Mah-Jong day

I spent the day at the Surrey WI HQ, organising a Mah-Jong Refresher Day. At least, it was billed at a refresher day but when they arrived, of the fifteen participants only one had played before. So we had to start from scratch with this very complicated game. Fortunately I had lined up three helpers and by the end of the day they had had a good grounding. They went away with handouts and they all were keen to carry on playing. It was lovely to hear the happy laughter as they tried to remember the difference between pungs, kongs and chows.
To set the scene I took along some interesting sets. There are three old Chinese sets, bone or ivory with bamboo backs. The set top left was hand carved from oak by my father in the 1940s and is very special to me. Much of the pleasure in playing Mah-Jong is in the lovely tiles.
(The ubiquitous tile matching game found on the internet bears no relationship to the real game.)