mostly david ephgrave

As an only child, I have bleak memories of extracating the board game Mouse Trap from the top shelf, setting it up, triggering the final chain of events and then packing it away again; happy National Siblings Day everyone. I don’t know why I'd always get two-or-more-player games for birthdays and Christmas, when my parents had no interest in playing them. I had friends, of course - I didn’t spend my formative years locked in a cupboard; that came later - but they didn’t visit often enough to warrant me owning so many; if only my mum and dad hadn't bought them, they could have eliminated the whole “Will you play them with me?” question and the awkward “No, I don’t fancy it” response. I guess that's was why I was so interested in magic and music as a kid, as you didn’t need other people there for you to explore it. I spent much of my childhood learning tricks or listening to records while playing along on the piano and guitar, as they wer...

“It’s Christmas time…and there’s no need to be afraid.” Unless you’re playing the Ghostbusters board game, that is. I spend the day at my sister-in-law’s flat with my mother-in-law, my wife and our friend Richard, who was kind enough to give us the game as a family gift. We settled down to play it after dinner, and like any new board game tackled on a festive occasion, it took some getting to grips with. While the design is excellent, and was clearly put together with fans’ interests at heart, the instructions are unbelievably complicated. You need the Enigma Machine to decipher them. Either that, or some sort of code-breaking degree (though I’m sure there’s no such qualification). While it left us flummoxed for at least an hour, with Richard taking responsibility – and therefore the brunt – of the instruction manual translation, by the time we’d got our brains around it, it was a lot of fun. I would have happily played it again straight away. What’...

I briefly met up with my mum, my dad and their friend Anne today for a quick drink to mark my mum’s seventieth birthday. I’m sure she’ll be pleased that I've committed her age to the internet, though to be fair, she uses the line ‘I’m nearly seventy’ so often as an excuse to not do something that it’s become a running joke. I sent her a text yesterday to remind her she only had twenty-four hours left to roll out her catchphrase before it became inaccurate; I’m that kind of son. Pushing my gentle teasing aside for a moment, my mum is one of the most youthful and active ‘nearly / actually seventy-year-olds’ I know. Her job is demanding, yet she approaches it with energy and humour, and is clearly very good at it. She’s an organiser and a problem-solver; traits I think I picked up from her myself. She’s also - dare I say it? - funny and easy to talk to. I wonder if she’ll lend me fifty quid? I’m proud of her for all she’s achieved. I’m also grateful for her support. I ...

Anyone fancy a quick copyright-free game of Who’s Who? Or maybe a couple of quick rounds of the often-imitated Line ‘em Up?   Failing that, we could have a quick game of Alibaba.   Or if you’re feeling flexible we could roll out the Topsy Turvey mat. It seems that the trademarking of board games is a tricksy business. All it takes is a subtle name-change to keep the lawyers at bay. I wonder how much the faces differ from Who’s Who to Guess Who? Wilkinson were probably just a ‘tache away from a potential lawsuit. I’d quite like to turn up at a kids' party with one half of the Who’s Who board and initiate a game against the original. Perhaps they're both compatible with some kind of universal adaptor (or after a quick once-over with a marker pen). There's always a chance that it's a case of ‘the chicken or the egg’. Maybe Who’s Who came out years before its counterpart – but the person who dr...