The Lurch

It's a long time since I took one for his knob. Or two for his heels. It's a long time since I added up fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, and six is a dozen. All this because I only discovered today the origin of the phrase to leave someone in the lurch. If you have ever "died in the hole", you were left in the lurch, because that is exactly what the lurch is: you are on 50, when your opponent has sailed past you to win the game.
Have you the slightest idea what I am talking about? If you haven't, then it means that your youth was not misspent as mine was. Thanks, dad, you were a great card player.
My best year at this game was the year I spent teaching at Longton High School, Stoke on Trent. Most evenings, I went to the Windmill pub at Meir Heath near where I had digs, and sat at the table with the cribbage enthusiasts playing crib and drinking pints till it was time to stagger back down the hill to my lumpy bed chez Mrs Ainsley, a dyky sort of woman, who never tired of telling me she was descended from the famous Ashley pottery family, and equally never tired of telling me what a wonderfully SUPERIOR person her previous lodger, Michael, was. Superior to me, that is. I wouldn't have given one for HIS knob, and that's a fact.