Watching me watching them watching me... what?

My folks came to visit last weekend. It was Easter weekend, so it was a nice long break and the weather was gorgeous. We went out and about a few times, but the evenings were almost always the same - we played a game or two of Scrabble.
Now, the thing is, we're all fairly competitive - but only in the sense that each of us wants to do the best we can with what we have on our racks. This is all well and good except when we have sets of letters that are either abysmal (all vowels/consonants etc) or very promising and the board layout is abysmal. This is when you'll find lots of heavy sighing and much shuffling of letters. In Mum's case, this is usually a warning to the rest of us as she'll more often than not put down a word that garners her a cool 30+ points.
My father, on the other hand, will 'Pffff' and say, 'Oh I'm in pickle, I am.' And then he'll put down a word that doesn't exist or is spelled incorrectly.

In the meantime, you will find exchanges like this one between Julie and Dad...

It's been a few days now, but I still have no idea whether that was a cracker of a zinger or a blank-faced fail. There's no doubting its entertainment value though. Dad, on the other hand, thought it was absolutely hilarious and went right into his 'Muttley snigger'. (it's not precisely the same. Dad doesn't wheeze so much pant between his side teeth (And if that description doesn't help, then I'm stuffed...).