Heart of Gold by Foxymoron

This week was the funeral of Colin Elks, known to all his bridge friends by his mother's maiden name, Colin Elliott. He had a debilitating illness all his life, but he coped with it stoically even when it deteriorated over the last few years. I played with him once a month for around 20 years and he was a fine player and he enjoyed tinkering with his beloved Precision. He played it with several partners: Nigel Freake, Ken Barnett, Martin Baker and, for a while when he was in this country, the noted pianist Alex Panizza. He was also a frequent partner of Chantal Girardin.

He had a love of music, and knew all the Abba songs, and was a great fan of Nottingham Forest, in particular the golden era under Brian Clough. And it was notable to learn at his funeral how helpful he was to his friends and family, often driving them through London and beyond. He had a spell as a mini-cab driver and certainly "had the knowledge". When he could no longer drive, that was a major blow, and also led to him giving up bridge. He loved the quips and camaraderie at the table, and did not take to online bridge at all. He also "had the knowledge" of our bidding system in bridge, and one of our luckiest, and I suppose unluckiest, auctions was on the following hand, many years ago, after he had introduced the "two-way heart" to the Precision system.

I was out to lunch in the auction. 1C was strong and 1D was 0-7. Now 1H was 2-way showing hearts or 20+ and 1S was a relay. 1NT was 20+ and 2C asked. We played steps after that at the time, as my old system notes showed, so 2NT was 26-27. Colin's 6NT concluded the auction. So, how did I bring this home? Solution next week.

Whether or not you make it, the TD will arrive shortly later to replace your other board and tell you that you have the wrong board. So, you are getting 40% on the board you should have played as you spent far too long trying to make 6NT on a board that you were not scheduled to play.

Colin accepted this bit of bad luck (or was it my usual incompetence) in the same way as he accepted life, uncomplainingly. 

As Kipling said: 

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same ...

The phrase "heart of gold" originated in the late 1500s. It was first seen in William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, in which Pistol describes his master as "a bawcock, and a heart of gold". Colin was certainly a bawcock.