Monday nights will never be the same again now as the tricks are counted

FINALLY, having reached my sixties, I am at last ready for commitment. The time has come to move towards a lifestyle which reflects this maturity. There has been enough chaos and caprice. Enough shirking and shilly-shallying. Enough dodging and dithering. Certainty shall replace vagueness. Where once I drifted, from henceforth I shall steam steadily along my chosen channel. The die is well and truly cast. Yes, from now on, Monday night is cards night. Please take note.

If you wish to have me around for supper, then be sure to extend the invitation for a Thursday or maybe a Tuesday, as I shall simply not be available to dine on the Monday. If you want to sell me tickets for some play or concert, count me out should the entertainment chance to be staged on a Monday. Any other evening, and I am your more than flexible friend.

Should you, my dearest of dear buddies, happen to die, then I shall of course be in the front row of mourners at the graveside, no matter what the weather, no matter where the burial ground. However, please excuse my absence from any wake, removal or general wailing and gnashing of teeth which may be called for a Monday night.

I shall of course be thinking fondly of the deceased you while the first deal is dealt. I may even find myself distracted by grief from the task in hand as I sort my clubs from my diamonds. Yet I should tell you frankly that such sorrow will be well forgotten by the time I find myself wrestling with a knotty conundrum involving a four to one split of hearts among the opposition pair. How much easier it would be to find the winning strategy if only they were divided three to two.

Don’t die just yet, by the way, but please be aware that a fresh set of priorities is now in place. Monday night is cards night and that’s that. Too old for five-a-side soccer, too likely to forget my lines for amateur drama, I find the cards a most appealing pastime. I have joined the Our Town bridge club which convenes each Monday in a committee room on the ground floor of the GAA complex.

We must be the greatest disappointment of all time to the complex bar manager. Between the lot of us – and we number forty bridge players on a good evening – we scarcely run up a tenner a week at his till. One club member occasionally indulges in a glass of whiskey, though never tempted to have second, and there is sometimes a call for a rock shandy.

Thoughts of drink are forgotten as our focus is relentlessly on the cards, the cards, the cards above all and to the exclusion of all else. How to bid them. How to play them. How to extract the very best value from the 13 pieces of card in our fist.

January is said to be a great month for taking up fresh pastimes, adopting resolutions, breaking new ground. Too often such initiatives have been cast aside by the time February comes around, no matter how enjoyable or worthwhile.

The aerobics go by the board because Great Aunt Juniper comes to visit one week and then the City supporters club call a meeting the next. The thread is broken and the hi-viz leotard (the talk of the neighbourhood) is never taken out of the drawer again.

Or how about the weekly art appreciation talks being given in the public library? Michelangelo was pure joy. But Rembrandt was overtaken by young Persephone’s chesty cough. And then the appeal of Picasso was trumped by the siren call of a lads’ night out.

Bridge, in contrast, breeds continuity and here’s why. Playing bridge requires a partner. Failure to turn up means letting someone else down. This alters the dynamic and fosters loyalty to the game. So please record my apologies in City supporter minutes. Please raise a toast to this absent comrade, lads. And please let Juniper ply Persephone with honeyed drinks to ease her troubled throat, because I have a new best friend who needs me present and correct at the other side of the bridge table.

I will turn down lucrative work overtime on Mondays. I will drive through gale and sleet on Mondays. I will desert my family on Mondays. That’s cards night.