Such a polite little fellow. The brexit controversy is becoming a little too taxing for him. But the boring babbling about weeds has changed to football. I prefer croquet, Jaques of London, the oldest games manufacturers in the world, first wrote down the rules of croquet. The game is a race around a circuit of hoops. The Blue and Black balls play against the Red and Yellow balls. The first side to get both of their balls through the 12 hoops in order and hit the peg is the winner. Once a ball has completed the circuit and hit the peg (is pegged out) it is removed from the game. When the striker's ball has been through the last hoop it is known as a rover. It can then score a peg point by striking the peg (pegging out) and be removed from the game. It may also cause another's rover to be pegged out.
Jaques of London also invented ping pong and Happy Families. A fascinating game of skill and discernment.Croquet became highly popular as a social pastime in England during the 1860s. It was enthusiastically adopted and promoted by the Earl of Essex who held lavish croquet parties at Cassiobury House, his stately home in Watford, Hertfordshire, and the Earl even launched his own Cassiobury brand croquet set. By 1867, Jaques had printed 65,000 copies of his Laws and Regulations of the game. It quickly spread to other Anglophone countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. No doubt one of the attractions was that the game could be played by both sexes; this also ensured a certain amount of adverse comment.
By the late 1870s, however, croquet had been eclipsed by another fashionable game, tennis, and many of the newly created croquet clubs, including the All England club at Wimbledon, converted some or all of their lawns into tennis courts. There was a revival in the 1890s, but from then onwards, croquet was always a minority sport, with national individual participation amounting to a few thousand players. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club still has a croquet lawn, but has not hosted any significant tournaments.