Jetlag

Mute Swan on the Thames

One of the problems with emigrating from England to Australia is the distance you suddenly are from family and friends. Platitudes about the world getting smaller don't really cut it when you're sitting on a 13 hour flight after an 8 hour "short leg"! There are a lot of theories about jetlag but it is probably safest to say that it affects each person differently. My wife, Caroline, for instance, suffers minor jetlag problems, while it hits me quite badly.

We left Melbourne late on Wednesday flying Malaysian Airlines.The first flight was comfortable and the service was excellent. A 3 hour stop in Kuala Lumpur was followed by the gruelling 13 hour flight landing in London on Thursday afternoon. It's a short drive to my family which is our first destination, Basingstoke, in north Hampshire.

Village clock in Burley, New Forest

In Australia, when people ask me where I come from in England, I say that I am from about 70km west of London. Trying to describe where Hampshire is can be difficult, and as soon as you move away from London in a description, you have lost the main reference point that people have about England. So where is Basingstoke, really? Basingstoke is a crossroads, a market town between the historic centres of Reading to the north, Winchester to the west, Southampton to the south, and of course, London to the east. While it has historic prominence from Basing House, which sits to the east of the town, Basingstoke is essentially a new town, growing in the 1950's and 60's from London overspill. And as a new town, Basingstoke is a hotch-potch of housing estates built around a relatively small central shopping area. In itself, the town is not very exciting, but its location is excellent. Basingstoke is an hour from London, an hour from the coast, a short hop to the Thames, and surrounded by places of historic interest.

The bridge at Pangbourne over the Thames

Our plan was to have a couple of fairly easy days when we first arrived, so as to get used to the new time zone. We were treated to drive to the Thames on our first day by my brother and his partner. The Thames is a beautiful river through the counties of Berkshire and Oxfordshire and we were driven to the village of Pangbourne just west of Reading, about 30 minutes drive from Basingstoke. A pub lunch by the river as narrow boats and swans glide past is about as idyllic as it gets. This was followed by a riverside walk. It was a mild autumn day, and we were enchanted by scenes which inspired Wind in the Willows illustrator E. H. Shepherd, and the author, Kenneth Grahame retired to Pangbourne.

Thatched roof in Burley, New Forest

The following day I was still suffering from jetlag. So another short trip was welcome. The weather has been very pleasant, with plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the high teens Celsius. So we went off to the New Forest to search for ponies. Again my brother drove and the 4 of us headed to the picturesque village of Burley. The magical natural countryside has an ancient history with evidence of prehistoric barrows while the area was the land of the Jutes in Anglo-Saxon times. Royal interest goes back as far as William the Conqueror, who proclaimed the area a royal forest. For us, though, it was a matter of having a scone and seeing some beautiful wildlife, and both of these were found!

New Forest pony in front of an Oak

Pony on the New Forest heathland

Sylvan magic

It's been great to see family, and see how my former home has changed over the 30 years since I lived here. And its been a beautiful start to our trip to England with a couple of stunning days out.

Basingstoke Chess Club, A Sad Day

I learnt a little earlier today of the sad loss of stalwart organiser, