The Family Spirit

On Sunday Douglas and I were invited over to my parents for lunch. The menu was roast chicken with all the trimmings (roast potatoes, parsnips, and veg) so I made some mini nut roasts as my chicken replacement.

I looked at my parents photos of their recent trip to Germany and France.. there are some really beautiful ones! My father defiantly has an artistic eye for pictures.

We had a really good meal. My younger brother and his 3 kids were also there, so it was a busy table full of Cosshams (and the honorary Cossham, Douglas) lol. It all went well, even Carlo, aged 6 who first of all announced that he wasn't hungry, managed to polish off a large portion, and then several extra chipolata sausages, followed by blackberry and apple crumble and ice cream!!

After lunch, my mum suggested a game of Monopoly, which we used to play quite frequently as kids, although my memory of playing was that the game took forever, and normally ended up with one or more kid in tears because they hadn't won!

Mum, Thomas, Carlo (assisting) and Leo

My mother tells me that when I was small I didn't have a competitive bone in my body, and that I was always happy when someone else won. Ok back to the main story :-)


My dad, Carlo and Martha had fun building (then destroying) marble shoots made out of the wooden bricks that have kept generations of Cosshams happy, whilst the rest of us rolled our dice and counted our money.

Slowly, my husband, my mother and my nephew were all bankrupted by either me, or my angelic baby brother, and left the game.

Douglas and my mum still solvent at this stage




My cards.. doing pretty well.

So then there were two. After managing to land then buy several properties that were owned by the bank, I had a whole row of properties with houses and hotels on. My brothers fate was sealed, and soon enough, he landed on one of my hotels, and that was that.

I will gloss over the near tantrum he had when he realised that he had been crushed by his most beloved, generous, kind but now horribly competitive older sister and just say that I went home with a very evil grin on my face, which strangely has come back again just now :-D

Ok.. there was a bit of a discrepancy over what happens when a player mortgages all his properties.. does the player whose rent needs to be paid got them, or do they just go back to the bank, so he might have had a teensey weensy point in his frustration, but the grin remains!!

Sweet Victory! Notice correlation between hotels and my properties :-D