Strategy

I am not a naturally strategic thinker. I know this for one very good reason - I suck at strategy games. In particular Civilization (of various numerals), a game that has devoured many a spare hour of my life since I was about 20.

I find them a depressingly accurate barometer for my life - I'm very good to start with, opening up early leads against my computery opponents and bossing the game. And then...

Well, not much really. Everything seems to be going well so I stop really thinking about it and keep hitting the 'end of turn' button rather than nurturing my civilisation's cities or upgrading their military units. And before I know it the bloody Russians have stolen my capital city and the French have got rocketry and started building spaceships out of cheese. 

Hey, Saladin, do you like hospital food, pal?

It's not a bad way to discover quite what an abysmal completer-finisher I am. Weirdly I play the game much better when I'm slightly drunk, as all the caution of my sober approach flaps away like a vanquished pigeon and I start kicking the living shit out of the Japanese. In previous decades I could probably adopt this approach in the workplace and achieve some spectacular results. These days, however, I'm told that hip flasks and cans of beer in the filing cabinet are generally frowned upon, and besides there is - conceivably - a difference between destroying the digitised Dutch and drawing up a decent digital inclusion delivery model. Though the good thing about bottles of whisky is that not only can you drink from them, you can also hit people with them, a constant temptation in any modern workplace.
 
Oddly, the discovery that I'm not very good at strategy doesn't put me off playing Civilization, because although I'm a very poor strategic thinker, I clearly am an excellent appreciator of tiny animated workers building roads over the top of mountains. Something to be proud of. Now pass the whisky.