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 Chess in Thailand, My daughter on September 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I found a video that I haven’t seen in a while, in which I give my daughter some training during the lockdown when the Corona virus was reeking havoc on everyone’s lives. My daughter is only aged 7 in this video.
Posted in My daughter, On-line journal on August 3, 2022| Leave a Comment »
There’s focus, there’s amusement, there’s hilarity, and there’s self-indulgence. I am guilty of all this week but most of all the latter, which you could argue is the sum of the three parts before it. Why? Simply put I can’t express the total amusement I had over the posts regarding shrines a few days back, and in truth I’ve been in love with my blog since then, or at least in love with the idea that more humour would follow on, which it did. Irrespective of how amusing you think I may or may not be, I consider myself to be very funny at times and have been on form all week.
As wonderful and refreshing as that may be, it saddens me as I type, so much so that something has to change with immediate effect for the simple reason that in the past few days I have neglected my daughter, along with everything else in this world. And that is unacceptable because I have very little time left with her before I return to work. It is true that I spoke very little to her today -now that cannot be allowed to go on.
Fewer posts may follow this week or perhaps they won’t. Perhaps the time of writing will change from daylight hours to evening hours, as is the case at this very present. She lies next to me asleep in this cold dark room. Everyone is sleeping except myself. Of the 4 people sharing this space, 2 of them have Covid, it has been confirmed. Inevitably I will pick it up if I haven’t already. Something is wrong already, I can tell but cannot quite tell what it is yet. But that is immaterial… .
A cardinal sin has been committed and I am disappointed with myself for letting it happen. Because of the very nature of who I am, it’s my job to know myself exceptionally well. That I do because I have to. I’ve always been obsessive, today is just one more example of that, and a very cheery one in certain respects, saddening in others. One of hardest things of the job of remaining human and one step ahead of humanity for the most part, is accepting your own values and the vulnerability they bring with them. I love my daughter too much to allow such mistakes to be made and not picked up upon so quickly. Yes it’s not a crime to make yourself happy and love what you do but it is a crime to forget what is most important of all.
Mark: ‘you’re giving me a hard time, what am I supposed to do with a hard time, especially from you?’ You are supposed to remain in love with A Flock of Seagulls playing and stop beating yourself up. No harm has been done, just precious time wasn’t seen as precious. The flip side of all that is you’ve had 6 solid weeks of company and have, in my own little way, grown fond of and very used to it.
What I have to conclude upon is I will forever be an academic with conclusions forefront in my thinking, in addition, I took my love of writing to a new level recently. The content about the guy who smashed up a shrine had me chuckling away for days there. I was entertaining myself like never before and brought many online friends into the humour on different platforms as I could not hide my joy, I really couldn’t. There are no morbid tales here, just a disappointment with myself for allowing priorities to be reordered temporarily. So Grace goes back to being the primary focus, and writing stays secondary. I should not write in the day anymore, that’s her time not my time. Whilst they sleep, well that’s different.
This is what I am supposed to do? The way that you smile reveals a shadow from the past or so the song goes, oh well. What I am supposed to do now is link a song. Can you guess what it is and who it’s by?
Posted in My daughter on July 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
What do I do when I am not at work and not online? Well, ‘I know its out of fashion and a trifle uncool’
Posted in My daughter on November 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Chess, My daughter, Tournament Chess on February 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Here’s a few extra pics from the tournament my daughter entered. My favoured portrait lens is broken, hence shot style is different to usual.
MJM
Posted in My daughter, Personal Interest & Experience on February 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
“Parenthood…It’s about guiding the next generation, and forgiving the last.”
― Peter Krause (Parenthood)
Posted in My daughter, Personal Interest & Experience on February 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Get this: I enter my daughter into the National Championships of the country where she was born. She is entered into the girls U-8 section, which I thought she’d find a cinch. Her results are here:
http://chess-results.com/tnr513631.aspx?lan=1&art=1
The bottom line is she just isn’t ready, losing one game in only 6 moves. I found it hard on many levels. I have hyper mania and have had it since my main accident on Oct 9th 2016. Instead of sleeping I am up all night sprinting down dark lanes listening to dark heavy metal. Then it’s a motorbike to where the temple is, a walk over a long bridge, a taxi ride, 21 stops on the skytrain and, a sprint across a major city junction -not the sort of start to a day of chess your opening moves should bear resemblance towards and care for a dependent daughter relishes.
Despite my rusted eyes, photography responsibilities came to the fore, but because the chief arbiter didn’t know me, I had to put him in his place. The organizer, an old playing partner, stopped him short and let me come and go as I pleased whilst all other parents were booted out about a minute before play began -leaving me to click away until the fatigue made my eyes too heavy. Here are some of the pics I took of my daughter.
With parenthood patience becomes a virtue. And on a lighter note, because I have hyper mania and never sleep, on the train between rounds I dropped and went right to the end of the line, fifteen stations past the one I was meant to alight -Pra Khanong, which means temple village by translation. The security guard had trouble waking me up. When I got booted off the train I was propa fucked – but miles away from where I needed to be made me laugh more than anything. The next day I nodded off on the train again but only went one station past where I was meant to alight this time. At least it gave me good reason to flirt with a super hot mum whose daughter played mine. Tough old five days that was, thankfully with it being a long holiday there were less muppets in the city.
A lot more work lies ahead and speaking of which, it’s 0340 and time for another run down down lanes with dark heavy metal blasting out the old eardrums. Only 4.32kms everyday with a 1.6 km bike ride. Nothing much but sorely felt during official events…
“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
Posted in My daughter on February 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »
As a loving and panglossian father, I wrongly assumed within 6 months my daughter would be doing all too well… .
I learn from parenthood that patience is both a virtue, and crucially, a necessity.
I entered Grace into the Girls U8 section of her National Championships thinking she had real chances…oops. Instead we could only encourage her to enjoy the event and pay no attention to the results. This meant I had to drag the old camera out. I have an eye for photography still but its a rusty eye.
Posted in My daughter, Personal Interest & Experience on February 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Not since living in Azerbaijan have I had to dust off ye olde Canon. Now some might consider that rather forlorned, which it is, but it’s what ya do with what ya got which counts the most.
I love my Portrait Lens and it’s f1.8 shallow depth of field, as ya shall surely see. It’s me daughter’s first chance to represent her country so a rusty me will be a creative-me too, as yee shall see… .
As esteemed chess coach Richard James will tell you results so rarely matter when they are so young…
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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