In my wild – drug-free and apocalyptically conformist – youth I used to play a drinking game called “finger’s on”. A group of us would each put an index finger on an empty glass and take it in turns to guess how many would remain, with participants deciding to leave their finger in place or remove it from the glass. “I think there’ll be … five” – cue frantic counting and success or failure.
If correct you were out of the game and poured a little bit of your pint into the glass – the last person remaining was required to drink the concoction in front of them. But the kicker was that you were not allowed to celebrate until you had high-fived each previously successful player in order of when they went out of the game. No glimpse of a smile, not even the slightest raise of one corner of your mouth; if your eyes even so much as glinted with happiness – that was it. BACK IN.
