‘Brideshead Revisited’ Revisited
By some quirk of fate, Craigoh once again wins a box of sand in the Grand Raffle
On Saturday 7th August the New Sheridan Club held its summer party, Brideshead Revisited Revisited—marking the fact that 2020 was the 75th anniversary of the publication of Evelyn Waugh's most popular novel and 2021 was the 40th anniversary of the iconic 1980s TV adaptation. It had been a year and a half since our last proper party (the Evil Party of Christmas 2019), with only two scattered monthly meetings in that period too, and there was a palpable buzz in the air. Some came dressed as specific characters—there was a Lord Marchmain, an Anthony Blanche and a Father Mowbray, for example—others just enjoyed a general 1920s endless-summer sort of look.
Early in the planning (yes, these events are planned, sort of) there was a fear that some might still be Covid-shy so we thought of ways to use the outside space; to this end, our first game, Knock the Aesthete Into the Fountain, was designed to take place outdoors. As is traditional, the game involved firing the ancestral nerf gun at the aesthete—played by long-suffering Action Man—in an attempt to knock him backwards into the fountain. The fountain in this case was a paddling pool filled with actual water, with a pond pump creating the fountain itself. For verité Action Man even had a picnic hamper, including Champagne, strawberries, Fuller’s walnut cake and cucumber sandwiches, lovingly modelled from sugar paste by Mrs H. Of course, no sooner had I set it up and filled the pool than the heavens opened (I could just have left the pool outside and it would have filled with rain anyway). Nevertheless, by the time of the game itself the rain has stopped and we were able to carry on. A few contestants in and it was beginning to look as if the calibration of this event was awry: one or two direct hits didn't seem to make Action Man fall over and I was beginning to wonder if I needed somehow to make him more precarious. But at that point the matter became moot because the bolt on the nerf gun broke, rendering it inutile. Thinking quickly, Scarheart decided to change the rules and announce that in fact contestants had to close their eyes, turn through 720 degrees, then try and throw Action Man into the fountain, guided only by the sound of the water. A couple of contestants succeeded leading to a rather post-tsunami spectacle of Action Man floating face-down in the paddling pool, his picnic goodies melting into the water splashed on to them. At this point we realised that we had not allowed a way to decide which of the two successful contestants was the winner. We decided we'd think about later on, and in the end we avoided the problem by forgetting to hand out any prize at all for that event.
Our second activity game was Break the General Strike. This perhaps reached a new level of tastelessness for us. Inspired by a scene in the book where Ryder talks to expat Brits who are returning home to defend the established order from General Strikers and the presumed revolution or armed uprising this would lead to, the object of the game was to roll a World War I era Rolls Royce armoured car down a ramp and try to hit some armed insurrectionists (played by 1:35 scale WWII partisan figures lovingly painted by me the day before). However, the street scene where this was taking place also contained a couple of clusters of innocent bystanders (1:48 scale railway model figures) as well as a group of 1:48 scale Catholic priests. (In case anyone wondered why the insurgents were physically larger than everyone else, we explained that this merely represented the enormity of their perceived threat to the established order.) Players scored a point for each insurgent taken out, but lost a point for every innocent civilian massacred in the process. The average score was around -3, and the eventual winner—our host Hal, with a score of +2—was the only person to score above zero. Even Curé Michael Silver succeeded only in slaughtering the priests, though there may have been a secret inter-denominational agenda…
Our third game was active in the background all the time. In the book we learn how Sebastian hides drink around the place, and Sebastian's hip flask was indeed hidden somewhere in the building, the task being to find it. We tried this once before, with our Hunt for Red October game at the Russian Revolution themed party in 2017, and the submarine was discovered about halfway through the evening, but his time round we found ourselves getting to the end of the evening with the hip flask still unlocated. In truth only Scarheart knew where it was and none of us on the Committee could find it either. In end, after Scarheart made various tannoy announcements dropping clues, the flask was found on the book case, quite visible between a couple of books.
The evening also featured a complimentary buffet courtesy of our hosts the Tea House Theatre in Vauxhall, but the grand finale was, as ever, the Grand Raffle at the end of the evening. All the prizes were themed around Brideshead and included the book itself, a teddy bear, a bottle of Sauternes and some strawberries, a megaphone and a copy of 'The Waste Land', a rosary, a fez and the Rough Guide to Morocco, a set of watercolours, the makings of a Brandy Alexander and an ocean liner (well, a cruet set in the shape of an ocean liner), as well as DVDs of the 1980s TV series, the later film version and the Laurel and Hardy flick A Chump at Oxford, and various books about Waugh, his social set and Oxford at the time.
Many thanks to all who came. Judging by the comments we've had since, a good time was had by all.
You can see a full set of photos from the party on our Flickr account.