M.A.X had had severely restricted choice and asked me to help out at the weekends so gathering up Senior & Junior Caddy with the concomitant adolescent impedimenta, the 6'5" Rottweiller and a passing wife (it was a 4-1 fit) we abandoned the YC to its fate and pitched our camp on the South Coast for a week. The Rottweiller did win the Mixed Pairs with Christine Duckworth which seemed to be a result as broad as it is long. Senior Caddy had the distinction of playing on two different teams in the Swiss. (She got called in as a substitute on two different occasions and the DMs in general would rather let people play bridge than have 7 frustrated players with no game.) Since she won in both matches she's probably the only player ever to get Master Points from playing on different teams in a single event.

I was not the only DM to comment that there was a spate of missing cards (13 in 3 hands, 12 in the fourth). BT (the sponsors) should have taken note that the traditional backs to packs are red and blue, rather than one-colour packs. A face down red card while one is playing with a blue pack is usually noticed and corrected.

This was one of them

I was called over to be told North was missing a card, and it being Swiss Teams I took North’s hand to the other table and found the Queen of Hearts on the floor. I checked with the second North that he had 13 cards in front of him on his current hand, that the original hand also looked correct, returned and gave North his reconstructed hand. You would expect that to have been the end of the matter.

8 tricks into the hand and West’s Queen of Hearts was covered by North’s Queen of Hearts, the returned card. Oops! (Ruling - Redeal the board. This is now the only option even though it’s a Director’s Error)

We finally deduced that the Queen of Hearts had been dropped by the second North during the hand he was currently playing and the Seven of Clubs, which was the true missing card had remained on the table unnoticed for four hands, to be collected up at the point when I walked over! Anyway by the time this one was sorted both tables and the Purple Carapace were all reduced to helpless leg-waving. Fortunately it was the last stanza of the session so the late play didn’t cause any real grief.