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PUTRID
PARTY TIME!
| Food | Label |
| Chicken pieces | roast rat |
| Chopped trifle | plague vomit |
| Plums | plague swellings |
| Raspberry ripple ice | cat brains |
| Warm sausages | dog droppings on a stick |
| Crisps | plague scabs |
FUN AND GAMES
Try entertaining your guests with GENUINE games from plague times. Games like
RAFFLE
You
need:
Three dice
A score sheet and pen
Rules:
1. Each player takes a turn at rolling all three dice. A player
who rolls a "double" (two ones or two fives and
so on) gets a point. BUT . . .
2. If both players roll a double then the highest wins the
point. (Double four beats double two, say.)
3. The first player to 10 points is the winner BUT . . .
4. Any player rolling three dice the same wins the whole game
with that throw.
KAYLES
You
need:
Nine skittles. (Or plastic bottles of the sort used for powdered
milk)
A stick (or a 30 cm ruler)
Rules:
1. Place the skittles in a triangle with the point towards
the thrower. The row one has 1 skittle, row two has two, row
three has 3 and row four has 4. (Even you can remember that!)
The skittles should be fairly close so that if one falls it
will knock over another one.
2. Agree a mark of 2 to 3 metres away from the skittles
3. Each player throws the stick twice at the skittles.
4. The player who knocks over the most in two throws is the
winner.
(NOTE: Another arrangement is to place the skittles in a straight
line facing you)
(EXTRA NOTE: In 1477 King Edward IV passed a law banning this
game. He probably couldn't stand the thought of poor people
enjoying themselves!)
Gruesome games you wouldn't want to play
People enjoyed such stories but they also enjoyed getting out and playing games. Some are still played and have hardly changed in the last 700 years . . .
Camp ball.
The game was similar to football. You grabbed the ball and tried to get it into your opponent's goal a few dozen yards or a couple of miles apart. There were any number on each side and hardly any rules. The trouble was there were no football strips - players wore their normal clothes . . . including knives! In Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1280 Henry de Ellington ran into David le Keu. David was wearing a knife at his belt, the knife stabbed Henry in the gut and he died. Deadly David didn't get a red card but hacked Henry probably got a very red shirt.
STOOL BALL
A milk maid sat on a three-legged stool. Men bowled a ball at her like skittles while she tried to dodge. If they hit her then they got a prize. But beware! The prizes were not gold medals. They were cakes . . . or kisses!
GHOSTLY GAME
When
you invite your guests announce that the final game will be
a ghost-story competition ... great if it is dark by the time
you reach this part of the party. Place a torch in the centre
of a circle of guests, switch the torch on and the lights
off.
If you want some good stories then read "True Ghost Stories"...
go to HOUSE OF BOOKS for information.
A PARTY STORY
Or, if you're too idle to go out and buy a book, here's a quick story from Horrible Christmas ...
The Sedgefield SpookIt was Christmas Day 1792 in Sedgefield and all the poor people headed for the local rectory. They dragged frozen feet over freezing furrowed fields to pay their rent to the church rector. Tiny Tom limped along with his father and whined the way kids do. "Da! How much further?" "Shut up and mind you don't drop me!" his father, Farmer Fitchett, fumed. Tiny Tim steadied the wheelbarrow and went on to the great gateway of the rectory. When they reached the steps he gently lowered his father into a group of grumbling farmers. Seth Sumpbottom turned out his empty pockets. "He's taken my last penny! It'll be cold Christmas gruel for my family today!" "Arrrr! That be right that be!" the other farmers agreed. Farmer Fitchett shook his head till the lice dropped onto the cold steps. "Best get it over with," he sighed. He stepped into the dark hallway. "The Rector's too mean to spend a penny on a candle to light our way," he grumbled to Tiny Tom who limped behind him. They groped their way along the passage and reached a dark oak door at the end. Farmer Fitchett knocked. "Come in!" a woman's voice cried. Tiny Tom narrowed his eyes, expecting to be dazzled by the light glinting on the piles of gold and silver, the way it always did. But, when the door opened, there was just blackness in the room ... blackness and a horrible smell. "Farmer Fitchett?" the woman asked. "Arrrr! Ma'am!" Tiny Tom's father mumbled. A little light spilled through the closed curtains. The boy could just make out the needle-nosed woman. Next to her in the gloomy room sat the silent and still rector. "Good morning, Rector!" Tiny Tom said brightly. "Mother says you've been ill. I hope you're feeling better!" Then the boy coughed as the sharp smell stung his nose and made his eyes water. The Rector didn't reply. The woman spoke sharply. "The Rector is sick. But not too sick to take your money! That'll be forty guineas, Farmer Fitchett," she said. The farmer threw a bag of coins on the table. The rector's wife snatched the bag, spilled the coins and counted quickly. "Good day, Farmer Fitchett. Close the door when you leave." Tom and his father backed towards the door. The boy gasped at the musty air of the corridor. "Penniless, boy, we're penniless till next market day," the man moaned. "I wish that illness had killed the old rector," he snarled. "Why, father?" Tiny Tom asked. "Because if the rector died before Christmas Day we would not have to pay that forty guineas! We'd have plum pudding and fresh duck for dinner this day! Arrrr! Now, wheel me home son." "I wheeled you here!" Tiny Tom said softly. "Arrrr! Well that means it's your turn to wheel me back!" Next day, Boxing Day, the news was all around the village of Sedgefield. "The Rector is dead!" they said. "A day too late!" they groaned. But that night, as the farmers sat drinking in the tavern on the village green, a grim and grey-faced doctor walked in. "Is he dead?" a sour-faced Farmer Fitchett asked. The doctor nodded. "He is, Fitchett. Dead at least two weeks, I'd say!" "Two weeks! But I saw him yesterday, Christmas Day! We all did" the farmer cried and Seth Sumpbottom joined him with a puzzled, "Arrrr!" "The Rector's wife wanted your rent," the doctor said. "She had to pretend he was alive until she got it." "She couldn't keep a mouldy body two whole weeks!" the inn-keeper's wife said (though most of her pigeon pies were twice as old as that). "That's why she soaked him in pickle vinegar," the doctor explained. "That was the smell! The nasty smell!" Tiny Tom cried, spilling his ale in his excitement. "Let's go get our money back!" farmer Fitchett
bellowed louder than his old bull. The fierce flame swallowed most of the rectory. One tower window was still dark. As the frightened folk looked up a greenly glowing face looked down on them. "The parson! The pickled parson's pickled ghost!" a woman screamed before flames burst through the tower and it collapsed into the shattered shell of the house. Since that day the grisly, greenly glowing ghost has never been seen again. But ask the people of Sedgefield if the story is true and it's for sure they'll say, "Arrrr!" |
