Too much...it's all too much

Talking about Kevin

Kevin was a little bundle of energy, and an old friend’s landlord, then an old friend’s friend. He was an English teacher, a part-time conveyancing practitioner, through that an accidental landlord, and a card-buff. Worryingly, I’m displaying some Kevin behaviours. To whit:

A Kevin Sunday morning

SCENE: the kitchen table. Kevin is sitting at the table with a steaming mug of tea, a cigarette burns in the ashtray. In front of him is the Observer, split into two. He is reading the in-depth catch-up news section, while doing the crossword on another page. One radio is tuned to Radio 4, another to Radio 3. Also open on the table is the book he is currently reading. The television is also on.

PB and I walk in.

I say something about sensory or information overload.

PB explains that Kevin fears missing out on something.

Later I realised that Kevin just hated the thought of letting a precious second slip him by. Kevin claimed that he’d taught his brain to multi-task. Apparently not to the point where he could successfully reverse his car while doing anything else at all, claimed PB. However, all bets were off when it became apparent that Kevin couldn’t reverse his car. In isolation.

Duplicate Bridge

Kevin ran duplicate Bridge evenings, and sometimes he was short of a couple of players to make up the tables, and PB and I would provide (pretty inadequate, it has to be said) making-up numbers. Well, there was free food and drink involved, and Bridge is a great game.

Different players play the same hands in duplicate Bridge (hence the ‘duplicate’). Packs of cards are shuffled, dealt into four hands, and stuffed into holders.

One holder goes on each table.

You and your partner are either north / south or east / west, and you play your hand in front of you, keeping the thirteen cards you start off with. You record the result of the hand, then the north / souths shuffle off one way, and the east / wests t’other, and play another hand, at another table, against other opponents.

In this way, players hold the same cards, eliminating the luck of the deal, and make of them what they can.

Later they gather, compare, count the scores and bewilder the likes of PB and me with tech-details. They all have, it seems, adopted various bidding strategies and conventions according to the circumstances, they have finessed and drawn out and done all sorts of stuff while PB and me’ve flown by the seat of our pants. We never, however, finished in last place.

Those worrying behaviours

Increasingly I’m finding myself wanting to watch the rugby, football or cricket, but with the sound off, because there’s so much great music to listen to, and with a book ready for the half times / drinks / long injury stoppages. Oh and better have the phone and a laptop or netbook to hand as well. Just in case it’s a really long injury and some emails come in…