Board games by the fire

Taking a few days off over the holiday season meant some quality time plonked in front of the woodburner with some old board games. I introduced Joe to a childhood favourite,  'Coppit'. My 'vintage' version is, as you can see, a bit the worse for wear, but it is still a great game, even cut-throat - if a board game can said to be such a thing.

Once he got the hang of it (after one game), he won every game after. But I got repeated revenge with Scrabble and didn't gloat too much.

Another old favourite of mine is 'Tell Me' - I've had this game in various versions almost all my life. The two I have now are from the 50's and 60's. The same game, but with slight differences and not just in the box design.

It's a very basic concept; general knowledge questions are read out, the disc is spun and lands on a letter of the alphabet and the first person to call out a correct answer (or one which isn't disputed) wins the card. Winner is the person with the most cards. Although simple, the spinning disc brings in the element of randomness, so the answers are different every time.

The 1960s version is almost like the one I knew in the 70's, with fairly straightforward questions -    

    

'something in this room'  'name of a member of parliament' 'an advertising  slogan' (this one is not included in the 50's version; maybe a sign of the times?)

also 'a word used in radio' (very broad and up for debate) 'a means of communication' and a reflection of the growing prevalence of the one-eyed monster in the room, 'a television personality'.

The 50's version has many of the same questions, but also some odd, almost philosophical ones. We played both games, and this one threw up by far the most interesting discussions and verbal tussles. Here are some choice ones - 

'What would you  like to become?' - which could be anything from 'a better person', to 'a proper grown up' to 'a postman'.

'What or who annoys you most?' - again, a debatable subject, and dependent on the alphabet letter thrown up. And should the answer be silly or truthful? Should you say any answer so long as it fits the letter, or not answer because you honestly can't think of anything which annoys you beginning with 'X'?

'What or who do you love very much?' - same situation really, and we tended towards the silly and soppy.

'What frightens you?'  Do we really want to go here? If the letter was the right one for one's honest answer, it could throw up all kinds of deep confessions, but we decided to stick with anything monster-ish or spooky. 

'How do you feel at this moment?' Again, this one can lead onto quite interesting discussions and it's then that you realise how something as simple as a board game can be great conversation makers as well as entertainment.

'Something seen on a country ramble' didn't appear in the 1960's version - maybe it was deemed too old fashioned for the time. A bit 'Enid Blyton'.

'A word reading the same forwards or backwards' is very straightforward, but surprisingly tricky to think of at the time and led to a few drawn out silences as we racked our 21st century brains, more used to Google for the answer to anything.

 

An original owner of the 50's game had obviously decided  to put in their own questions - I have a feeling this may have been 'Dad' as the block lettering is very much like my father's and other men's writing of that time.  So we have something a little more modern

'A term used in inter-planetary space travel' - this was an ambiguous beast and some confusion reigned as to what kind of thing precisely fitted the question. I swung it with 'asteroid' but it didn't really feel right.

'Name of your favourite TV programme'  - again, a more updated question, so maybe this family had a TV of their own. If so, they may have been quite financially comfortable as not many households at that time had them.

The last two seem to have their own little back story. There is -

'A county cricketer, past or present'

 and then

'Not a cricketer but a famous sports person'  

I wonder if there was a cricket expert in the family, and the last altered question was put in to give the others a chance? We will never know, but I'm sure we had as much fun playing these old-fashioned games as previous generations have.  

 

Berrington, the 'Teddy Bear of Doom' went up for sale in my Etsy shop and someone loved him enough to buy him. I know he's gone to a fabulous home, though I had to help him with the packing. So it's been a good start to the new year for both of us and I send everyone best wishes for 2016. 

Going Polar

Have an inevitable snow picture.




Have another one. After Andy's nine day 'at home' holiday, we were cut off by snow. Joy. The gritters didn't come down our winding country lanes, leaving them iced over. So we were cut off, and with a 45 mile commute to work on a motorbike, he was 'at home' again, for most of the week. I'd rather he was safely at home climbing the walls then in a cold ditch with a broken neck, in spite of the general trend to tut-tut at people who didn't or couldn't get to work. Bikes and snow don't go. With the whole village confined, and delivery lorry unable to get through, our one little Co-op soon ran out of supplies. It was stripped. We managed to get one little loaf (loaves being rationed to one per customer) - the last one in the shop. And a carton of goat's milk Longlife milk. Thankfully we already had some normal UHT and the dreaded stuff remains in its box, now we are getting back to normal and have fresh. Lines must be drawn, and Longlife goat's milk is where I draw mine.




Thankfully we had plenty of wood and more than enough food. We and the cats hunkered down to sit it out. Naturally, the cats hogged the sofa. Before he went completely loopy with cabin fever, he did struggle in for the weekend rota, although because of the treacherous ice, his late Saturday night shift and early Sunday start, he had to stay overnight at the nearby, ghastly (and this one is ghastly) Travel Lodge. So I was home alone with the cats. As usual, I had plenty of things to do, not least of which was designing a prototype polar bear. A great excuse to watch my Arctic DVD and try to grasp the essentials of polar-bearness.




I was also dying to use one of the little glass bear noses I bought last year - only 8mm across at the widest point - it's the tiny black thing I've got pinned to my felting sponge up there, with my two lead bears saying hello to the white woolly blob that was the start of Petra. I wanted a really simply shape, and looked at lots of Inuit carvings - I figured they were probably the experts, and most toy bears I found were really just white teddy bears. Every bear type has distinguishing characteristics, and the challenge of the Polar is that it is deceptively easy looking. As it was, there was much adding and chopping before I finally got what I was looking for.




With a thaw setting in, at last we were able to get over to the woods, where we found evidence of Badger tramping solidly along a path. Badgers have five 'fingers' in a straight-ish row, as opposed to a dog's four pads. They walk along putting their back foot as near as possible to their front foot, so old Brock's trail looked like a two legged race.




Driven by hunger, the little Muntjac deer were down in the bluebell woods, the most walked in part of the reserve. They almost didn't care how near we were, but eventually they sloped off into the beech grove ahead.




To my unkind amusement, Andy had a slapstick moment, when he leaned on a rotten gate post which promptly collapsed under him. Unfortunately there was a large, slushy, muddy puddle just where he landed and I would be derelict in my duty if I did not share this moment with the world.




Now conditions are somewhat better and routines are almost restored; though our roads are still like ice rinks and I count the hours until Andy is safely home. Roll on Spring.