Let the games begin…
Yes, Cluedo and Scrabble are out of the cupboard and Caroline Quentin is limbering up for playtime
Caroline Quentin limbers up for some serious playtime with her family
When the festive season comes around, it’s not only the fairy lights and baubles I ferret out from the cupboard under the stairs, but the dusty stack of board games. They sit there unloved and unopened in the darkness for 11 long months, alongside a sparkly reindeer and sequinned
Santa, only emerging for their annual December expedition to the living room.
For some reason, in my house, the only time we play traditional games is in the run-up to Christmas and during the holidays. I’m sure, as a child, I played board games all year round. I distinctly recall fevered bouts of Snakes & Ladders, refreshed only by a glass of Tizer and an Easter egg, and I remember long, summer evenings, cross-legged around a Monopoly board, only taking a break for a Mr Whippy (with a Flake, naturally) when the ice-cream van chimed out Popeye The Sailor Man and all the little kids came running.
Nowadays, though, it seems there isn’t enough time for family fun, except over Christmas and New Year. Only then do we roll a dice, ask trivial questions and discover who killed whom with a piece of lead piping in the library.
This year, we’ve got the season started with a family get-together over a game of Scrabble. I’d forgotten quite how thrilling and competitive spelling can be. It was a delight, too, to realise that teenagers can get a buzz out of beating their grandmother on a triple-word score and that a usually genteel aunty will resort to using unacceptable slang words for body parts just to beat her 14-year-old nephew.
It was marvellous to sit with each other, within touching distance, to see the faces of loved ones, animated and slightly flushed (sherry being a compulsory board-game accompaniment for the grown-ups), to express freely feelings of excitement, frustration or celebration, in a most un-british way. While my lap of honour for simply using a doubleletter square might have been a bit over the top, to share the same focus, however frivolous and temporary, felt good.
I’m not exaggerating when I say our game of Scrabble has brought us closer together; it’s much more intimate than playing a computer game.
With this year’s games underway, I want to make a vow not to pack them back under the stairs and to play together more; to grab a few hours during the week to do something as a family, even if it’s just a quick game of Snap. I must remind myself that it’s not the winning that matters, but the taking part. Unless it’s Scrabble – if it’s Scrabble, the gloves are off, even if I’m playing against my four-year-old godson (who can’t read yet). With the ultimate spelling game, I’m in it to win it and shall take no ‘prisonrs’. Yes, honestly, I’m sure in Shakespeare’s time it used to be spelt without the ‘e’.
‘Our game of Scrabble has made us closer as a family’