Posted in Luton Chess Club on February 28, 2023| 1 Comment »
Luton Chess Club is continuing to promote itself and attract new members. It is hoped that with new members joining the club can enter the Bedfordshire League next season and become more competitive. Let us hope that is the way it goes.
Mark. J. McCready 8.12pm, Tuesday February 28th,
Chachoengsao Thailand.
Posted in Chess in Thailand, My own endeavours on February 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »
That’ll be all folks.
Mark. J. McCready 10.07 am, Saturday February 25th, Laksi, BKK.
Posted in My daughter on February 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Grace, my daughter, can be seen playing her daddy on holiday in the videos below, videos I had forgotten all about. She’s only 6. I was working in Guangzhou, China but flew into Thailand to see her and took her to a 4 star hotel by the sea, namely; Le Mercure, Pattaya.
Mark.J.McCready
3.21pm, February 16th
Chachoengsao, Thailand
Posted in Life beyond the chess board on February 10, 2023| Leave a Comment »
A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
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