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Parlour Games
Gentlefolk! Allow us to present, boldly but
assuredly, a selection of parlour games from the personal files
of Henry Crease-Munton,
doyenne of the drawing room, with which to leaven the benighted
state of modern entertainment.
BULLY-BOY COME HITHER
Four players take to the drawing room and form
a circle, casting their upper garments to the ground (need
it be said, unless they are working class or very closely
related, all players be gentlemen!) One player is nominated
to think of a famous bullying historical figure, eg. Napoleon,
Alexander the Great, Albert Hammond Jr. One of the remaining
players then chooses an item of furniture in the room and
hurls it at the ‘bully-boy’, who must then respond
to the resulting pain in the manner of his chosen personage,
whose identity the third player must then guess. The game
is at an end when the fourth player, or ‘bugger’s
curate’, storms out.
UNBUTTON THE DEVIL
Six players put on their coats and leave
the room to make way for a further three. The eldest of these
mounts the mantlepiece and harangues the other two with a
tirade of colourful musings on the subject of their parentage.
After the room has quietened, the floorbound players may retaliate
in an appropriate manner: production of birth certificate,
studied aloofness, biting sarcasm, fire, etc. If he feels
outgunned at any time, the eldest player can call ‘devil-me-whoops’,
swinging from bookcase to bookcase like a deranged gibbon
while reciting Rabelaisian verse, until the futility of the
situation is profoundly comprehended by all present, and the
raucousness subsides to leave a deathly silence.
There can, alas, be no winners in this dreadful
game, although any outstanding grudges may be settled later
via a quiet round of cards or comparison of manhoods.
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