Archive for the ‘Bedfordshire Chess’ Category

“In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps,
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.”

Faith Healing -Philip Larkin

Depart here: arrive there. I am about to ‘win the exchange’, to put it metaphorically for ahead is an ascent into the sky by A380, leaving behind a bid farewell to the fragments of a life long since passed, still echoing, resonating into that to come: the resumption of the life I chose, the airline chosen to carry me there, and my child waiting for her father to carry her, therefore, an exchange of locations awaits. I will ‘win the exchange’ but it is not without an evinced sense of sorrow. To cherish that disparate fragment left behind so deeply, I will miss it…I know how I will feel and think during take-off next week: ‘Into my heart an air that kills’…one day next year the Bedfordshire chess scene will feel like ‘the land of lost content’, that I can tell … .

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

A Shropshire Lad v.40 A. E. Housman

Behold the spectacle of Bedford Chess Club! Before departing I went there to see both it and its members new and old. It was great to thank Mr. Paul Habershon for the help he has given and to be escorted to the bar by Mr. Nigel Staddon, now 87 years old, able to answer the questions I posed. It was also a pleasure to meet Mr. Steve Pike, and have a chat at the bar… in fact I wonder and ask myself did I spend more time chatting in the bar than in the club watching games? All in all, truly amazing it was and whether or not I had drunk cider just before never mattered…not that I would ever do such a thing you understand being on the medication that I am!

Oops! Now where's that delete button gone?

Oops! Now where’s that delete button gone?

At the centre of the county scene flourishes Bedford Chess Club. I was so welcomed, it was so very touching but within my heart a sadness spoke too, it said ‘When you close the door as you leave, you must say goodbye to not just the members but the club as a whole’. Many I met were kind and so polite, happy to see me again. There was much to talk about and part of me wanted not to go but to stay… .

I left the building and there something left me…when the exit door was opened it jarred then splintered through my heart…but I remembered as one door closes another opens, and close it I did…so upon the street I stood alone… .

“Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.”
Here -Philip Larkin
There, stood staring into an avenue empty, my brain stopped processing for a split second or two: then I heard the trees arching over rustle in the wind that gusted suddenly, saw the street lights become brighter, felt the pain of ‘farewell’ sharpening, and for a moment I was disorientated. Towards the train station I walked happy but sad, sad but happy as I had an evening so inspired by the courtesy and company of others, and it cannot be repeated… .
To the action… .

In Bedford 3, I offer assistance to Steve Pike’s son at @6.10 then appear!

Farewell beloved Bedford Chess Club…it was such a pleasure, I do hope one day I will see you again…once I have won the exchange (of locations) and played on with a better position…perhaps I will return with my daughter to play also…if I can free us up… .

“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.
Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.”

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Life moves us on. And on. And whilst at the station awaiting an extortionately priced train to where I grew up, that afternoon of horrendous delays extended long into the evening… . It was then, and only then, that my love of the chess club in Bedford became perceptible as a dissonant fragment of a life long passed by, thus a cynical epiphany occurred. I told myself, ‘what I tolerate, so must my child, as she will endure what I endure’. Crap train service as always, for example. I told myself, ‘If you tolerate this (extortionate and crap train service) then your child will be (the) next (to tolerate this extortionate and crap train service)’… .

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It’s so wonderful to return to the fold, to be back in the heart of the thing I miss the most, to put to one side a return to health, to become so adrenalized, to go into overdrive, to tear my opponent apart, to win us the match yet again and once more for my long-lost team mates, to make my team both proud and happy, to come back and conquer, to make myself both happy and content and so, to come ‘From out of nowhere’, to watch the first 23 seconds of the video below, you will see what I modeled my behaviour on when I checkmated my opponent and became so ecstatic- I kid you not… .

The day and how it unfolded…

Being so out of practice of course I was worried. This is about honour but the brain damage I have makes me go from hyperactive to a polarized alternative without warning. I never know when nor have the means to control it. I began telling myself just take it to him if you can. I said ‘You are from Luton (letter ‘t’ not pronounced), you know what that means. Stick it to him. And honour your team and its town. Then as the time of departure drew near I dressed with this on.

