Nine Card Rummy

Categories: uncategorized

Tags: local

Date: 09 January 2007 02:36:02

It turns out that the mysterious card game is Nine-card Rummy. Whatever that is.

They are playing by some sort of Rummy rules, discarding face-up, laying down the best run or set or straight they have (so is almost like a kind of poker). 1-2-3 beats K-Q-A, runs beat sets beat flushes, and four nines vanquish all. Instead of playing till someone comes out (as in Gin Rummy) they go until some condition is met (I'm not sure what) then score 1 or 2 points, using a crib board to tally. First to 101 in the normal way. Looks like a fun game, but there are all sorts o tiny special rules I don't yet get.

And I saw a new kind of dartboard cricket tonight. One player "bats", scoring whatever they hit over 40. They get to play for eight wickets, each falling when the other player hits a bull - one fort the green bull, two for the red.

On the bus back from College tonight I got smiled at by an attractive young blonde woman. Which was a turn-up for the books. Truly - it always raises the spirits. Even when you are young and thin and, OK, spotty and not that good-looking. And it works even better when you are middle-aged and fat and, OK, OK, seven times more spotty. After she had got herself on the bus she sat down on the seat right in front of me. She was reading a Terry Pratchet book - Thief of Time - and I couldn't resist looking over her shoulder to remind myself of the plot.

When I got off the bus at Trafalgar Square I rather cornily looked round at her and to my surprise she smiled bigly. Which really did make my day rather a lot. Honest, it really does work. And then when I was walking towards Charing Cross Station it occurred to me that maybe she thought I was Terry. Its a resemblance people have joked about before. It was a running joke at the Glasgow Worldcon before last. I don't look like him at all really, but I suppose I dress a bit like him. Or he dresses like me. If rather more expensively. Well, we both wear hats - and I've been wearing them since the 1970s, so its not just him. Honestly, I have no chip on my shoulder. And our beards are vaguely similar, though mine is shorter. And we got over it. At the most recent Glasgow Worldcon the running joke was that Charlie Stross looked like me. Or that I looked like him. Possibly the only man in history to sell a novel written on a Psion 3 - and he did - I saw him writing it.

Anyway, maybe if my suspicion is right, somewhere in the Blogosphere a lovely woman is saying that Terry Pratchett smiled at her on the bus going down Charing Cross Road.

Sorry love, it was only me.

But if you need my email address...