smallclanger slept in the car, so he was a bit (too) bouncy until
we eventually went to bed.
The next morning it was throwing games: "coconut shy" (actually throwing a red nose at a "tin can alley" set instead of shooting it), throwing the red nose into bowls on the stairs, and magnetic darts. Later on we played Skribble (where I dismally failed to describe to the assembled throng how to draw a rucksack), Thinkblot (where you look at a collection of strange shapes and try to convince the other team that you really have seen a synchronised swimming team) and The Movie Game starring Vinnie Jones (no, really), which is a card game with nine sets of rules. We played game one, which is like Rummy except that you have to collect sets of one film with two of its stars, and game six, which involves reading the plots of movies and trying to guess the title. The QL-related items of the afternoon were a soundbite quiz and a video quiz. Unfortunately I hadn't got round to making a video quiz this time, so we repeated one from two years ago.
One of our number had to catch a train home to get up early for work
the next morning, and the rest of us did a murder mystery game (it was
bopeepsheep wot did it, your honour) followed by the little
trivia quiz which was on the CD after the solution to the murder
mystery. Then we played Test the Nation with BBC1, skipping through
all the waffle and thus completing it in less than half the time.
On Sunday we slept a bit late and so missed the other directly QL-related item, namely the observation test (that is, watching bits of a QL episode and answering questions such as what colour Sam's suit was). We went out for the traditional duck hunt (as featured in Private Dancer) and then finished the quizzes in the party book.
After lunch we played Chrononauts and Carcassonne (and so it was that I
found out where one of the pieces in jiggery_pokery's user icon
comes from).
Unfortunately smallclanger made himself unpopular by knocking
a lampshade off a table and breaking one of its glass panels.
After leaving Telford we called in to see buzzy_babe again
and took some more pictures. We were there for about an hour before
making our way back.
Not wanting to wait until we got back to scrabble about looking for food, we called into a certain fast-food establishment (not beginning with M) that we happened to spot just before getting on the motorway. As we sat down, the Inspector Gadget theme started playing. When that finished we were slightly amused to hear the QL theme start up. (After that there was another one that we both recognised but failed to be able to name.)
We got back at about 10pm. Despite not sleeping at all in the car,
smallclanger was wide awake and refused to go to sleep when put
to bed at about 11. I think he was finally persuaded to go to sleep
at about 1am, and he got up early the next morning. On Monday night
he went to bed at about midnight but was complaining not long after 2,
after which he prodded his mummy until being taken back to his own bed
at about 4 and then waking up again at 6.50. He was asleep when
I got up (late) but by the time I had my clothes on he was ready to get up.
So we are a bit zombified this week.