Disk 2 · early 1990s · age 8–10
We Made Our Own
We couldn't afford Cluedo or Monopoly, so we made our own. Ours had better murders.
Saturday afternoons were the kitchen table, my brother and sister, a tin of felt tips, Mum's good scissors and every cereal box in the house. The printed side made the backs of the cards. The plain grey side inside made everything else.
Our Cluedo was called Who Ate the Ham Sandwich? The victim was always lunch. The suspects were the three of us and our two dogs, who were always suspects where ham was concerned. The rooms were rooms in our house, plus the doorstep. The weapons were ways of eating a sandwich: with a knife and fork, folded in half, in one go, with your hands.
My sister ran it like a court case. My brother was crossed off early, every time. And every time, the answer came out the same: me, on the doorstep, with my hands. Everyone else had an alibi. They were at school.
Our Monopoly was a lap of our own street, drawn round the edge of a flattened box: the corner shop, the rec, the library where Mum worked, chippy tea on a Friday. Every square was somewhere we'd actually been. The dice were folded paper and never rolled straight. My brother was the bank, because he was always the bank, and the bank was a biscuit tin, which caused problems.
Mum called us for tea. We never put the games away. We just ate round them.