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He he, nothing to see here. Not a reference to where I am from but more so where I should be.

The black snow boots bought in Baku were the ones I wore in Bakuriani, Georgia, and on the way back to Tiblisi where I stopped off and took a pee in scumbag despicable Stalin’s home town (yes, yes, yes claim to fame!). Georgia is below.

Me and me baby. Some cold wind was blowing up that mountain.

Me and me baby in Tblisi. Some cold wind was blowing up that mountain.

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Bakuriani. Me and me baby. Isn’t she lovely? Look at the transportation in use!

I wore black fleece trousers also. I wear black because musicwise I was a metalhead once. My jacket is orange because I am from Luton. Prior to play I was not confident because I felt tired and not myself but the conversation en route was cracking. I saw what Milton Keynes is like en route. Then, I saw the University and there I began to change. Was it that I had slotted back in? Perhaps yes perhaps no.

The Karpov-like accumulation of small advantages…

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French Tarrasch with me being white.

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14. Nd4 was played. The purpose is to place the queen on the f1-a6 diagonal because the black queen is misplaced. When the white queen goes to b5 with tempo after an exchange on e2, then Rad1 is played, white has the easier game… .

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Black allows both 15. Bxd4 and 16 Qb5! He thinks a kingside attack is worthwhile. I already know I will win… .

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All endgames are won but two rook endgames require much precision so I played 24. Qxb7. He can activate his rook and does with 27. … Rb8 but look at his back rank weakness, it’s easy… .

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Ahem. I just played 31. Qd6 and then he played 31. … h5. Hahahahahaha. Any thoughts on how I delivered checkmate with the next move?

You know, I left the playing hall both overjoyed but full of sorrow. Enjoy the vids below.

I appear @ 2.47, 6.20, 9.43.

In this one I am Sir, ‘Not appearing in this clip’.

I appear @ 2.42, 4.31 (my point was soon proven in the game), 5.58 (confirmation that I was correct).

I appear @ 5.21.

I appear @ 0.43.

In this one I am Sir, ‘Not appearing in this clip’.

And so I left the building and entered the night at 11 pm or just there after. Whether it was now cold went unnoticed. Leaving behind that which made me what I am mattered more. The walk to the car was where conversation was most convivial. The team captain and I were so overjoyed…oh how I so much missed every single aspect of what I was walking away from. My heart sank so very far. I walked. I walked on. We were triumphant. We left… .

…on our way home we drove along the motorway and I talked about who played the best. Did it really matter that I won? Yes it did but what mattered more was to feel loved by those who, being English can’t express their feelings so easily, only to then act in accordance with what they don’t feel. When an exception occurs, you know there is a reason for it is now that we are top of the league! And who put us there? It was me :-).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ChrdJoBCk

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Thank you for reading and watching.

Mark

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As a student of adversity, I’ve been stuck over the years how some people with major challenges seem to draw strength from them and I’ve heard the popular wisdom that that has to do with finding meaning and for a long time I thought the meaning was out there, some great truth waiting to be found but over time I’ve come to think that the truth is irrelevant. We call it finding meaning but we might better call it forging meaning…

Andrew Solomon

Taken from one of Manhattan’s greatest ever writers…if not the greatest, that being Andrew Solomon. The thing that distinguishes him is not just that he is so often at seminal moments in his texts and speeches unwittingly Aristotelian but rather that he is so modern, methodical and meticulous. Being an established journalist in the US and A’s top newspaper, he knows what his readers anticipate, having been drawn, collectively or otherwise, towards his literature for reasons which are both rationally informed and researched well in our modern age…I was tempted to say well-researched there but I’m neither a fan of compound adjectives nor metaphors to be honest… he is not just a man who is triumphant in the face of adversity, but surprisingly or not, also someone who has liked a complimentary tweet or two made about him by yours truly :-).

