SO - CARDS ON THE TABLE...

When I was a lad we had a card table, which usually sat at the front of our living-room.  In our 4th house (in the town we'd moved to in 1960), my parents summarily dispensed with its services without so much as a 'thank you' for its 20-odd years of loyal fealty.  It was sold to a dealer in 1981 or '82 and bravely went off to meet its fate.

A couple of years later we moved to yet another new house, and my folks acquired another table of the exact same type as its predecessor, in every respect save one; namely, it was lighter toned than the dark-hued original and therefore more suitably complemented the assortment of other furniture amongst whose company it sat.

As I said, the table was of a variety known as a card table; the hinged top unfolded and swung round to present a green-baized surface upon which, in a different era, various card games could be played after dinner by way of rounding off a pleasant evening.  (Neither one of our tables had ever been employed for that purpose as far as I recall, rendering them somewhat redundant in that area.)

Anyway, to try and cut to the chase - as regular readers know, we returned to our former house just over four years after first vacating its premises, and the 'new' table came with us.  What's more, it took up residence in the very spot on which its precursor had once stood at the front of the room.  And why not?  It was the most obvious place.

Which brings us to the photograph which graces this post.  The photo was taken around July of 1972, a few weeks after we had first moved to this house.  In the background can be seen the original table of which I've just been so interestingly (cough) telling you about.  The framed photograph now sits atop the replacement table, creating (in my mind) all sorts of strange and curious ponderings.

We've now owned the 2nd table for quite a number of years longer than we had the first, though I still tend to think of it as a recent acquisition.  An interloper, in fact, who brazenly occupies the space more rightly belonging to its ousted antecessor.  It'd surely be more fitting to have that picture sitting on the very table seen in the actual photo itself, rather than atop a base pretender, a stand-in for the one so cruelly cast out more than 30 years ago.

H'mm, 30 years, eh?

On the other hand, maybe it's time I accepted it as one of the family.  After all, it's been around for over half my life.  And at least the original can be seen through that framed window into the past, ensuring that it yet resides, in a sense, in its accustomed spot.

So - anyone for a game of cards?

******

(Interestingly, most of the ornaments on the table in the photograph now sit on the replacement today.  How's that for continuity?!)