between Ludo and Freddie, his three-year-old brother. Ludo won the first six points comfortably and looked all set to cruise to victory. Then something strange happened. Freddie scored a goal — it was more of an own-goal by Ludo, in fact — and his older brother turned into a different person. He exploded with rage, threw his pusher on the floor and tried to pick up the air-hockey game with a view to smashing it to smithereens.
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