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Narrated by James Marriott
With my husband on a boys’ mini-break, I had a friend to stay last week. She did warn me beforehand she’d be quite busy online – her new hobby is bridge. Like an anthropologist observing a cult, I sat and watched. Monday night was a two-hour bridge school with a regular partner, a lady from the Scottish islands. Wednesday night was a two-hour lesson with a scary teacher and another regular partner. On a third night per week she does the same again.
You’re hooked, I told her. Obsessive even. Bridge is like cerebral cage fighting, a peculiar mixture of risk analysis, memory, maths and terrifically low cunning. Two of her opponents are nonagenarians from the US, fiercely competitive ladies who get furious if they’re
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