Lessons from solitaire and le sens de l'amour.

You're born alone, you give birth alone, you die alone and you have a school inspection ...alone.
So I start the day with my three tries at solitaire.  It's the time it takes to drink a big bowl of tea and listen to the most tedious half hour of the Today Programme (The Business World followed by Sport).
A good day ahead means three games in the bag in a small window of time.
The first was a walk over, the cards were against me on the second and the third (defeated) was proof of hubris.
I drove to school with this in mind.  
You can stack your cards against chance, which I'd done -  
the 6 week lesson plan was a masterpiece of Education Nationale box ticking (I can play the game when push comes to shove) but you don't choose your cards.
Chance came in the form of a docile bunch of boys, helped by the fact that I'd warned them there might be someone inspecting the class (me).
They toed the line; the cards were stacked.
Knowing that I didn't need a king to block a run, I'd got a couple of class exclusion forms to hand but they weren't needed.
The kings sat quiet, the queens stacked up against them, the jacks behaved themselves and the numbers ran through.
It was one of the most boring lessons I'd ever taught.
I play with one suit.  In the debriefing that followed I understood that there were others. 
A propos of nothing, Nico plays two suits but always finishes with a run if hearts.  He's a hopeless romantic.