Continuing on with the celebrations for my dad’s 50th (which he claims have to last the full month), a pile of us gathered at the house back in Kirkie for a gangland themed night.
With all of the cigars and cocktails kicking about, it was almost like being back in New Orleans.
Ever since I was wee and read a book on Al Capone, I’ve had a soft-spot for the whole 1920s gangster culture. You can’t help but admire the guy that flooded the streets of Chicago with booze during the height of prohibition, even if he was a big criminal.
Some of the stories about Capone are pretty incredible.
What finally caught him out wasn’t any of the sex, drink or death that he was linked to, but tax fraud. (let that be a lesson kids!)
He was told to keep a low profile at the trials which eventually saw him incarcerated in the infamous Alcatraz prison. This was to help avoid coming across as a rich, smug criminal. True to Capone style though, he turned up every day in a different brightly coloured suit… banana yellow one day, lime green the next.
I wish I had suits like that.
The surprise of the evening involved a murder mystery game, of which a few of us where characters in.
Perhaps inevitably, I was given the role of the murderer. Probably not the best choice since people were automatically suspicious of me simply because it was me, and not based on any of the clues.
It took a few minutes (and many glasses of wine), but by the end of the night I had convinced even myself that I really was the killer.
Like my red tie?
The thing about what I wore is that if I walked in the house on my own looking like that, people wouldn’t bat an eyelid; they’d just think I’d made an effort to dress a bit smarter.
I do love a pork pie hat.
If I could be bothered with the effort, I’d dress like this all the time.
