TAVERN PASTIMES

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20511, 30 May 1938, Page 12

TAVERN PASTIMES

INDOOR GAMES SWEEP MAYFAIR DARTS AND SHOVE HA’PENNY (Times Alp Mail Service.) LONDON. March 10. Children’s games and ** four-ale bar ” games are providing Mayfair's latest after-dinner alternatives to bridge and dancing, says the Sunday Referee. Smart people are having apartments converted to play rooms for darts, shove-ha’penny, table tennis, and running model trains. Cork panels are being built into games room walls around the darts boards to prevent darts damaging the decorations. The Hon. Mrs " Denys l.owson’s play room In her house in Upper PhilIfraore Gardens has an electric railway with two tracks, working on e fifteen-foot table. ** It’s great fun.” Mrs Lowson said lo a Sunday Referee reporter. “We run the model Just like a real rail>\hv—plus some thrills the others haven’t got. For instance, when we have guests to dinner we all get tremendously excited racing two trains over the points and seeing whether

they get past before there’s a collision.” Jack Hulbert plays with a model railway in his home in Curzon Street. Mayfair Going Crazy One or the best games rooms is dclng constructed under the direction of Lady Anne Elliot, Lord Jersey’s sister. Once it was the landing between her dining and drawing-rooms in Southwick Street, W. Glass shutters folding back into the wall shut the games room off from the rest of the house. It has white walls and chairs upholstered in blue velvet. Countess Orloff-Davidoff has fitted up a special basement games room in her house in Hill Road. Maida Vale. There the favourite games are tabletennis. darts and bagatelle. Lady Gloria Fisher can ask guests i to throw darts in a big first-class room in Eaton Place. A member of a prominent West End firm of sports outfitters told a rc-por-t^r: games that once belonged almost ex- ‘ four-ale bar.’ M mufacturcrs are finding it difficult to turn out darts and shove-ha’penny boards quickly enough. i “ Women are helping flic popular- ; ity of these games enormously. Some customers arc ordering darts boards in colourful, modernistic designs.”