McCreadyandChess

At first sight the ploughman’s task seems to be one which ought rightly to be set only to some well-balanced philosopher, who could calmly descend into himself during the many lonely hours and think of nature and man in orderly thoughts. To the ordinary man, with his drug-habit of taking to reverie during any long spell of solitude, such a task would seem fatal. In fact, it is pretty certain that many a plain fellow must be turned into a fool by the immense monotony of similar furrows and the same view repeated exactly every quarter of an hour. When he is still a boy, he goes about even in the four hours’ darkness of the winter mornings with always a song amidst the sleet or the silent frost. At lunch he can look for nests or nuts or hunt a stoat. Edward Thomas, The Heart of England, Part Two The Lowland, Chapter 2 Faunus, London J. M. Dent & Co. 1909

The road taken and the road not taken…

I couldn’t have known at the time, of course, because nothing loomed large in the future, only in the past it did, but Wednesday March 29th 1995 was indeed a day not to be forgotten.

For a Spring morning the weather was nothing untowards, no not at all. No rain, no wind, no hail. Below some light cloud that feint sunshine pierced, a local train, where a future friend sat, halted in Luton and I got on. He’d come from London and went past Hertfordshire into Bedfordshire unbeknownst to himself, so stayed on the train that had reached its end before heading back to London. Mario Nicolaou was his name, I was the one who explained he had already gone past his stop when he asked where we were. Rather approachable he was and some small talk was had. Then as the train left the station and left the town some five or so minutes after, the countryside stretched over the widening River Lea and the grasslands it bent beyond. Harpenden and St. Albans came and went, then at Radlett off we stepped in search of a bus that took us to a university campus hidden in the countryside, not much past 10 am still. It came soon and up a long hill where country folk were housed far back from the road before it left us behind and further still towards Aldenham, a quaint rustic village where the bus turned off and dropped us nearby, along with a collective of students and their book bags headed towards their halls and their lectures.

It was an Open Day for whoever had their application accepted, home to undergraduates who studied for an Arts Degree only at Hertfordshire University, and some post-graduates too I suppose, all lectured within a 19th century Grade 2 listed building named Wall Hall, it’s accompanying gardens as impressive as they were pastoral when the weather was kind to all grazing in the farmland yonder.

The day itself was timetabled for they offered a modular degree in which you could then specialize in beyond the first year. We were all invited to sit in the largest of the rooms on the ground floor. It had bay windows, wooden panelling and a large stone fireplace that resembled a portcullis. Various heads of departments came and went to promote their courses, and of course, some hours were spent listening to them whilst taking tea and biscuits. History I recall too little of to mention except that in the second semester I took a module on the Industrial Revolution in England taught by him presenting, linguistics I found thoroughly unappealing, literature and its Marxist interpretation of what that was I found unpersuasive, my mind already settled on studying Philosophy, which I warmed to with the little sun that fell through the windows at back of the room where the sagacious lecturer stood as he foretold what we would study with those under him that long afternoon.

After the presentation, freshmen provided a guided tour of the campus with us all being split up into groups. Mine was orchestrated by a chap from Peterborough named Paul. He showed us around and his room also. There, I asked if I could see one of his essays, which imprinted something on me I still use today; that being how to indent ‘,then,’ stylistically in writing as so,¹ and that I really ought to start improving my writing.

A jolly good day ended late afternoon and there was I in a bit of a rush all of a sudden. I had a match in the Bedfordshire County Championships that evening against future county champion Paul Kendall, rated 168 that season but usually rated around 180-190 (abouts ELO 2090), which if I recall correctly, due to the type of board and set used, took place in Leighton Buzzard. My mind was elsewhere and had been all day, it really was, thus the game was rather peculiar. It may have been the case that Paul assumed victory was forthcoming before play began for he played an innocous sideline against my French Defence (1. e4 e6 2. b3) a double edged position arose as we castled on opposite sides of the board, me kingside and him queenside but that left him with no real attack and me much easy play. He allowed checkmate on move 25 with both of us playing as if it were a blitz game. All relatively meaningless, the result was of no importance but the manner of it was suggestive however. I was already doing well in the county championships and that result put me into second if I recall correctly, with only 1-2 rounds left. Paul was stronger than those I would normally beat but I was interested only on how the day went and where my life was going for I saw it all up front for the first time. I played chess that evening in a carefree indifferent mood and was elsewhere mentally but somehow I pulled it off and won easily. This put me in the reckoning for the title, much more prestigious than any before it but a combination of me believing it to be beyond my grasp and not coused on my most recent win in it at all, consigned it to nothing more than history post-haste.

