Strange heady feeling at the moment. This could be down to some sort of virus, or the fact that I won a chess game this morning in 17 moves. I was playing Andy Pandian (oh yes I was), who was kind enough to come round to my house to play a much-postponed club knockout game. After a fairly innocuous opening he allowed a winning pawn sacrifice. In fact it was so winning that it wasn’t even a sacrifice.
Quite a relief after a series of long games, most of them lost, like the one yesterday against William Boulton of Norfolk & Norwich club, who is a really top-rate junior. Good game, but he had the edge almost all the time. One of my recent games has been annotated by our star annotator Mike Read, for inclusion in the January edition of En Passant, the Norfolk chess magazine. He is very complimentary, but as I suspected, I missed a couple of things. Using “couple” in a rather loose sense.
Spent most of Sunday recovering from Saturday’s lunch, but then had a date with a curry on Magdalen Street. With the curry came Heather, Simon and Sam – Heather with a new dark-haired look, as well as a new no-smoking lifestyle, and a new intention to move in with Simon. Sam is very pleased with this, as it means he gets a larger room. They all go very well together. Good curry, too, at Ali Tandoori, where the waiters quickly become personal friends, which is sort of extremely nice and rather over-the-top at the same time. Had my usual Biryani, which was as usual good. Not much to eat at all yesterday. Caught up on phone calls, in-tray etc.
Dot is now off to see Barbara, leaving me to organise tonight’s Tuesday Group meal, which will be quite fun and extremely straightforward. When it comes to meals I only do straightforward. I may be earning a little money again soon. Three of my poems have been bought for a website, and a teacher has offered me a fee to go in and talk about poetry. I am also planning a course for church magazine editors with Anne Coomes, who runs the website in question. This will not be paid for initially but could lead to some income later. Dot’s accountant was round here yesterday finalising her accounts for the year. His daughter has written a book, and I was able to direct her to the right place to get some publicity in the EDP. I hope.
Weather is slightly warmer than yesterday, but very cloudy, in an anticyclonic sort of way.