You Slag!

It’s a milestone Family Pie, so called because half is southern and unaccustomed to sounding the ‘t’ in party. A milestone because Tommouse is coming with his new girlfriend, Emma, for the first time. (I muse whether I’m Jim or the flaky grandma; in The Royal Family) Either way we’re all on our best behaviour to give Tommouse the best chance of maintaining his relationship and thus lightening our burden. Mothermouse magics up a wonderful table of tastes, we eat and drink and move on to phase two, games. Having done Playback the night before I’ve come armed with a new one to play that we did in warm-up, ‘Eastenders Slag Off.’ You form a circle and pass around being ‘it’ by turning either left or right and vehemently saying, “Shut it!” in true Eastenders fashion to the next person. If at any time you want to jump to someone on the other side of the circle you engage their attention with two pointy fingers and shout, “You slag!” They are then ‘it’ and can return it back by doing the same with enhanced conviction, “YOU SLAG!”. To avoid this developing into an acrimonious impasse either one can conclude it by shouting, “Get out of my pub!” so the other must then revert to telling an adjacent person to, “Shut it!” and so on. In the proper game people drop out through hesitation or getting it wrong but we didn’t get that far. All went well to begin with as most of us are family and enjoyed the permission to joyfully and energetically slag each other off. The turn then comes to Martynmouse from Mothermouse telling him to “shut it.” He gets confused and in return tells Mothermouse to get out of his pub which then totally confuses Mothermouse who, in full on vehemence points across the circle and shouts “You Slag” with full force family finger pointing to, Emma. Mothermouse then realises she has just called Tommouse’s new love on her first visit to meet the family a slag and collapses in shame. Emma laughed but I think Mothermouse will be scared for life, especially as we’ll never let her forget it.