Game of Dracula

Last night Gavin and I played "Game of Dracula" - an old board game I had as a kid back in the 70s, and which I recently found on ebay. The aim of the game is to escape from Dracula's castle to "home". If Dracula catches you then your playing piece gets covered by a vampire bat and you have to chase the other players around to "switch the curse" to them and free yourself.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I won. But in the midst of my celebration, I noticed Gavin was in tears.

"Daddy", he sobbed, "you can't leave me in the castle. I'm your boy. Who will play with me? You've got to come back".

He lifted up the side of the vampire bat and pointed sadly at his playing piece - "look, I'm still under here. What will become of me?"

He was so upset, and my soothing reply that he would now "roam the night feasting on peasants" didn't seem much comfort.

"Well I'll never play it again then" he declared.

And that was that - I went and told him a bedtime story, cuddled him, tucked him in and forgot all about it.

So this morning I went to wake him up and he had a big grin on his face. The first thing he said was "daddy, I'm going to go back to that castle and teach that vampire a lesson".

I promised we'd get mummy to play with us tonight, and we'd make her be the vampire.

That seemed to be much more acceptable.