Iona is teaching her friend, Beth, to play chess. She has finally gotten Beth to stop calling the Knight 'that horsey thing'. It's progress, she tells me. The pawn remains resolutely a prawn, however. I don't ask why. I guess it is too much like saying porn.
Iona challenges her Dad to a game and is in check within a few moves. He knows what to do with those prawns. He starts the dishes while she tries to extricate her King. She calls out to him from the lounge: 'oh, so we're playing the check version', as if it is perfectly obvious that there are a thousand different ways to play chess. It is a measure of her growing sense of self that her defeat doesn't make her cry.
I don't know what to think about prawns. They seem anonymous, disposable, a prelude to the real action. And yet. Every now and then, just sometimes, only maybe, one of them will make it to the other end of the board. Then, my peoples, that prawn gets to be any damn thing it chooses.
