This one came out of a hospital room.

I was sitting with my father. We were telling each other stories, the way you do, and somewhere in the middle of it I realised this was the part I was going to want afterwards. Not the paperwork. Not the accounts. The stories.

Most families never get round to it. Not because they don’t want to, but because there is no natural moment to say “tell me about your twenties” to someone you have known your whole life. It feels strange. So it doesn’t happen, and then it can’t.

What it does

One More Story is a deck of 126 cards that makes it happen anyway. Each card is a question. You take turns, you answer, and about fifteen minutes in people stop performing and start actually remembering.

The questions are the point. They skip favourite colour and go for the ones that produce a real answer: the job you were bad at, the thing you were wrong about, who taught you to drive, what your parents fought about. The prompts do the asking, so nobody has to be the person who made it awkward.

It works at a kitchen table, on a long drive, at a holiday nobody was looking forward to, and in a hospital room.

The harder companion

Nothing Left Unsaid is the other deck, for the conversations about estates and end-of-life wishes rather than stories. Same idea, higher stakes. If you are not sure which you want, start with this one.