She had been taught the game by her auntie, who lived in the next house in the village where my cousin and her family (including my aunt) lived, not far from where our mothers had grown up. It was during one summer holiday, when my cousin, five years older and a seasoned card player, came down to stay that I first got introduced to Gin Rummy. There would be exceptions to the lack of card game-play though, and I remember we went through a phase in school of obsessively playing ‘Tecken’ (literally translating from Swedish meaning ‘Sign’) during rainy school breaks, when we were allowed to stay inside in the bunker-like ‘bad weather room’.Īnother exception to my normal disinterest in cards was during school holidays, which sometimes involved visiting my cousins up north, or them coming down to stay with us. I’ve never been much of a card-player – this in spite of growing up in a small town in Sweden, where many nights as a young teenager were spent drinking tea in cafés, and later nights, doing the same at friends’ houses the perfect setting for card games.
