I can't recall ever playing cards much when they were away, so presumably they were 'male led'. Rummy was a favourite as was cribbage and a game called coco-rummy(I think that's the correct spelling.) Of course these games where much in evidence only when the men were demobbed. My family played cards as a major pastime(no tele' then - which is probably the reason for the decline) and I recall watching them playing at the table through the bars of my cot. I haven't been in a proper card game for ages, used to enjoy them a lot.What ever happened to Canasta? It was a huge craze in the 50's-60's. Try that now and you'd probably be lynched for all sorts of health and safety breaches and possibly child abuse. We used to play Rummy with the kids on holiday, usually sitting outside a cafe or taverna or somewhere as well as the game where you stretched a paper napkin across a glass, balanced a small coin on it and then took turns to use a lit cigarette end to burn holes in the paper until the looser let the coin fall into the glass. Their favourite games, apart from gambling ones like pontoon and poker which were not allowed, were Switch and Scabby Queen and a painfully vicious game called Swipes which involved being hit across the knuckles with the edge of the cards.

Up till recently, I worked with a bunch of teenage reprobates from many of the least desirable estates in Glasgow and virtually all of them played cards.

How to play strip cribbage