A love of chess did indeed get me reading in my teens voraciously then continually, which lead to a love of literature in all its forms and guises thereafter, poetry especially. That began to foster in 1991 and by 1995 had already reached the point where I wanted to carry it on further as much as I could: exemplifying that reading habits had remained in place but its subject matter had broadened. Wednesday March 29th 1995 was a day where academia and chess began to diverge from one another; one representing the past, the other the future, which would be mapped out by it in my neighbouring county. ² With a waning interest, I would carry on playing chess for another two years before it was put on hiatus so that I could focus fully on academia. For years chess became the road not taken and that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

End

The rest, says old McCready, is history… .

‘There is little of wisdom in his words except moderation; but his garden is luckier, his kitchen sweeter than all the rest in the hamlet, and of all his tasks—ploughing, harrowing, rolling, drudging, reaping, mowing, carting faggots or corn or hay or green meat or dung—he likes none better than the others, because he likes them all well as they come. And ah! to see him and his team all dark and large and heroic against the sky, ploughing in the winter or the summer morning, or to see him grooming the radiant horses in their dim stable on a calm, delaying evening, is to see one who is in league with sun and wind and rain to make odours fume richly from the ancient altar, to keep the earth going in beauty and fruitfulness for still more years.‘ Edward Thomas, The Heart of England, Part Two The Lowland, Chapter 2 Faunus, London J. M. Dent & Co. 1909

1. I have temendously fond memories of Paul as he was such a great laugh and the amount of parties and drinking sessions down the student union bar with our many mutual friends cannot be counted. During the winter of my year as freshman he got into a snowball fight in his kitchen once. Jason, his opponent, ran out of snowballs and scuttered out to make some more. Paul thought he had gone and sat down at the table by where I was. Jason then stormed back in and pelted one right at him, going straight into the mouth whilst he was talking to me, which made him go ‘Aaaarrrggghhhh!’ with a look of disdain before chasing him out and carrying things on in the snow. He lived in the building just across from mine on the campus and he had 4 exchange students on his floor, one from Germany, another from Greece, one from Spain and another from America, they only had one toilet on their floor, as we all did, and I browned them all off in one party once by putting an empty wine bottle in the tank which made it difficult to flush! The American guy was called Mike Howard and was studying at the University of Wisconsin, in Eau Claire (He is the one fully responsible for getting me into American Football by insisting I watch games with him and supporting The Green Bay Packers with Brett Favre at quarterback, especially when they played the Minnesota Vikings). Paul loved playing pranks and did so to everyone on his floor by adjusting the embezzled dial at the top of the door to the kitchen, which determined how slowly or quickly it would close. Paul worked out that if you turned it in a certain direction fully, the door would take about 10 minutes to close and you had to push it very hard to force it to in order to speed it up. Mike came into the kitchen and Paul went and showed him what he had done and how you had to bust your balls to close it properly now, which being a fire door was funny to him. He then came up with a brainwave and did it to the door to Mike’s room whilst he was in the kitchen. When Mike went back to his room with his plate of food, all we heard from down the corridor was ‘Oh that’s really clever, show someone how to do a trick then pull it on them thinking they won’t know it was you!’
   
   I do have a picture of Paul, Mario, Jason and I all with our arms around each other in Paul’s kitchen during some party/drinking session that winter but I simply cannot post it, I really can’t. Let’s just say, clearly much drinking had already gone on and leave it there. SEE BELOW FOR UPDATE
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2. In Wall Hall Campus, I stayed at Room 6, Hall 6 Kennedy Court for one year 95 – 96 (it was called that because John. F. Kennedy used to stay in the large stately home before it became part of a university campus). I was so well read by then, I never made that much effort to study in my first year and found it all rather easy. So much so that I spent more time reading The Guardian newspaper and attending The Philosophy Society, of which I would become the President of the following year and attend dinners in St. Albans with many visiting lecturers, and of course, the student union bar both before and after lectures and at weekends also. I hung out and played football with the exchange students mostly, we drank together too, and went shopping around Hertfordshire, especially in St. Albans. For that reason, I joined them in my second year and also became an exchange student in Finland. I have lifelong friends from my first year at university and was more socially active than I had ever been. The most intelligent person I have ever met in my entire life was one of my lecturers also, a certain Prof. Daniel. D. Hutto. To this day I have never met one chess player with anything like the intellect he has. My family drove me and my possessions to the campus to help me move in, including a large book collection, with my mother and sister insisting on a guided tour that Autumn after I had settled in. Friends came to visit and have a look round also, Paul especially, I even took ex-girfriend Rachel there during her visit to England. I completed my degree by helping out at a conference for the Aristotelian Society and have nothing but pleasant memories of my time there. On my very last visit, I rolled up on my bicycle from Luton to collect my results: 2nd in the year in the Philosophy dept., and Upper 2.1 awarded, achieving 67.4%. I then put another 85kms on the bike by shooting off to Cambridge where I spent the summer, having already accepted an offer to commence with an MA at Warwick University that Autumn. ↩︎

WITH RELUCTANCE: HERE IS A PHOTO FROM THE XMAS PARTY 95

LEFT TO RIGHT ITS PAUL, MARIO, ME, JASON

Mark J McCready