Fight to the Finish.


This afternoon, I’ll be taking part in what is the Ephgrave family equivalent of playing with fire: I will be sitting around a table, playing board games with my mum.

Her problem is she is incredibly competitive. Not in a friendly, low-key, “I'm having a bit of laugh” way; more in a high stakes, no-holds-barred, “I must succeed at all costs” way.

The ruthless ambition displayed when she has a plastic counter at her fingertips must be seen to be believed; if one of her ancestors was responsible for a totalitarian dictatorship, I wouldn’t be shocked.

Unfortunately, my mother’s killer instinct will often bring out the worst in me; I evidently inherited the same cutthroat genes, in a slightly watered down form.

She will also delight in my personal gaming misfortunes; the unabated joy she exudes when I get an answer wrong is similar to that of a multi-million pound lottery winner.

She also doesn’t play fair. A good example took place during a game of Scattergories, one Christmas Past. For the deciding round, we had to name as many books we could think of beginning with the letter ‘A’: I went with ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and the like; my mum tried to get away with Alan Shearer, Alan Sugar and Alan Hansen.

“But you’re just saying the names of famous people”, I exclaimed.
“Yes”, she replied, with Machiavellian glee. “But they all wrote autobiographies.”

I argued that no-one in their right mind would release an autobiography with their full name as the title. My mum just wouldn’t have it.

A few months later I exacted my revenge. Whilst standing on the platform at Vauxhall Station I spotted a poster advertising Alan Sugar’s book ‘The Way I See it’. I took a photo of it and texted it to her as evidence.


I shall await the events of this afternoon’s recreational activities with bated breath. If it ends up as heated as the Toxteth riots, I won’t be the least bit surprised.

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