Rebecca Tyrrel: Days Like Those

'Matthew's giving up internet poker. But what will he be doing instead? Interfering with my jam-making?'

The announcement was due to be made at 9pm. Matthew warned Louis and I that he had something to say and it would be helpful if we were both in the same room at the same time so he didn't have to say it twice. And so, at five minutes to nine, I screwed the cap on my last jar of homemade tomato and walnut jam, called Louis down from upstairs where he had been helping his leopard gecko shed its skin, and we both sat in readiness in the sitting room.

Matthew arrived home from the shed at the bottom of the garden bang on time and stood in front of the fireplace rocking on his heels, his hands behind his back, clearing his throat. "What I have to say to you will change our lives considerably," he said. "The very patterns of our days will be affected." Then he walked over to the drinks tray and poured himself an octuple Scotch.

After resuming his position by the fireplace, he placed one hand on the mantelpiece, one foot on the fender, cleared his throat once more, took a septuple glug of whisky and said, all in a garble: "I am giving up internet poker."

So that was the announcement. And he was right; it will change our lives considerably, the very pattern of our days will indeed be affected - Matthew will be around a lot more. Great! Or not so great? What will he be doing? Kicking his heels? Interfering with my bottling, pickling and jam-making enterprises? Conducting his own research into reptile skin-shedding cycles?

Because Matthew had gone to the trouble of making an announcement before the actual announcement, stating that he was going make the announcement, I was reminded of the build-up to Edward VIII's abdication speech. Not that I was around in 1936, but we've still got Edward Fox. I found myself asking him (Matthew, not Mr Fox) if he, like the King who gave up the throne, was relinquishing his poker for the woman he loved - me. "Am I your Wallis Simpson?"

"Of course I am, and yes of course you are," he said, "and Mr Baldwin's kind offer of appointing me Governor of the Bahamas also had something to do with it." By now the Scotch had been downed in totality and it was only as the night progressed, quite slowly, that the real reason for the abdication emerged.

Matthew had suffered a long sequence of what he calls "bad beats". These are pieces of outlandish misfortune; good cards are beaten by less good ones.

"Six times in a row I've had my aces cracked," he said, refilling his tumbler. Obviously I was worried to hear this and anxious to help in any way I could; call a doctor perhaps, make a poultice of some sort, did he need a truss? "What I mean," he said, "is that every time I am dealt a pair of aces, some American youth, no doubt wearing a baseball cap the wrong way round, finds a way to beat them. Then the youth writes something offensive in the chat box about my mother and I can't even head-butt the cretin in the chest. That is why I have had it with online poker. I quit with immediate effect." And he picked up the remote and pointed it at the television. I went downstairs to read up on quince.

Louis and I spent a while this morning speculating about how Matthew was going to fill the 10-hour gap in his day, and we were very surprised when we heard him getting up and going out to his shed. "Perhaps it's force of habit," I said. "Perhaps he's got so used to going out there and logging on that he is going through the motions without thinking. Perhaps his brain is on automatic pilot." "Or perhaps he is actually doing some work," said Louis. "He does also do quite a lot of work when he is in his shed." "Not on a Monday he doesn't," I said.

So I took Matthew a cup of coffee and an oatcake with some home-made lime and kumquat marmalade by way of an excuse and I found him shaking his fist at his computer screen and growling the words: "You nauseating little ponce. The only thing that could have saved you and you had to hit a double five. You moron." "Oh stop it!" I said. "Stop it now. You said you had given up and now you've started again." And then I saw that instead of the usual Party Poker set-up on his computer screen, there was an interactive backgammon board.

I stood for a minute, watching him play, fingers white on the mouse, until a message popped up: "Thank you for playing. You have lost $24.50. Would you like a re-match?" Matthew moved the cursor to the "yes" icon and clicked and I watched him lose another game while at the same time giving me a brief tutorial on the rules.

I don't rule out the possibility that I might log on and have a game myself occasionally. It is a strangely hypnotic thing to play and you don't need the maths skills poker requires. Matthew has gone as far as to say that the backgammon is making him happy. And I know this to be true because he says he was not at all surprised to learn that it originated in Iraq thousands of years ago. "That's the first decent reason I've heard for invading," he said, "It's deadlier than anthrax." So it's all boding tremendously well.