Today

I've just got back from a jolly weekend in Edinburgh to celebrate both Becky & Beatrice's birthdays and to sample the festival.

We saw all sorts of Fringe dance, acrobatic and musical events.

After we returned from the "Walk of the Dead" around the City graveyard and covenanters' prison, we didn't feel like sleeping, so we played our own version of room 101, only limited to pop stars. I was upset to find that I couldn't persuade the others to dump Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, but they did agree that Roy Orbison had to go. This then moved on to the worst pop songs. Was anything worse than "My Boy Lollipop"? Unless it was "I Like 'lectric Motors". Finally, we turned the game on its head with "pedestals". And everyone agreed with my choices - Queen, Annie Lennox (well, we were in Scotland) and Joan Armatrading.

This kept us going till after 2.00 am; we laughed a lot and learnt a good deal about each other's passions.

In My Day

We played a lot of games as children (no telly, you see), and not only board games like monopoly. We had our own precursor of Just a Minute, in which you had to talk for 2 minutes on a subject not of your choosing and with some words which you weren't allowed to introduce (these you didn't know in advance). (Such as "car" if you had to talk about driving etc.)

We played definitions, where a given word was written down one side of the page and up the other. You then had to fill in each gap with a word and give only the definition to the group. This worked well if there were a lot of possibilities; but we heard of a game where the only possibility seemed to be "emu". One player did try postulating a bird with (presumably) bird flu that called itself an "ebu"......

We had a whole book of limericks written by the family. This worked a bit like consequences, in that all but the line immediately above were concealed (you had to know what word you had to rhyme with).

"Won't you come up and look at my etchings
And my collection of beautiful sketchings
And if you should tire
There's a couch by the fire
That you can use for your stretchings"

Is an approximate memory of one.

Paul and I continued this with our family with Paul's version of "Call My Bluff" and our hilarious version of Noel Coward's "Adverbs". I remember one word "joyfully" - Paul was asked to remove our cat. Amelia from the arm of the chair in this fashion, which he did, vigorously and with a whoop of joy. I don't think she ever forgave him. And we puzzled Izzie for a long time with "deafly" as we ignored all her questions till she thought to write them down.....

Anyway I was very tired the next day what with all this frivolity,