Courant columnist Brian Tilley gives us his weekly dose of reality...

DOES anyone still play cards? A few weeks ago, we were on holiday up in Scotland with number two son, daughter in law and three grandchildren.

Most nights, the telly went off after the 6pm news, the mobile phones were packed away and we played cards.

I can’t remember when I last had so much fun, as the fog cleared from the memory banks, and I dragged up memories of the endless card games my sister and I played when we were nippers.

I started by showing 10-year-old Elise how to play clock patience, but she lost interest when she succeeded in getting all the cards in their right positions at the first attempt - a feat I have never achieved in over 60 years of playing the game!

We moved on to knockout whist, a game taught to me by my grandmother. You never hear of whist drives any more - or beetle drives for that matter - but they both used to be staple fundraisers for women’s institutes and townswomen’s guilds across the land.

The children - aged 17,14 and 10 - picked that up fairly quickly, and then we graduated to cribbage, which they picked up so rapidly they soon left Mrs Hextol and me trailing in their wake.

”That’s 15-2, 15-4, 15-6, two for a pair and don’t forget the one for his nob,” they would cry, as they wiped the floor with their elderly opponents.

There were raised parental eyebrows when I suggested a game of Strip Jack Naked, and I had to hastily explain there was no baring of flesh involved in the game, also known as Beggar My Neighbour

I was eliminated after about 10 minutes, but the two younger children were still turning their cards over in the same game close on midnight, when a draw was declared.

Perhaps the most successful venture into the esoteric world of cards though was Cheat, where participants are actively encouraged to be as mendacious as humanly possible.

As children are basically honest, I found it ridiculously easy to win the first few games by cheating outrageously to rid myself of all my cards - the object of the game.

They soon caught on though, and twigged that I could not possibly be disposing of 11 jacks in three hands!

The games went on for many hours and the mobiles were not missed at all - a refreshing change in these high tech days,

Adults playing cards is often depicted as being restricted to casinos or the the Wild West, with saloon gals hanging round frilly shirted gamblers with string ties and Derringers up their sleeves.

It wasn’t like that in the pubs of Macclesfield, where there were two separate leagues for card players - the Cribbage League and the Nine Card Don League.

They were just as popular as the darts and skittles leagues, but you never hear of them now.

Card playing was also a key component of away games with Macclesfield Town FC, when I was

allowed to travel on the team coach with players and directors,

The directors played a game called solo, one of the options in which was to play to lose every hand. I did achieve this remarkable feat - called going misere - on one occasion, earning the undying hatred of my playing partner, who was playing to win!

Cards were also an important part of the week at my first newspaper We worked in a satellite office, and each press day, the editor would disappear to the head office some 12 miles away to put the final touches to the paper and the reporters played cards.

I can’t remember the proper name of the game, but I believe it was a Macclesfield version of a diversion called Montana Red Dog.

There was no hard cash involved, but a vast and complex scoring system was deployed by the news editor, involving sums as small as one eighth of a penny, and all gambling debts had to be settled on the weekly pay day.

Totals owed seldom exceeded half a crown, but the news editor was reluctant to part with even such a trifling sum. I believe he still owes me two shillings from 1968.

We thought the Thursday card school had run its course one fateful day when the editor returned to the office several hours earlier than expected because the press had broken down,

The reporters room door crashed open and there we all were, cards fanned out in front of us and jaws on chests.

The editor fixed us with a gimlet eye, and told his trembling scribes : “I’ve only got one thing to say to you lot - deal me in!.”