Ruck meaning a scrum in Rugby or a mob having a fight is a slightly different usage to what I am talking about. It's the same word OK, meaning a pile or heap or something: I'm looking for the use of the word meaning a lot: there was a ruck of folk at the party. Not implying fighting or a melee particularly, just a lot of them. It's definitely used like this in south Cheshire and Stoke, but I want to know if Vikram Seth was right to use it in that sense for a Rochdale person.
   A shard-ruck, in Stoke(pronounced more like shord-rook), is the heap of broken pottery beside a pot-bank, incidentally,