Cards And Cordiality

Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of author Jane Austen. So this evening Catherine, Fraser and I celebrated with a game of 'Marrying Mr Darcy'.

Here's six eligible gentlemen. Could we improve ourselves and snare one of them into a blissful state of matrimony?

Catherine was the beautiful Jane Bennet, whilst Fraser had Kitty Bennet, whose abilities extend to her being very god at copying what someone else does. I went with Georgiana Darcy, who is rich and more likely to receive proposals.

Nothing went right far Catherine and Jane struggled to improve herself, committing social blunder after social blunder. Fraser Started Kitty off well, and got an early opportunity to opt for spinsterhoood (which is a gamble, but if taken at this stage offers bonus points at the end). They went for it, even rejecting a later proposal from Darcy himself. I improved Georgiana so that she would attract a couple of suitors with a decent score, and then wasted that work by eloping with Mr Wickham. It turned out that she scores well for Wickham.

In fact the good Wickham score was enough to give me the win with 23 points. Catherine came second with 20 points after marrying Mr Denny. Fraser rolled badly on the Old Maid table and finished with 18 points. A roll of 5+ would have seen them win, so it was a close game.

We'd actually celebrated Jane Austen's birthday a couple of weeks ago at the local library. They held a high-tea and trivia event, and Catherine and I went along with our friends Jon and Claudia. Most people dressed up. We certainly did.

We finished in the top half in the trivia. I've still only read three of the books, although we have watched at least one film of TV adaptation of each of the six novels. Claudia has read them all, but a while ago. Educated guesswork got us along way.

Here's our outfits. Jon and Claudia won the Best Dressed Couple award.

All good fun and, like most library events, all free.