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…
Posted in My daughter, Personal Interest & Experience on September 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Whether I like it or not I feel obliged to document content, health permitting of course. I thought it best that my daughter can find her first recorded moments of chess with her father. I have, of course, taught her how to play and taught her how to develop a conscious overview of her thought processes when she plays. I wrote down our first two proper games and was surprised to see that some of her moves show she has a good grasp of the game already. She even started off with the English Opening -an apt choice!
Since my last post, I am happy to announce I have some movement in my right shoulder now and am hoping to be well sooner rather than later…
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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