In returning to what was so long ago once ‘home’ -that being where I learnt to play chess- understanding what it once meant to be here and exactly what it means now is not easy. No longer can I consider it as home since home can no longer be ascertained geographically. If we rely upon the cliché that ‘home is where the heart is’ then home is wherever my daughter is so that I can be by her side, protect, love and educate her as every father should, then of course ascribing a location to home is thus otiose. However, life itself is perhaps more complex than chess given it is broader than our beautiful game and much more so the chess community you grew up in and have missed so dearly in more recent years, should you be overtly quixotic. Those thus tainted by the tragedy of its demise from that town you walked almost every road thereof. How do you practice when where you live is bereft of the club you spent so many evenings improving in or not improving in? It is no longer possible to find meaning within its walls, instead meaning must be forged… .

‘I am not an Athenian or a Greek. I am a citizen of the world.’

Spoken by Socrates in Plutarch’s ‘Of Banishment’.

Regarding the walls of thee old chess club I once knew so well, whilst drifting towards a draw in a league game long since significant, me and the team mate next to me had our opponents wander off together. Quietly and somewhat surreptitiously my team mate asked ‘Mark, what do you think to my position?’. I then said ‘It’s out of this world, its covered in bone, it’s out of this world, it’s covered in bone, out of this world, it’s covered in bone, out of this world, covered in bone, OUT OF THIS WWWOOORRRLLLDDDD, COVERED IN BONE AAARRGGGHHHH’. Boy did my team mate look confused, then get this, the chairman of the club came over and said ‘Oy! McCready what ya playin’ at?’ That was back when I used to listen to music during the trek across town. (Erm Mark, please don’t employ the word trek yeah. The last two of the three fatalities you somehow outplayed involve the word trek yes? Bicycle manufacturer and activity in Nepal yes?) I wonder what song such words come from?

 ‘Forging meaning and building identity does not make what was wrong right. It only makes what was wrong precious’

Andrew Solomon

God isn’t he gorgeous…oops, erm, irrespective of how badly you played or how instantly forgettable your opening repertoire once was, what you have learnt from is precious… .

‘We don’t seek the painful experiences that hue our identities but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences. We cannot bear a pointless torment but we can endure great pain if we believe its purposeful’ 

Andrew Solomon

It is tomorrow that I must go to Milton Keynes and it is there I must play chess to win for Luton once more…once upon a time this I once wrote about a journey across Bedfordshire.

My team mate sat next to me had not moved since we’d left Luton. We mirrored each other’s posture and sat still as he took an interest in the serenity outside. Beyond the square windows of the car, an arbitrary county line went by. Further in the distance, the shining windows of a farmhouse blazed by a creek that wove among the fields in the hills, beyond valleys sloping into an expanse of time, where day and wild orchids blew across the B-road ahead.

Me, me, me, me, me, erm ages ago… .

What a day what a day it will be. How so exciting the manner in which darkness descends will be. As chess players we gain from our game how essential it is to think ahead, so I say, the experience will outlive the result or the manner in which I win. There is supposed to be a world championship match on but for now there is no world championship match, there is only the road ahead and that which lies beyond it.

Its game on tomorrow…ghettos exist we do not profit from them…just thinking of Milton Keynes now…see below.

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Watch this space

Irrespective of my health, remaining inactive simply isn’t possible. My fellow county players, you have much to look forward to as the past is accessible once more. I work 3 hours a day with microfiche and will begin publishing that found within days.

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My fellow county players, I have some truly fantastic news, the current FIDE President Kirsin Ilyumzhinov has agreed to allow Bedfordshire to participate in the upcoming Olympiad in Baku. Without doubt the most prestigious invitation Bedfordshire has ever received in its long history and one can only imagine the excitement the opportunity will be seized by. Four main players are required and two substitutes. This will be decided at a meeting to be announced shortly, let us hope as playing partners and long term friends it is conducted in a gentlemanly manner and doesn’t descend into an almighty scrum. Bedfordshire’s most senior members will soon be sent all the info including flight details, hotel bookings and so on.

