The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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11:27am on Friday, 1st November, 2013:
Anecdote
It may have come to the attention of regular QBlog readers that I collect antique playing cards.
A couple of weeks ago, I found someone else who collects them: one of my students. I had a bunch of playing cards for the students to take for free so they could play the game I had set form them to implement in Lua. One of the students couldn't decide from among the dozen or so designs I had out because she collects playing cards so was spoilt for choice. I let her take two, then afterwards asked her about her collection. The oldest pack she has dates from 1980, which may be ancient if you're 20 but isn't all that long ago in playing card years. Being a student, she can't afford older packs, so I said I'd see about giving her one of the packs from my own collection dating from the 1920s that I have two of (bearing a nice Dondorf Baroness pattern). People who collect playing cards are few and far between, so I like to encourage them.
However, it occurred to me that just giving something to a student might be improper, so I thought I'd better ask the Head of Department if it was OK. The HoD asked the Human Resources and the Equality and Diversity sections whether it was OK for me to give this pack to the student. It wasn't really valuable — I'd bought for £9.99 (although I got it cheap, I was expecting it to be more like £20).
Two weeks later, the response came back that it wasn't a good idea as it might be taken the wrong way. I don't think the student herself would have taken it the wrong way, but I suppose other students might have, so it's as well that I asked. I was hoping that my heavily-documented interest in collecting playing cards would have won the day, but it seems not.
Oh well, I'll have to hold on to the deck until she graduates, then give her it.
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Copyright © 2013 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).