I looked at this conversation with my daughter and giggled

Hope everyone's relatives and friends stay safe.

Thank you, PamelaJI. We keep them close in our hearts and prayers. They're some miles from the fires but suffer the air pollution, nevertheless.

It doesn’t look good in Vic. We saw my DD’s new nephew on the U.K. news when his mum and dad were interviewed whilst on the beach in NSW. My DD and the rest of the family were on the roof of their house with a hose!
All was fine thank goodness. Hope your DD is OK.

From my DD1 in VIC:

"Hit 43 degrees today! ....... Very sad though - lot of fires and damage from winds.
Sky has been red most of the afternoon."

My reply:

"Sounds ghastly. We’ve heard about it on the news here. Been thinking about you.
Here we’ve had severe wind and rain but no snow which has affected the Midlands and North.
Our poor planet. Stay safe."

"It's quite cool here, considering it's summer. Only 27C"

"Oh, that sounds lovely. It's -1C here"

"😲"

I beat mum today. Excellent. She’s very good but you need a bit of luck too. I haven’t played for years but now she’s living with us I’m improving my skills.
fallingstar it’s a word game with tiles but much quicker than Scrabble.

We’re snug in our home while it’s freezing outside. Son is in Australia keeping cool in the pool.
Orlin playing chess on his phone comfy in his armchair, son making his moves on his phone lying on the lounger floating in the pool.
So the messages are similar.

What is bananagram?
We often play scrabble and I like to play it online but am always on the lookout for new games.

No Christmas is complete without the battle for supremacy ar Scrabble that takes place between DD and DDiL However 15 year old DGS is a dark horse rapidly approaching in the outside lane, who will imminent overtake the pair of them.

It’s the trivial exchanges that keep relationships real, isn’t it? It’s what you miss when you can’t meet up and just witter on about nothing😬

When I go to visit DS2 and family, I'm only just inside the door and he has the Sccrabble board out and ready to play. He usually beats me nowadays but his younger son, my GS3, (now 18) is learning fast and his spelling which used to be less than accurate is improving every time. With English qualifications and a lifetime of teaching under my belt, what chance do I stand? I may have to ask my DiL to sabotage the Scrabble kit.

Hmm, never heard of banagram, but often play scrabble with my elder daughter, who also plays an online version with my old boyfriend. Best games are when we all three can get together for a game, even though the result is a foregone conclusion. Him first, her next then me trying hard to catch up. And I am the one who taught my daughter to play (too well, obviously)!

:-) We still play bananagram and scrabble with our middle aged sons and have done ever since they were small children. We also play both games with the grandkids from when they could first piece letters together to make words, and still now they are teenagers. I've given each grandchild their own copy of Chambers dictionary to reduce the demands for mine.