While searching the net for something else entirely, I found a whole new card game. I started reading the instructions and was quickly bamboozled. But it sounds a lot like 500, with an extra suit of trump cards added -- five suits altogether -- and a whole raft of extra rules, possible bids etc.

One site I looked at said people who start playing can sometimes end up thinking the others are just making up the rules as they go along -- which reminded me of Sonny trying to teach us to play sweepi. So I looked that up on the net and only found one passing reference -- and they called the game sweet pea.

Hey, here's a site where you can download 500 for your computer. Looks pretty shonky, but.

I used to play cards a lot -- in fact when I lived in London, a whole network of us had regular card evenings. The host house put on a lavish spread, set up tables and off we went. Euchre, Pontoon, 500, Black Bitch, Fan Tan, Gin Rummy and, when worse for wear, Snap or Cheat. If there were only a few of us, we would lie on the floor and play manic rounds of Racing Demon, which can get pretty physical.

Then when I was away on a work trip in Vanuatu, with the army medical corps, I was sucked in to a kava-fuelled grudge-match vortex called Star Euchre. On holiday in Vanuatu it was another form of Euchre, I think -- my opponents ceremoniously presented me with the score sheets when I left. At home when I was a kid it was always 500, endless games at the crib, with the Tilley lamp hissing and popping and the tension rising. I played 500 in Kenya too, with some Australians in the Kakamega forest.

A pack of cards is such a small thing, but it's a Tardis -- it billows out into long evenings of pleasure, intrigue, strategy, betrayal and triumph.