I’ve been trying to remember the name of this card game for months. I’ve been talking about how my family used to play cards, betting pennies, on our family holidays, my cockney Grandad overseeing the rules and issuing 50p pieces to the children to take down to the arcade and swap for coppers. In 1997 they had made the 50p coin smaller, but occasionally we’d still get a big one, thicker and heavier, more solid, which made me think that’s the way the past had been.
This lost memory started to bother me when I remarked to a friend that I’ve never been on a plane with a family member, that my brother visiting me in Norway was the first time I’ve ever been outside the UK in the company of someone I am related to. That got me thinking about seaside holidays to Cornwall and the Isle of Wight (the first was a 4 hour drive from home, the second an hour long ferry trip). But a funny thing happened the other day - I was listening to a radio programme about Essex, and the way people on the programme spoke must have stirred up some memory of my family or my grandparents or just my Grandad. Accents travelling up the Thames Estuary to Southwark. I suddenly remembered the name of the card game we played in chalets at Whitecliff Bay on the Isle of Wight, about fifteen of us Browns, Palaczkys and Gaigers crowded around a little table: Newmarket.
This lost memory started to bother me when I remarked to a friend that I’ve never been on a plane with a family member, that my brother visiting me in Norway was the first time I’ve ever been outside the UK in the company of someone I am related to. That got me thinking about seaside holidays to Cornwall and the Isle of Wight (the first was a 4 hour drive from home, the second an hour long ferry trip). But a funny thing happened the other day - I was listening to a radio programme about Essex, and the way people on the programme spoke must have stirred up some memory of my family or my grandparents or just my Grandad. Accents travelling up the Thames Estuary to Southwark. I suddenly remembered the name of the card game we played in chalets at Whitecliff Bay on the Isle of Wight, about fifteen of us Browns, Palaczkys and Gaigers crowded around a little table: Newmarket.