Regarding the current FIDE President, I’ve been calling him all year to try and persuade him to allow Bedfordshire to play in the upcoming Olympiad as well as all future Olympiads. The essential part of the conversation went as follows:

M =Me

K= Kirsin

M ‘Alright, is that Kirsin?’

K ‘Yes, and who is this?’

M ‘It’s Mark.’

K ‘Oh, you again, (long pause) and what are you calling for this time as if I didn’t know?’

M ‘Hmm, well, as I explained in the e-mail I kept sending. The Olympiads these days are an absolute joke. Half the countries that enter aren’t even proper countries, like Aruba, Chinese Taipei, Guernsey, Jersey, and Andorra to name but a few, and in addition some of the countries participating are the most unpleasant places on the planet, like Iraq, Yemen, Nicaragua, to name but a few. Bedfordshire has got much more going for it than that lot so can you let us in or what?’

K ‘Mark, the problem is that Bedfordshire is far too strong to enter the Olympiad and we fear its participation will make a complete mockery of the whole event. It is abundantly clear that every team you play will be beaten 4-0. Under no circumstances whatsoever can I have ex-world champions and hordes of 2700+ players knocking on my office door demanding to know how they have been beaten by an unknown county player. This will cause complete chaos and undermine the entire event which will probably have to be abandoned as a result. It is, of course, the chess world’s worst kept secret that Bedfordshire was far stronger than the Soviet Union in its heyday. Even when Botvinnik’s train briefly stopped in Luton whilst en route to Nottingham in 1936, he confessed it was the only time in his life he was too terrified to play chess after a local gentleman entered his carriage with a chess set in hand, being aware of the fearsome reputation Bedfordshire had across the entire globe. When the offer finally came an hour or so into the journey Botvinnik, more relaxed, insisted that he would only play if given odds of a queen. The gentlemen from Luton obliged but was a well known figure of its thriving chess community and played on board 2 for the Luton ‘Z’ team. Naturally it was not long before Botvinnik resigned.

K ‘Given the abundance of talent you’ve always kept so well hidden to all except us of course, we will give you two choices: the first that your Bedfordshire players agree to play all matches blindfold and that their opponents’ moves are not announced during play to them, no questions concerning play can be asked or will be answered, your team members must simply guess what has been played before making their next move. Alternatively, you deliberately lose all matches against established nations but you can beat all the weak ones that no one cares about. We suggest this second option and expect you will take it.

The FIDE president then continued:

K ‘If Bedfordshire annihilates the entire chess world at the Baku Olympiad it might be annihilated in return…it could be that upon the victorious Bedfordshire team’s return a simultaneous display of atomic bombs may just happen to land on Milton Keynes Chess Club, Bedford Chess Club, Leighton Buzzard Chess Club and Northampton Chess Club, erm, but perhaps not Luton, after all, we don’t want to improve its appearance!

Those players who wish to form a team for Baku please sign up below. In doing so you express agreement with the following statement:

‘If I represent Bedfordshire at the Olympiad I promise not to constantly thrash super Grand masters or wallop ex-world champions with ease. Also, I don’t want to be killed or anything like that so I won’t say anything bad about Azerbaijan or anything nice about Armenia as well. I accept full responsibility for any atomic bombs landing on my chess club as a result of my over-performance at the board and promise to rebuild any chess club entirely obliterated with my own hands as a result. With the greatest of enthusiasm I will sign up below.’

Name?

Club?

Rating?

Colour Preference (if any)?

Ability to deliberately lose to 2800 & 2700 players?

If none, previous experience surviving atomic blastings?

Inside leg measurement?

Hat size?

The air speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African and European)?

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Bedfordshire or Baku?

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An Atomic Bomb

Swallow

African or European?

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An unnamed member of Bedford Chess Club (possibly an occasional Board 5 player for the A team) has sent pictures to F.I.D.E taken during their 3-2 loss to Leighton Buzzard last season claiming that underhand tactics were used to deliberately put them off and that they should be stripped of their title.

