The Game

Last night I went out to dinner with two of my male friends. We ate steak and chips (apparently this is what men do) and we played my favourite game (which was only fair, because the men got their steak and chips).

My favourite game does not involve dice or a board, because board games are excruciatingly boring (and besides, I always lose). In my favourite game, absolutely everyone wins, because that is the point of the game, and what makes it so thrilling.

It is The Lottery Game.

You’ve all played The Lottery Game. I’ve played it dozens of times. And yet each time, the game is a little more exciting, and each time, my imagination runs a little more wild.

Last night’s version of The Lottery Game began as it always does. With a question.

 “Do you ever just wonder what life would be like if you won ten million dollars?”

“YES!” I yelled, practically jumping off my chair, and choking on a chip in my zeal.

“Um… okay,” said my friend Rich*, recoiling slightly in his chair. I realised that the question had been posed rhetorically, and I tried to regain my composure.

Naked Woman Depicted Not Actual Blogger

“I have too,” said my friend Buck** happily, and shovelled in another bite of cow.

“What would you do?” I asked.

“I’d play guitar all day.”

Hmmm. I figured I’d just hire someone to play guitar for me with all my money, but perhaps I was missing the point.

“And what about you?” I asked Rich, who was gazing wistfully into the distance.

“I’d get a butler!” he pronounced, and it sounded eminently sensible.

“Which would give me time to spend up to three hours a day in the gym,” he continued, and I decided that my friend was seriously unhinged.

“And I would travel!” he added, which was redeemed him a little. “I would travel through Europe, and backpack through India, and…”

No no no no.

“Why would you backpack through India?” I demanded. “You’d be a multi-millionaire! You could stay at the best hotels! You could hire people to carry your luggage!”

“But I like backpacking,” he said shamefully, and the table fell silent.

“What about you?” Buck asked me finally, and I was very glad he did.

“Well firstly,” I announced, “I would get staff for absolutely EVERYTHING.” My eyes began to glaze over as I warmed to my topic. “I would get a maid, and a chef, and a chauffeur, and a nanny. I don’t want to do ANYTHING that looks like work, EVER again.”

My fantasy began to overwhelm me, and adrenalin surged through my body. “I want to play with my kids, but not have to lift a finger! I want to sleep until noon and then read in the bath! And I want to get a massage every day of my life. A two hour massage. No. A three hour massage! And then another bath!”

I stopped. I realised that I was bouncing in my chair, and clapping my hands with glee. And Buck and Rich were staring at me as if I was totally deranged.

Sometimes, it seems, even The Lottery Game can produce losers.

*not his real name, but this is what he would be if the game was real

**also not his real name, but I assume you knew that

The Dangerous Dinner Party Box Of Questions

You know when you come up with a brilliant idea? Well, I just have.

One of the toys I brought back from the U.S. for my kids was a tiny little box of cards called (appropriately enough) The Tiny Family Dinner Box Of Questions. It includes fascinating questions to start family discussions, such as "Who at this table is most likely to borrow something and forget to give it back?" and "Describe a perfect weekend?" (which isn't technically a question, but is still a good conversation starter).

Now, you can, of course, get boxes of Dinner Party Questions for adult dinner parties, but these tend to be of the wholesome, stimulating-but-non-provoking variety - which, as we all know, is another word for 'boring'.

So I have come up with my own Dinner Party Questions, called (appropriately enough) The Dangerous Dinner Party Box Of Questions.

Feel free to add suggestions of your own.

The Dangerous Dinner Party Box Of Questions.

1. Name the most annoying characteristic of the person to your left.
2. Describe the last conversation you had about the person to your right.
3. How much money would you be prepared to lend the person sitting opposite you?
4. Who is the worst cook at this table?
5. Who is the worst dressed person at this table?
6. Who is the worst parent at this table?
7. Who at this table would you most like to sleep with?
8. Who at this table would you least like to sleep with?
9. Who at this table would your partner most like to sleep with?
10. Name the person at this table with whom you would most like to be stranded on a desert island.
11. Name the person at this table with whom you would least like to be stranded on a desert island.
12. Who at this table has the child who is the most badly behaved?
13. Who at this table do you think has the most sex with their partner?
14. Who at this table do you think has the least sex with their partner?
15. Who at this table is most likely to engage in shady business dealings?
16. Who at this table is most likely to end up in jail?
17. Who at this table is most likely to end up in rehab?
18. Who at this table is most likely to engage in kinky sexual practices?
19. If you could swap lives with one person at this table, whose would it be?
20. If you could swap partners with one person at this table, whose would it be?

'Ask Toddler' - A True Story

Tonight my family and I played a new game. Bored with charades (as we'd run out of shows and books that both my kids and husband and I knew) and not so keen on my 11 year old son's suggestion of a Family Maths Tournament (and no, I'm not joking, though I kind of wish I was), we decided to embark on something a bit different.

