Daleks at Play

This instalment of the Dalek Game is for An Almanac of Words at Play by Willard R. Espy which I must have acquired somewhere second-hand, perhaps at a Lifeline booksale. It is a collection of light poetry, word games, literary games, amusing letters – charming, esoteric, veering between the heavily educated and the extremely flippant.

I am not a very keen player of board games. I am, rather, fond of parlour games and word play, and this book has a place in my heart for introducing me to several and to the idea of more. We make up games over coffee or while driving (witness the Daleks), add to them, integrate them into dinner parties. The game I remember most from this book, at the moment, is a game of rhyming couplets, where you are given a famous line and have to add to it. Of everything in the book, I probably remember this because of the example:

“I’ll take you home again Kathleen,
That last martini turned you green.”

In other news: I have put up the last instalment of the American Sketchbook. I am in the throes of drawing a comic and designing (other people’s) wedding invitations, but after that more (non-Dalek) posts will arrive. And this beautifully written, beautifully printed book has arrived, and will get a post of its own soon!