WE’D been at the bus stop for 22 minutes, staring at the fanciful real-time information board.

A nearby pensioner had apparently cracked the code. “When it says the bus will be 22 minutes” she calmly confided, “it means they haven’t got a clue.”

So I did a foolhardy thing. I picked up my children and carried them up to Boswell’s toy department. Bounding up the stairs I exhibited the reckless courage of a man who enjoys flushing £10 notes down the toilet. As it happens our hands would soon be full of banknotes, because I bought ‘Junior Monopoly’.

Back home, I hack into the cellophane packaging using the sort of elbow grease Egyptologists employ when prising opening a tomb. Once I break in, the Junior Monopoly board is unfolded in front of us. There are some child friendly properties on offer.

Budding entrepreneurs start with a burger joint and pizza parlour, work their way up through cinemas, toy shops, a bowling alley and a zoo before reaching Mayfair and Park Lane. The latter locations haven’t changed, but the illustrations are unfamiliar. I walk through Mayfair frequently, for instance, and I’ve never found the beach.

I hand each of my children 18 Monopoly Dollars along with their chosen tokens, a cat and a ship. I optimistically take a bright green racing car for myself.

As we roll the dice and work around the board I notice an interesting logic. For three Monopoly Dollars you can buy a video game arcade, but a museum will only cost you two. If you ever need a microcosm for the way the Arts are being devalued in the modern age you’ll find it here.

As it turns out my five-year-old is a ruthless swine, snapping up most of the properties on the board. His pile of cash grows higher as mine diminishes. Eventually I run out of money altogether and have to sell him my zoo. He thinks this is uproariously funny and donates a Monopoly Dollar, throwing it at me like a Wall Street tycoon bunging a coin at a tramp.

So kids, what are we learning here? You can look at it two ways, I suppose.

You can keep handing over those Monopoly Dollars until you run dry. You can learn that rent collectors and landlords are evil thugs, with more money and property than they know what to do with.

Or you can learn to enjoy acquiring vast stacks of money. You can innocently gloat when a ‘Chance’ card demands the poor sods around the table go bankrupt, after handing you a sizeable cash gift.

And you can learn to flex your imagination. Because with Oxford property prices reputedly increasing by 35 per cent over the past few years, this is sadly the closest many young people will ever get to buying any kind of property for themselves.