First Time Solitaire Player

I have been subscribing to the wonderful Jacquie Lawson online cards for at least four years now.
One very inexpensive yearly charge and I can send an unlimited number of these on any and every occasion.  And they are so inventive and lovely!

So just in the last week, I sent in $5 and purchased her "English Garden"  , an interactive - what shall I call it?  Delightful fantasy garden setup. It includes a number of games/activities as well, and one of them is Solitaire, or "Patience" as the Brits call it. 

I have reached the age of 70 without ever learning to play this card game.  So now I am learning, and losing every game!  It's quite addictive; I am glad I never played it before!   However, it is a good game to play while recovering from surgery!

here is part of the English Garden scene.

 

Here are the rules

 

 

 

Here is the game.   By playing this, I hope to keep dementia at bay! I hope also that a poem or two comes out of my struggle.

Here's a piece about it that John Updike wrote in 1972:

The New Yorker, January 22, 1972 P. 26
A man sits playing solitaire. He has reached a point in his life where there is nothing to do but play solitaire. It is the perfect, final retreat, with nothing beyond it but madness. Only solitaire creates that blankness into which a saving decision might flow. He has to choose between his wife and his mistress. The week after he graduated from college, he returned to the Vermont farm where his mother sat playing solitaire every night. He was already married. As he sat that night playing cards, he drew a straight line from that night to the night of his death and began walking on it. He rapidly gave his wife children, to make his escape irrevocable, and because he wished them a less solitary life than he had had. He hoped that his mistress and his wife would dissolve into each other, become one person, so that he would not have to make a decisions The only way left to choose is on the simple turn of a card, for he is faced with a problem without solution. There are two cards remaining in his hand. He turns one over. The ten of hearts for his wife, a strong card. He tears up the other, only then noticing that it is the black ace he needs to win the game. But he is not a superstitious man. He will not change his mind. He sits and waits for grief to be laid upon him.


And here's a poem about it by Sam Riviere:

Solitaire

By Sam Riviere 

 

                                            

I think I always liked the game

because it sounded like my name

combined with the concept of alone.

(My name really does mean “alone”

in Slovenian!) We don’t actually care

if it’s true, but we want to know

the person telling us is telling us

the truth. Say his name is “Hank,”

as in, “of hair.” (It’s not.) My upbringing

was classically smooth/chaotic, apart

from traumatic events I’ve never detailed,

even to myself. Traumatic but methodical.

But why say what happened even.

In the tech block the blinds were down

and I cleared my way to the final marble

under the indistinct gaze of an indistinct

master. My success had allowed me

to become the bastard I always knew

I could be. What did it mean, to clean

the board like this, counting down to one?

By these gradual and orderly subtractions

my persona was configured. The goal

was to remain single. Sometimes telling you

the truth wouldn’t be telling you anything

much. For a while I’ve felt torpid and detuned,

as if I want to share a view with you,

so we can both be absent in one place.

Look, the sky is beautiful and sour.

I’m not here, too. I’m staring out of this cloud

like an anagram whose solution

is probably itself. I am only the method

that this stupid game was invented to explain.

Source: Poetry (October 2014)                   

 

 

I'll see what I come up with.