Murder, Mystery and Suspense

The whole crew were due a treat on the final night. Mum and Dad had laid on one of those Murder Mystery games and issued the invitations to the Silverwoods. The game we'd chosen was "Death in Venice", so all the characters were playboys and film people. The girls were all to be dressed up to the nines - glamourous frocks, tiaras and jewellery. Every one had been practising their looks and learning those bits of their characters which you are allowed to know prior to the game.

But first there was another treat in store, Fish and Chips from the famous Grandma Pollard's Chippie in Walsden. This is actually a couple of days cruising up the Pennines, past Todmorden where we'd been on previous years but not this year, but Mr S and Dad were to leap in the car which was "moored" at Sowerby Bridge and drive there (only 20 minutes by car!).

This bit went OK, and the boys returned with the fish and chips to find the local stretch of canal invaded by the local scouts being given canoe instruction. Every one was having a great time, especially when Instructor A told his lot that they had to splash the other group. Various people fell in the canal but this was all part of the fun, and the capsizing and being hauled out is all part of the training. They were quite noisy, but we couldn't help watching them.

The fish and chips were actually rather lucky as we were there the day before the shop closed for its fortnights annual holiday. The sausages for the young ones were ENORMOUS -great big 8-9" long bangers and quite thick. Both Dad and we were eye-ing them enviously (despite having a goodly portion of his own in Dad's case); surely Baby R won't manage all of one of those! Needless to say Baby R (also now called "Boo" after the little girl in Monsters Inc, because of her ability to toddle very fast and appear and disappear at will) ate all of hers, and a good few "dabs", a mountain of chips, and most of M's sausage also.

Fish and Chips done, the little ones were put to bed and the older ones got all dressed up for their Murder night. Very glamourous we all looked too! The game began, Dad, who plays the "host" at whose posh Venician residence the action takes place started the introductions. There, unfortunately, it all went pear shaped. The story depends on a detective speaking (in this case sounding a bit like Marlon Brando) and his voice is on a DVD which comes with the game. We were going to play it on the boat's DVD player.

Unfortunately, we discovered, Baby R had been there before us, had stuffed some stiff card into the DVD player slot and killed the machine. We could not get it to play, and getting the disc to go in and out only served to scratch great gouges across the disc. End of game. Everyone really disappointed and fed up but there was nothing we could do, except revert to Plan B (games of cards and more story reading from Wintersmith.

Ah well. Tomorrow it's all over.

Deefski