In the first picture, the Bedford players felt unsettled by the appearance of their opponents as well as their behaviour before play began, claiming they were named A. King and A. Queen. Each also mimicked the piece they represented whilst moving round the playing hall, rather than milling around freely, especially around the boards of opposing players in time trouble, which it was claimed, is not how royalty should conduct itself and was ‘bloody annoying’.  

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Leighton Buzzard A

In the second picture Bedford’s board 5 player said when he approached the board to start the game he couldn’t concentrate properly as his opponent had a handgun on view and at the ready, and gave the impression of being a fugitive, furthermore, when his female sidekick stripped off in front of him, he forgot to press his clock and lost several minutes at the start of the game but added if there were further instances of femme fatales stripping off at the start of play, no further complaints would be lodged.

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Leighton Buzzard A strip off

A F.I.D.E official replied stating that clubs who coerce strippers into their gamesmanship will be stripped of their title. Quoting rule 18.1 ‘Er. it’s not cool to muck about during rated games yeah? It’s sort of against the rules’.

Images courtesy of MemoryChess once more.

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An email replete with expletives has been sent to the Bedfordshire Chess Association by the English Chess Federation, banning Luton Chess Club from entering the Beds. league next season after its latest mobilization was considered rather idiosyncratic.

Club Secretary Peter Montgomery, at the request of the ECF, sent pictures of recent games and evidence of the clubs recent reform. He explained ‘Well…we were going to mobilize to boring old Milton Keynes but that’s not even in Bedfordshire, so we had a brainwave, we thought why do we need to go and play there? To mobilize all you need is mobiles, let’s just use them instead.’

He then sent pictures of some recent games, which were rejected with the concluding remarks ‘Are you taking the piss? How can that be a club? Never bloody mind how boring Milton Keynes is, just get your backsides over there if you want to be entered for the next season.’ Here are the pictures of the reformed Luton Chess Club which were rejected for their idiosyncrasy.

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As per usual, I am indebted to MemoryChess for his fabulous efforts and the endless inspiration they provide.

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With England in the midst of yet another decade of poor governance and cultural degradation, its putrified neo-liberalism and crumbling capitalist architecture have fostered new levels of poverty, an increasingly narrowed middle-class, a surreptitious and multitudinous erosion of civil liberties and an unvoiced -often- immigrant minority living in more than 10 people per room sometimes and dependent upon communal meals made from Tesco’s leftovers after which our travelers of the twilight, must steal, beg and break into properties in an attempt to survive starvation, inflicting yet more misery on the British public and their apathetic police force. The 2-3 million Brits also on the poverty line, crave a slow death from decades of drinking into oblivion with their minds destroyed by drug use and dodgy soap operas.

With the democratic decision to leave the EU, those who uphold power within the UK are already trying to challenge and overturn the decision instead of respect our democracy -that being the heavily trampled on will of the people. Politicians always act out of self-interest, that’s why they become politicians in the first place. No matter how dressed up with rehashed rhetoric their artless speeches are, they can still influence that 1% who uphold the power of a nation who may or may not want to leave the EU: ‘we, must get the backhanders we are accustomed to, I didn’t shove my tongue up dozen or more backsides for nothing you know, I want what I worked for’.

Britain slides further backwards led astray by another generation of politicians where their career has such greater precedence than the plight of their nation, that the systematically depoliticized generations awash within the cities are defeated and despondent. The Freudian slip in the video below reveals what matters more to Cameron, being part of a machine that manufactures hundreds more like him whose priorities are no different.

The New Teams, their premises and, er, some words of caution

A public toilet in Stockwood Park Luton infamous for dogging, HIV, transvestites and numerous stabbings in the nineties has submitted a team for next season’s play asking if they could play on the grass outside the public lavatory rather than inside (as it’s a bit smelly).

A bunch of Bedford bell-ringers from St. Paul’s Cathedral have also expressed an interest, stating that matches could take place in the bell tower itself and that opposing teams would not need more than a decade or two to get used to the infuriating racket. Being a satanist in my youth, I suggest you refuse them entry to the league then burn down their stupid little Cathedral.

