Games night

I have joined a social group who meet up every alternate Friday night to play board games in a local games cafe (thanks to the encouragement of mrshb70). I enjoyed my first visit a fortnight ago and so went along again tonight for more fun and social interaction. It's only a very short walk from my apartment but even so, on my way there at a moment or two before 7pm I encountered a woman who was obviously in extreme distress, so never mind the time, I stopped to ask her if she was alright. She was gulping for breath and told me that it was her own fault for going out dressed as she was – immaculately turned out with neat black trousers, classy long white pea-coat and a flouncy floral plunge-necked blouse. I automatically assumed that she had been yelled at by her partner for dressing too attractively and it was an emotional reaction to an intimate spat, but had the wit to ask. No! She had been walking home along the street and had been grabbed by a total stranger who had tried to pull down her trousers. No wonder she was in distress! I asked if she wanted me to call the police and she said no, she just wanted to get home. I asked if she had far to go and she told me no, just around the next couple of corners. I asked if she wanted me to walk with her but no, she'd be OK. So all I could do was tell her not to blame herself for being out dressed nicely but to understand that it was the assailant who was at fault. She told me she was nearly forty and people her age should not be such a temptation, but she stopped herself part-way through that, I assume she realised that her implication was that it is OK for women in their twenties to be so assaulted. I hope she got home safely and I hope that she understands that it has nothing to do with a person's age, nor their choice of clothing – nobody should be sexually assaulted anywhere, ever.

So I arrived at my games club a little shaken and distracted. A group of nine played a ridiculous game around the theme of those sushi-bars where the food comes round on a continuous belt and you grab what you want and let the rest pass by to the people farther down the line. I've never been in one of those places and it was only as I was walking home at the end of the evening that I really began to understand what it was all about. Not my favourite game.

We then split into two smaller groups. Five of us played Mysterium, which I have played previously with family, while the other half of the group played Ticket To Ride. Ticket To Ride involves building brightly-coloured railway lines hither and thither across the whole of Europe – that team's difficulty was that one of the players is apparently entirely colour-blind and so at every turn needed to be reminded that this grey train is actually red and belongs to A and that this other grey train is actually blue and belongs to B. My team's difficulty is that to play Mysterium successfully, players all need to be on the same wavelength, and we weren't. It became very apparent very quickly who was on wavelength A and who was on wavelength B – Not a game for a group of total strangers, but very bonding and non-competitive, so I like it.

Finally my team played a marvellously silly game called Deep Sea Adventure which I absolutely loved! It's a perfect blend of co-operation, competitiveness and strategy.

The image is whatever game the other group moved on to after they had stopped playing with brightly-coloured European trains. No idea what it's called but it appears they were all doing awfully well at it.