If, like thyself, you’ve put your back into reading up on all that past, across days, weeks’, bank holiday week ends and months woven together, pat yourself on the back, sit yourself back down, and have a cup of tea, just ad milk and 1-2 sugars.
As a first year undergraduate writing away in leafy Hertfodshire, the two modules I took for history 15/16th century English history and the Industrial Revolution -both well worthy of study for this unbiased Brit with nothing better to do anyway.
My lecturer used to makes jokes about our industrial revolution, one was him going back in time asking people who it’s like to through the industrial revolution, with one answer being ‘oh are we, I thought we just sold more stuff’!
Back in the hallowed antiquities in the 1990s, where governance in the UK went into slow decline, everyone watched The Spice Girls and Mr.Blobby: unspeakable acts of crime were committed at my chess club in a manner that was as perfunctory as it was unforgiveable.
The 90s was not a digital era as such, clubs that had records kept them on paper. It was all paper back then. All our league tables, match cards, team lists, and rating lists were sent to the lockers in the football club’s changing room, then some months later lobbed out. Makes your spine chill doesn’t it?
In our modern age everything is digital and exists in the form of data. It doesn’t get lost.
It’s very saddening to think back to those evenings where match results were thrown out. No historian would do that. Instead they would classify them as primary source material, most likely they would remain covered. It was a great shame that our president Ken Liddle saw them as taking up space and to be slung out.
We value data and information much more now, which in turn means we are compelled to think of the 90s as depressing, from a historical perspective. Sadly the question of who a game scoresheet belong to in the modern game is a complex one, and to some degree, debatable.
Note to self: If you are interested in playing through the 496 competitive matches you wrote scoresheets for, erm, maybe not go up into loft and chuck the lot out -bloody hypocrite!
McCreadyandChess 
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