Some tramps usually seen loitering around Houghton Regis have expressed an interest if super-strong cider is provided during play on behalf of the club and shooting up in the bogs is not prohibited. Home matches would be played in tents shared by heroin addicts, where only some might be lying dead -but they’d only just be dead, or on the verge of dumps or by open fires where the outcasts of their chosen sub-culture smoulder between logs ablaze after a drunken back magic curse backfired, or perhaps by stolen cars set on fire in the middle of nowhere. One of the aforementioned tramps knows how to move ‘the horsey one’ as he put it, as well as ‘the prawns‘, he also knows that the bishop moves ‘slantyways’ but knows it can’t overtake other bits or become a crown or doesn’t get 200 pounds for passing go but must go scrumping up apple trees when they bear fruit to become promoted to a queen. He will play on board one if he is still alive by then… .

The EDL, have also submitted a team and have vowed to play only the English Opening with white or the St. George’s Defence with black. A spokesman has said:

Tell your boys we got a proper firm. We can handle ourselves over the board. We ain’t muppets. No one ever won me in play, I’ll win everyone, you’ll see. I play the prawns and make them into a mob where they march down the board, just like when we do when we are on tv. I like the prawns cos they is skinheads, so they look like us init.

When you come to our gaff its only English allowed. We got a bar. Visiting teams order just before the clocks are pressed, It’s 2 quid a pint and its 25 pints per order, so that’s 3 pints per player, er wait no 89…er no 5… yeah 5 pints per player and you gotta finish them in the first fifteen moves or we get an extra prawn on each board. Any Watford gets glassed coming in, then crushed by an 80’s fruit machine leaving. We’re the new firm, we got the thousands you lot ain’t got, you play by our rules or we march through every town in the country with thousands of skin heads dressed up as prawns upholding hundreds of banners exposing the flaws in your top boys opening repertoire as well as their worst ever blunders. Now you don’t want that do you? So just play ball and you’ll be alright. We’re not trouble makers, we’re just frustrated because the Hatters were treated like rubbish by the FA and we had no one to fight when we went into the conference…you can’t go though the weekend in Luton not scrapping with strangers in the streets -you’d go crazy in no time.

We’re supposedly against the Islamic invasion of England but don’t think we can’t be riled by months of foreign openings being played against us and reform into the ECDL (English Chess Defence League). Nuff said.

Lastly, several renowned clubs from Marseilles have also applied. After disagreements with the French Chess Federation they feel a move to the Bedfordshire league is the logical thing to do. They will continue to operate from the same premises but have promised detailed maps for visiting teams, stating that its not much further than Northampton for most clubs and is a much nicer drive anyway. If their inclusion is a success a sister club in the Cote d’Ivoire will be encouraged to join the following year.

Details to follow… .

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By jove! The beleaguered Luton Chess Club now homeless for months has exciting news for the county with 3 new venues available for the 2016 – 2017 season. I’ve been asked to post images on line and gain feedback from those around the county. I do need to add a great deal of effort has gone into securing the venues and it is unlikely that another within Luton can be found so we cannot accept criticisms concerning the unsuitability of the venues. Please note that the aim of the club was to find a venue which was a marked improvement on that of recent years.

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At Luton we only request that visiting teans are suitably dressed and that snorkelling between moves is prohibited, as is peeing in the pool both will incur a two minute penalty. Should anyone be caught shitting in the pool they will lose by default with immediate effect.

Towels, generously donated by oxfam are available although one of them is the worse for wear as it appears someone has used it to wipe his arse.

Do be a good sport and register your preferred choice of venue below.

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The altruistic John Saunders has delighted the members of the English Chess Forum once more with his efforts, supplying the 1961 rating list, which can be found here: http://www.saund.co.uk/rgs/pdfs/viewer.html?file=1961gradinglist.pdf

My former county teammates should note that several Bedfordshire players can be found in it, including Mr.Cordon from Bedford.

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