gejus-06-06

Even today one can find remarkable secondary use of playing cards. Last April my friend John Card invited me to come to England to give a talk about reused playing cards for the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards. John is this year's Master. He and his wife Pat are great hosts. They have a lovely house, stuffed with playing card related items. Well, if your name is John Card and you collect playing cards.......?

For Saturday Pat had arranged tickets for a musical. In the Netherlands we dress nicely to go to the theatre. In England they do too, but very different. The musical was The Rocky Horror Show and we were about the only people in the audience, that were dressed in ordinary clothes. It seems to be tradition to attend this musical dressed up as one of the characters of the Rocky Horror Show. So we were surrounded by transvestites, sexy nurses, barely dressed room maids, evil doctors with blood on their hands and some almost nude murder victims. The audience was part of the musical, shouting additional text, singing along and discussing loudly with the actors, all in a very humorous way. It was a great and very entertaining performance by both the cast and the audience.

At the end of the show I noticed a kind of secondary use of playing cards that was unknown to me. From the front rows people were throwing playing cards on the stage! However our seats were on the highest ring. I suddenly felt a great desire to grab a few of these cards for my collection. So while everybody was lining up towards the exit, I was fighting my way down the stairs to get to the stage. When I had made it to the ground floor, unfortunately all the doors were blocked by security officers. It was not the right moment and place to tell them about my fascinating hobby, so I ran around to find a way to get in, knowing that these unique secondary use playing cards were only a few meters away. Suddenly at one of

the doors I overheard a staff member telling the security officer that there was a sick woman still inside the toilets. I simply followed these men, pretending to be related to the sick woman, but I quickly passed her and stepped over the vomit to reach my goal: the stage! The steel safety curtain was down, but I was lucky to find three cards on the edge of the stage. I rapidly returned to John, Pat and my wife, who had no idea where I was. On the stairs I passed a dressed up woman who had one of the playing cards in her bra. I kindly asked "Can I take a picture of you?" and before she could agree I had already taken it. For reasons of privacy I do not show her face in this picture. She was not so cute anyway. Now that I think about it, of course I should have asked her for this card. Well, one cannot have them all.