“Hey Coops, I’ve got a challenge for you. I’ll give you a tenner if we make it to 30 levels, and a fiver if we make it to 25.”

We’d only been playing for just over half an hour and had just made it to 27 levels so none of us anticipated the hours and hours of sweat, tears, and raw-knuckled pain we were about to experience. The tower toppled at 24 levels, too close for comfort, so many times we nearly gave up. We cried. We cried out. We pleaded. We prayed.

Those blasted Jenga bricks were moments away from finding themselves on the fire.

But somehow, just when we thought we’d never make it. Just when it seemed we’d lost all hope. We managed to find the courage to dig deep and play on.

We never did make it to 30 levels. But we did make it to 25.
And I got my fiver.