The just and the unjust

Friday 25 April 2014

You may laugh, but I've emptied a whole selection box in here, 
plus a couple of eggs I nicked from the bots 
and the left-over cooking chocolate.  
That should do me until Monday.

We had a delicious houseful over Easter - all arrived with chocolate and one with a new game of murder.  As we were to be together for several days, we each picked a name, place and object.  The deadline was 9pm Easter Sunday and before then, you had to get your victim into the place assigned and hand them the object - thus killing them.

There were several false starts - Edward insisted the pub was a viable location, even for the children, and Rose minded dreadfully that boys planned to be in her huge, perfectly-filed wardrobe with handfuls of raspberries and a football boot.

I was so distracted by hiding chocolate and refereeing the church refuseniks and the tradition-at-all-cost-niks that I was murdered within minutes.  'Mum, can you sign this for school, you need this green pen, ha! you're muu-uu-rdered!'

The others strung it out and showed remarkable ingenuity; a chili in the newsagent, reading specs in the shed.  There was an elaborate hoax involving a blocked sink and chisel and some jokes in very poor taste about nails and crosses.

The Pretty One and I went to church by ourselves in the end, pretending religious choice and freedom; in reality, cowards in the face of wrangling sleepy six-footers into chinos and clean shirts.

On the walk there we remembered the time when, as little girls, we got dreadful giggles at a bearded man snoring like a buffalo in our pew.   Our Granny was furious and worse, disappointed, and we walked home with downcast faces and hearts.  Just as we reached our drive, she pulled out a little packet of chocolate buttons and let us share them.

I'd like to think she gave us wisdom too, but neither of us can remember anything she said, only the painful scrubbing we had to subsequently endure with a spat-on tissue to remove the chocolate evidence.

We are many decades on now, and so perfectly capable of removing, from our almost-50-year-old faces and fingers, the traces of praline and dark chocolate that we had stashed in our handbags with the collection fiver and savoured, smugly and secretly, on our walk home after the service.  Full of peace, laughs and Godiva,  the Pretty One was a sitting duck as we passed the bus stop.  "You've got the evidence all over your chops, quick, use this bit of loo roll.'  Murdered. Best bit of Easter.

19 comments:

  1. How cunning you are, and I do enjoy the tales of your sibling fun. I am lucky to enjoy the same sense of humour as my older brother, (and indeed my late mother and existing father). Rather dry, but killingly funny, with time and circumstance being the key ingredient. Luckily for my waistline I don't particularly enjoy chocolate, (which along with the smell of newly mowed grass) probably makes me a complete oddity. The crosses we bear, (in light of the topic).

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    1. Oh, I am a real fox... You would have fitted in, and been top chap for not eating the chocolate. Three points for the cross pun.

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    2. six points for a hot cross pun?

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  2. Hello Elizabeth,

    How inventive you and your family are with your very own interpretation and real life Cluedo. Indeed, was there anyone living to tell the tale after the Easter weekend! However, just as well that chocolate consumption defies the rules of murder........otherwise that would be so unjust.

    And, you deserve a medal for balancing so many different tastes and sensibilities. Thankfully, we come from small families and so, even when gathered together, there was never what one would call a crowd. Otherwise, real murder would have taken place without a doubt!

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    1. Oh, it was only a very few of them for a very short time. I'm not a saint.

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  3. I remember well and fondly the barely-stifled giggles in church amongst my brothers and me. Less fondly do I remember the blasted Easter hat I was made to wear each year. The hat was bad enough, but the elastic string under my chin that kept it in place made me a too-easy target for malicious snapping by those same brothers.

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    1. Elastic string! Ow, I bet they made your life lively. It would be delightful to see a photo or two...

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  4. I think you sound like your parties are a riot and just brilliant!
    Terrific idea to do the murders that fashion ;))
    But that last one with the toilet-paper beats all others hands down!!!
    :))))))))))

    Hugs Jane

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    1. Hello Jane,
      Then feel free to steal and adapt as necessary.
      I thought so, but no. It was won by someone even sneakier than I!

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  5. They should have marketed spit on a hanky as the perfect portable stain removal system....or maybe that's what today's wet wipes consist of?

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    1. I am glad you said that now those things are no longer part of my daily life, what a horrible thought!
      It was the relentless scrubbing that made me want to wriggle off and call the NSPCC

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  6. Between Murder games over long weekends, and Shag, Marry or Murder games that went on for ages at lunch, these were some of the times when I laughed the most. Thanks for that memory.

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    1. Shag Marry or Murder - I haven't played that! Thanks for the suggestion; would it work with teens though? They fall over frothing if i hold my husband's hand...

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    2. You don't know this one? It's brilliant. Take a famous person, David Beckham for instance. Shag? Marry? Murder? I'd go for shag on that one. He's not terribly bright, so marrying him would be a chore. And no reason to murder him.

      How about Gordon Ramsey? Shag? No... he's kind of sleazy. Marry? Hell to the no! Murder? Maybe. Sometimes you'd like to kill him for the way he acts.

      You can do this with men or women. Just sitting in a cafe... And it's such fun to hear the reason behind the answers!

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  7. Our granny was always showering us with tons of chocolate, that my sisters and I happily ate with alacrity. To this day whenever I see a Crunchie, Chocolate Buttons, or Curly Wurly I think of her.

    Your game sounds to have been very cunning indeed.

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    1. Lovely Granny, she sounds heaven. All the best chocolate. Though sadly Curly-Wurlys are about 1/4 of the size they used to be. I used to think a Crunchie was the absolute epitome of sophistication.

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    2. Well, are you sure the Curly Wurley is about a 1/4 of the size it once was, or is it that we've grown by at least that much ourselves? Do you know if Mars Bars went the other way and got super-sized? It is all topsy-turvy in my aging brain. Nothing beats British chocs, my guilty pleasure.

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  8. Wait! Please explain the rules of your Murder game! Please?

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  9. Jadie, assemble your guests and dispatch dissent and teen cool with a Hard Stare, give everyone three pieces of paper on which they will write 1. their name 2. an object 3. a place
    All in three hats and pic one of each and give a time limit.
    You 'murder' by giving the person you picked the object you picked in the place you picked.
    Prizes for all sorts of nonsense!

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Please leave a comment if you can be remotely bothered - anything you have to say is valuable and I absolutely love hearing from you all. Elizabeth