Another curiosity

One of this morning's topics was a children's party game called 'cobweb', which we thought involved sticking the ends of lengths of wool to the ceiling - a process which might not have been very good for the paint on the ceiling.

Unaided, we were unable to recover details of how this might have worked, but Google's Gemini came to our rescue with the interchange summarised above.

A bit eager, perhaps, to agree with what one is saying, but in this case he wraps it all up into a convincing story, a story which I would be happy to use in a bar room or dining table conversation. But I still worry about the paint on the ceilings - having taken a fair bit of wallpaper off the walls of bedsits in my time by sticking up posters and such-like.

Not a problem that Simenon mentions in the context of the many chambres meublées that crop up in his stories. Roughly speaking, the mid twentieth century, Parisian equivalent of our bedsits.

PS: I had known nothing of this game, but a little later, BH tells me that while she had not played it herself, it did survive in the conversation of the village ladies in Exminster, south of Exeter, where she spent the second half of her childhood. Probably in the context of the village hall, called Victory Hall, which now runs to its own website. In BH's day it used to run to minor skirmishes when dances chucked out at the end of a Saturday evening. While FIL & MIL put in many jumble sales - from which we probably still have some relics. Probably the odd whist drive.

References

Reference 1: https://exminstervictoryhall.org.uk/. 'The Exminster Victory Hall was opened in 1921 to commemorate the end of World War One. The primary purpose is to be a community hall for the use of the residents of the Parish of Exminster although it is also available for hire from individuals and organisations from outside of the Parish...'.