Michelle Obama is a hugely admirable person. Quite apart from her activism, reason enough to look up to her, she has no doubt faced some shit during her life and career, some of it simply because of her gender or skin colour (or both) that I can't begin to imagine. She was also, I suspect, at least partly privy to some pretty dark stuff during her time as First Lady that didn't see the light of public scrutiny.
But now we hear she is, like so many, struggling to deal with all the shit that's going on at the moment. The weight of everything has got to even somebody like her, with all her undoubted resilience, with everything she's experienced, with everything she's known about going on in the world's darkest corners in the past. It's now, the era of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; Trump, Putin, Johnson and Covid, that she lets on, publicly at least, that it's got on top of her.
She's not alone, of course, which rather belatedly brings me to the point of this entry. Thinking of how best to look up, not down in this blog, if it please Your Majesty I thought I might divert and entertain by introducing to you the world's oddest card game, Mus. (Pronounced something similar, though not exactly, like 'moose' - the vowel in this Spanish game's name sounds like it's being strangled, and isn't something you find readily in English).
Any attempt to explain the rules of this game to you is pointless. I've sat and watched, and had it explained to me, several times, and I'm still not entirely sure that I wasn't the victim of some practical joke. If that's the case, the jokers have gone to extraordinary lengths, because Mus is played so extensively here that the local newspapers publish a full page of league tables of local teams(!) But I'll at least try to explain what goes on from a spectator's point of view.
Now the first thing you have to know about any game of cards in Spain, even if you chose to play Snap, is that the cards themselves are weird. Not for Spain the normal, 2-3-4 etc up to King-Ace in four suits recognised worldwide. Oh no. They have swords, cups, coins and something resembling Captain Caveman's club. And you'll usually find that some bastard has removed all the 8s and 9s, but that nobody seems to mind. Quite what these, to me at least, innocuous numbers have done to deserve such ostracism is beyond me, but it means that a straight, if you're playing their version of rummy, goes 6-7-10. This caught me out on a number of occasions at first, and cost me several coins in lost games that I maintain I'd otherwise have won.
Anyway. You get four players, in teams of two much like bridge. They get four cards each. Then something like this happens. (Anybody who knows the game will immediately point out a string of mistakes here, but it all happens so fast and so weirdly, that it's impossible to follow). They act in turn, and the fourth player, the last to act in each round, is known as the postre, dessert, as apparently it's the weaker position. No, I don't know why:
"Big"
"No Mus"
"Pass"
"I can help you." (Winks at teammate)
"Mus"
"Pass" (Purses lips at teammate)
"Pass"
"Small" (Sticks tongue out at teammate.)
"Chica" (Player closes eyes)
"30"
"27"
"24"
"Nothing"
"Juego"
"Pass"
"Pass"
"Pass"
Then there's a complicated exchange of silver chickpeas. (No, I'm not making that bit up either. Out of the bizarre exchanges above, somehow they know who's scored what and they use silver chickpeas to keep score). Then the whole thing starts again. Oh and 3s are 10s, obviously. Can't believe I forgot that bit.
Often, at no point during what goes on above has anybody looked at or touched their cards after the first inspection. They can only change the cards they're initially dealt if all four agree, which is what the 'Mus' bit is about, apparently.
The bizarre gurning, shrugging of shoulders, sticking tongues out etc, is all part of the game and these gestures have their own rules. You can lie openly, but only by speaking. The body signals must be honest, and can be picked up by, and challenged by, the other team. You can be disqualified for using your own, made-up gestures, or for trying to deceive your opponents with them.
And the four cards you hold are used for all four rounds, despite the value of each card varying wildly from round to round. Kings (threes!) are valuable in one round but useless in another. Somehow this game, which originated in the Basque country, is hugely popular in Galicia, played all over Spain and wherever there are Spanish, particularly Basque, communities worldwide.
Now I flatter myself, dear reader, that though by no means an intellectual giant, I'm not an idiot. But this game just baffled me completely. My partner tried to teach me the game, but when I asked her to explain the rules in a more linear fashion because she was jumping around all over the place, she simply said "I can't. It doesn't work like that." We tried using dummy hands, to see which I'd keep and which throw away, using car number plates seen during long drives to stand in for the cards that I'd receive. A 3 would be a King, of course, but then do I keep the two 5s?
Even the chickpea scoring, where some chickpeas mean five points but others mean one point each, made me feel like Baldrick when Blackadder attempted to each him 'adding' using beans. (Four. Some chickpeas plus some chickpeas is four chickpeas. Points, sorry.)
Mercifully, during more normal times, most Wednesdays there's a game of Poker played in one of the village bars, using the normal Diamond-Club-Heart-Spade cards, with 8s and 9s and everything. I may lose €10 most weeks, but at least I know why I'm losing them.
Give this game a go, Mrs Obama. (I know she's an avid reader...) Its utter weirdness may at least baffle you long enough to forget all the shit that's going on for a few minutes.
Edit: My missus has just pointed out, having read and shared this, that it's not just the 3s that masquerade as another number in this game. I'd forgotten that 2s are 1s. Course they are.
