A Different League

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The other day, I finally located the whereabouts of the chess sets and clock I thought were lost. I knew they were in the house somewhere, but I'd just lost track of them over the last decade or two. I was starting to clear some of the stuff from the crawl space we like to call a loft, in readiness for the work on the chimney for the planned wood stove, and came across a cardboard box containing various games, including my competition chess set: the big 'uns pictured, the two travel sets and the chess clock, also in picture. Result and sigh of relief: the competition set and clock alone would cost a fair bit to replace, now.

The cloth chess board was one I silkscreened when I was a technician at the Art College in Bangor, back in the late eighties: my next build is going to be a full-sized competition board using some of the reclaimed pitch pine boards from James & Leo's chapel on Anglesey, which will replace the one I made in the mid-eighties, when I played for The Bull, Bethesda, in the Gwynedd league: the most anarchic chess club imaginable. The captain of the team was Dennis (Slash to his closest friends) Lewis Jones, who is a local legend on many fronts, and still playing chess online at a pretty high level today. I'm still trying to dust the cobwebs off my game after decades of neglect: maybe one day I'll challenge the old bugger again. The result, I fear, will be my inevitable loss ;0)

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