'Ask Toddler'.

Now, putting Toddler into the centre of our games is not a particularly radical concept. She tends to get there of her own volition, anyway. If we're playing Monopoly, she'll steal our money and run away. If we're playing Scrabble, she'll grab our letter tiles and fling them across the room. And if we're playing charades, she'll push us out of the way, and stand before us holding up the five fingers of one hand as her sole clue to the words "Spongebob Squarepants".

So it seemed to make sense just to cut out the middle man and make Toddler the epicentre of our activity.

The game began with Toddler climbing onto the coffee table (except that technically she was already on the coffee table in front of us). The rest of us sat on the couch in front of her, and began to fire questions in turn.

"Is the world going to end in 2012?" my nine year old daughter asked.

"No!" Toddler answered. "That's just on Total Dwama Island!"

"Oh." My daughter looked abashed. "Of course."

"What is the healthiest food in the world?" I asked.

"Apples!" Toddler said. Good! I like apples. I will keep that in mind.

"Who is the prettiest - you, your sister, your brother, Mummy or me?" asked my husband.

"My sister!" Toddler cried. My daughter looked pleased.

"And who is the most handsome?"

"My brudda!" she yelled. My son looked extremely chuffed.

"And who is the smartest?"

"MEEEE!" she practically screamed. We all cheered. She was right, of course.

Then it was my son's turn to ask a question.

"So, what do you prefer," he began...

"Purple things!" Toddler cried. Well, that was as good an answer as any, even if it wasn't to the question he'd been asking.

We took the game up a notch.

"Do you believe that God created the world in seven days," I asked, "or do you subscribe to the Big Bang theory?"

"Big Bang!" Toddler told me. Like, DUH. I swear I could almost see her roll her eyes.

"How many babies am I going to have?" asked my daughter eagerly.

"One!" pronounced Toddler with certainty.

"But someone told me I was going to have twins!" my daughter told her.

Toddler shook her head. "One baby. Just. One."

I decided it was time to ask the most important question of all. Toddler was clearly in Soothsayer mode. I knew that she was up to it.

I took a deep breath. "So... what is the meaning of life?"

Toddler stood on the coffee table, looked at us and raised her arms.

"You all just have to be happy!" she said.

It was an amazing moment. We all fell silent. And then, as one, the four of us burst out cheering. Toddler took a proud bow. It was a scene I will remember forever.

So if you ever need an answer to a question, feel free to ask my Toddler. It may not be the answer you're looking for, but the kid knows a thing or two about life.

The Games We Play

Those of you with children or grandchildren (and those of you who actually are children, in which case do your homework and don’t take drugs) will know all about school holidays.

During the holidays, I frequently find myself trapped in the torturous hell that is games. Yes, every day, after watching TV, going for a bike ride to the park, visiting Nana, reading, doing some craft and seeing friends, we are still left with hours to go till bedtime, with only our imaginations or games to see us through. And after all the wine I have consumed to make it to evening, quite frankly, my imagination isn’t up to scratch. So games it is.

Our first game of choice is usually Find Four (aka 'Four In A Line'), generally because we can play it on the computer, so it doesn't require cleaning up. Now, I am not bad at Find Four. I know this because I can easily beat my daughters at it (and yes, the two year old doesn’t actually know how to play, but the eight year old puts up a damn good fight).

Still, I cannot - and I mean CANNOT - beat my son. I know that plenty of people let their children win, but I am not one of them. And if I was, I wouldn’t need to. My ten year old is a maths prodigy, and employs some whizz bang Find Four strategy, and beats me virtually every single time. Even when I attempt to copy him (and believe me, I've tried) I CANNOT WIN. It is humiliating, to say the least.

Now, I am a very smart person. I promise. I did really well in Maths at school. And the fact that I am effectively begging you to believe I'm not an idiot shows how deeply my son's ongoing victory has affected my self esteem.

Happily, though, we don’t play Find Four forever. Unhappily, we also play Scrabble. Now, let me preface this by saying that as well as being good at Maths, I have a degree in English and Linguistics. I have studied the art of language. And yet I cannot put together one stupid word with seven letters at my disposal. My son regularly gets seven letter words like 'interns', and I can manage nothing better than 'man' or ‘at’, experiencing brief moments of triumph when I land on a ‘double letter’ space with the 't'.

The ultimate indignity is when he asks me, 'Mum, you're a writer, how come you're so bad at this?' Because I'm USELESS, son. Okay??? Now there’s a seven letter word for you...

Then of course there’s Monopoly. This has the advantage of including the element of chance; bizarrely, though, this doesn’t stop my son from thrashing me anyway. Even by the law of averages I should have won once or twice. I’d suspect he steals from the bank, but as I’m the banker, I have only myself to blame.

So as you can imagine, the kids returning to school couldn’t have come soon enough. It’s not that I don’t love spending time with them, truly. It’s just that my ego can’t take it.