Today’s title may well make you wonder what on earth I’m going to write about. I hope you won’t be disappointed to learn today’s blog post has nothing to do with “Truth and Triumph Tattoo” parlour – the best place to get your tattoos – in Dayton, Ohio; and I don’t wish to test your grey-matter with a treatise on Thomas Tomkinson’s great work, “Truth’s Triumph”, written in 1676 on the subject of “the fundamentals of the faith” (although a peek at Wikipedia this morning informed of the book’s depth and sounded particularly interesting, especially with regard to the controversial concept of God having a physical form); and classical music lovers may be somewhat down-hearted (if you had started to get excited) to find that I am not going to discuss (except in passing) George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, ‘The Triumph of Time and Truth, produced in three different versions across 50 years of Handel’s career’.However, I must add that on my diversion into YouTube to seek out the delights of the said oratorio I came across something wonderful and someone wonderful…
The wonder was Simone Kermes singing Handel’s “Piangero la sorte mia” (from Guilio Cesare) with the Venice Baroque Orchestra at Shwetzinger Testspiele (2010). Not being a classical buff in the slightest, I knew nothing of the music or the soprano, but I was captivated and moved to tears. Check it out on YouTube and see if I’m not wrong.
Now back to the “Truth and Triumph” that I thought might amuse you today. On Sunday Mary, my sister, returned from her weekly car-boot-sale outing with our Mum and said….
“I have a little something for you and Chris, Sally – it cost me nothing.” (Naturally it was in her car- boot!). “You and Chris love games – don’t you?”
And we do, at least I do, and Chris obliges me by joining in, otherwise there would be no-one for me to play with. So last night when Chris asked if I wanted to play Chinese Chequers, I surprised him by suggesting that we play Mary’s Truth and Triumph game instead. Chris pulled a face but I was so keen that he didn’t have the heart to refuse. The box was like an old treasure chest, brown as oak, and had “Truth and Triumph” printed in gold capitals in the centre – nothing else, no indicator as to what could be inside – and the edges and corners of the box were worn and a bit ragged. Chris left it to me to open it – well, I was the keen one – but we were both interested to know what was inside. Firstly, there was a stiff, quite nice quality board (so it was a board game) with a dusting of powdery mould on the back (not used that much then…), underneath that was the instruction manual, and beneath that four brown boxes with gold lettering – one was entitled WISDOM, the next THE CHURCH, (I began to think it a little different to the games I’m used to ….) THE LIFE OF CHRIST, and finally (as if I needed any more confirmation about the theme), the last box said THE OLD TESTAMENT; then there were the counters, the score cards and the dice.
“Perhaps it’s a game for nuns or old priests,” I suggested.
“Let’s play Chinese Chequers,” Chris suggested.
“Come on, let’s give it a go for a few minutes,” I encouraged, “you should be better at it than me because your granddad was a minister.”
Chris usually reads the instruction guides for everything in the house but on this occasion he let me do it because I was the one who wanted to play. I hate reading instructions so we ended up playing our own version of it (good job too, otherwise it would have taken all night!). It transpired that the game is very similar to Trivial Pursuit but with a religious theme. I threw the dice first and landed on a LIFE OF CHRIST question card.
“What kind of place was Christ’s tomb situated in?” Chris asked.
“A graveyard.”
“No, what KIND of a place?”
“A nasty place, out in the wastelands, away from the metropolis… a sort of cave… with a big rock in front?”
“No, I don’t mean that. What kind of land?”
“Barren land – very rocky?”
“Definitely not rocky,” Chris laughed (he alluded to Rocky, the handsome Texan in my book), “It starts with a G…”
“A GGGarden – the hanging gardens of Babylon!”
“No, the gardens of…?”
“Gethsemane?”
And so we played on for over an hour, helping each other through the difficult questions. Perhaps my favourite question was….
“What did John the Baptist wear?”
“Hemp” (I thought that sounded sufficiently coarse and uncomfortable for such a pious man), “or sackcloth, if you prefer?”
“Nope”
“It can’t be something nice like cotton, it must be an animal skin – goats wool?”
“No, but you’re on the right track.”
“Lion skin!”
“No, it’s…. c… camel…?”
“Camel skin!”
“No, silly girl, it’s camel hair!”
“Of course, everyone knows that!” I said.
In truth, I can’t remember any of the serious questions – they were way over my head; in triumph, I answered two questions correctly by guesswork; in disgrace, I answered one by cheating – I saw the answer on the other side of the card!
The wear and tear on the box must either have occurred through overuse of the surface as a good push off for Tiddlywinks or there is another scenario…
Picture, if you will, an evening at the nunnery. Young Sister Teresa Mary goes to the cabinet that stores all the board games; in-between Scrabble and Cluedo is a brown box like a treasure chest, which is dark and mysterious (only the older nuns know what lies within); yet again Sister Teresa Mary slides the box half-out and looks around at the others (busy rug-making or sewing tapestries), and she asks, “Would anyone like to play Truth and Triumph for a nice change tonight?” All hands stop working and all eyes look horrified, but no-one dares to speak, except for Mother Superior who says, “Let’s save that for a special occasion, Sister, I’ve been looking forward to a good game of Scrabble all day – who’s for Scrabble?” There are sighs and coughs, and several nuns kiss their rosaries. Thank God for Mother Superior!