Patience

When I was a child we didn’t have a TV, I think they were too expensive; I listened to the radio all the time, especially Children’s Hour, but other things as well, some programmes which exist to this day, some have long gone and probably only exist in people’s memories, there wasn’t the foresight then to keep recordings.

As well as listening to the radio we would paint and draw and make things out of balsa wood. I used to write stories and poems even then, and read, read, read, sometimes nearly twenty books a week, going back and forth to the library, and borrowing my mum’s library cards.

We played games too, scrabble as well as other board games. Sometimes my sister would be doing something else and maybe my friends were busy too, so I would occupy myself… and sometimes if I didn’t fancy any of my usual activities I would play patience.There were only two games of patience I knew in those days, clock patience when the cards would be arranged in piles of four in the positions of numbers on a clock face and a thirteenth pile in the middle, and what we called ‘sevens’ with seven piles of cards ranging from one card up to seven… the classic game.

I must have played hundreds and hundreds of games of patience… hundreds and hundreds!!