Another jolly game from the 1930’s, the Atora Christmas booklet shares this party entertainment with us:
Each gentleman chooses a lady partner, and the gentlemen stand in a line at one end of the room, and the ladies at the other. Each gentleman is given a dry biscuit and each lady a folded paper with a well known tune written on it at which she is on no account to look. At a given signal the gentlemen eat their biscuits, the ladies run up to their partner and as soon as the biscuit is eaten they unfold their paper and hold it up in front of their partners, still not looking at the title themselves. The gentlemen then whistle the tune on the paper and the lady guesses the name, she tells her partner and they then run back down the room together. the first couple back are the winners.
This sounds like a version of the cream cracker eating game, a competition to see who can eat three cream crackers most quickly – without a drink to help them! I’m not sure that adults would find the Atora game that exciting these days, and who would have a room big enoughfor particiapting couples to run from one end to the other!
Lois Elsden 