My poor mother. I should have warned her. I had completely forgotten to tell her that the Weekly would be coming out with me on the cover, so she was unprepared when she went down to the ladies’ golf day at her local club.
When she came off the course for lunch, one of her friends said, “Oooh. So Kerre’s getting married again. What will you wear to that one?” Mum stopped in her tracks, horrified.
“Married again?!” she gasped. “Who to?”
As a retired school teacher, she should have said, “To whom?” but she’d been taken by surprise so allowances must be made. “Oh, no, to Tom,” her friend replied and Mum sagged in relief. “They’re getting married again once she’s lost 12 kilos.”
When Mum rang me that afternoon, I pointed out that it was entirely her fault. If she got the Weekly by subscription, instead of when she does her mid-week grocery shop, she’d be ahead of the game. But, to be fair, in my younger days my parents received quite a few pieces of startling news about my doings, and another marriage out of the blue would not have been beyond the realm of possibility. As it was, Mum was relieved to be coming up to Auckland for the weekend and staying in the same house with me and enjoying the company of my same husband.
She had brought a crib board with her to teach Tom and I how to play the game. My parents and their friends used to play crib all the time at the beach. However, Mum hadn’t played in years and it was only when she was visiting Whangamata that the memories were rekindled and she decided to find a crib board. She and her friend bought one in a local second-hand store and after a vigorous polish, it looked as good as new. The scoring boards can be either triangular or rectangular and the New Zealand boards seem to be made of different types of native wood.
For the rest of their time at the beach, Mum and her mate went bodysurfing by day and played crib by night. She was determined Tom and I should be introduced to the game, so on Saturday night, after rugby and a roast, Mum brought out the board and a pack of cards.
Tom was most reluctant.
“I don’t like cards,” he said. “I’m not good with numbers.” But he can never say no to Mum and he took his place at the table.
Crib (or cribbage) is one of the oldest games in the world. Apparently, it was devised by a British poet in the early 17th century and the rules have remained virtually unchanged since then. It took us no time at all to get up to speed (Mum was a teacher, after all) and while I won’t go into all the rules, you get points for combinations of cards that make up 15, as well as points for runs and flushes.
There are a few scoring points unique to crib. When Tom laid down his hand, Mum was counting his score for him and then startled us both by declaring that he was in luck because he got (and I quote) “one for his nob”. Once we’d all recovered, she explained that if you had a Jack of the same suit as the starter card, you got a point, which is where the expression “one for your nob” comes from.
She took the opportunity to explain the “muggins” rule as well – if you fail to recognise a point-scoring opportunity in your own hand, an opposition player can call “muggins” and get the points themselves. Mum took great delight in “mugginsing” me a few hands later.
We had a great night. So much so I went on Trade Me and put in a bid for a crib board someone from Kaipoi is selling. It’ll be a great investment – if the game’s been popular for more than 400 years, it won’t be going out of fashion anytime soon.
