The old board games bring out the best in you, and provide excellent boundaries for the worst.

By Morven Crumlish

Holidays mean boredom, boredom leads (at the best of times) to board games, and the best games leave plenty of room for storytelling. We had an ornate version of The Royal Game of Goose whose bloody square portraying a dead goose was up there with Struwwelpeter and Harold Lloyd in giving me nightmares when I was little. I can’t remember if you missed a turn or were sent back when you landed on the dead goose, but there was something exciting in having a game that dealt with death. I steeled myself for it gleefully, anticipating the horror from the moment the board was unfolded, and feeling relief in the end when the pieces were packed up into their box. The Pavlovian response to the paraphernalia of a childhood is startling, as anyone who has dug out old toys for new children will know. The Picture Lotto and Pairs games I had before I could read have images that are as familiar and immediate in effect as those of favourite picturebooks; my mother would turn over cards and name a brightly coloured, often exotic, world I could imagine myself in: “a chooky hen”; “an elephant with a howdah”; “a bird of paradise”.

Source: GUARDIAN