John-Luke loved playing board games, and researching new ones to buy. For many years we had a pretty much weekly boardgame night with Tom and Charlotte at which we ate a lot of pizza, and also went through a phase of drinking pina coladas! Although I don’t think this added to our ability to remember the rules... John-Luke’s favourite games were probably Wingspan, Settlers of Catan, and Power Grid (although that was so long the rest of us wouldn’t really let him play it apart from on his birthday). He also liked the game Jamaica which was about sailing pirate ships, but none of the rest of us could get the hang of it and he always won. He and I got back into Carcassonne in the last year, and we used to play a lot of it in the garden - we’d play lots of games outside in the summer, white wine spritzer in hand, as long it wasn’t windy enough to blow the cards away! There was an app you could use with Wingspan where you could hear all the bird calls of the different cards, and he was particularly excited when we got an expansion pack with Australia and New Zealand birds in.

I was surprised, and pleased, when for Christmas last year JL asked me if I could crochet some little bowls to hold board-game pieces when not in play, like he'd seen online. I wasn't sure I was up to it. How on earth did you crochet a bowl? But I worked it out, and really enjoyed making several of them, in different wools, colours and sizes. It was a proud moment indeed when JL sent me the photo of my bowls in use!

John-Luke got me onto the board game Carcassonne, which I’ve been trying to get my wife into, unsuccessfully, ever since!

John-Luke was a big gamer and quickly introduced us into the world of board games when we moved to Swindon and started to spend more time with him and Ellen. We would get together weekly and spend the evening eating, drinking and navigating Catan. As we became better at the games, and they took longer, the food became less of a feature. Curly fries and hot dogs was an absolute winner, and we still see this as Catan food. Followed by a Sainsbury’s cheesecake, cut into 4. Unfortunately, or luckily for our cholesterol, this was not a long lived phase, but a memorable one. John-Luke was incredibly competitive and as a result we would regularly gang up against him. One evening, John-Luke pulled out a popper wallet, complete with Excel spreadsheets detailing our games. John-Luke had taken statistics for dice rolls, points, and robber position (which basically is how we would torment John-Luke!). Which all clearly showed the torment he received was not entirely fair! These evenings were in total jest, and we always had such a laugh. After a while we moved on from Catan, to a variety of other games, including Ticket to Ride, Flame Rouge and Sushi Go. As our lives changed, game night remained a go to, not as often, but always as funny. During lockdown we even managed this via Board Game Arena, which John-Luke was absolutely thrilled to find out provided the statistics for you!.

Do jigsaws count as board games? Yeah, sod it, they do! I once bought a Brexit-themed jigsaw for JL, just for giggles. He returned the gesture by buying me a picture-less puzzle that was deliberately difficult to complete. He was definitely winding me up by buying it for me, and it worked a treat… it was infuriating! I still to this day haven’t completed it, but it’s my life’s ambition to do so :-)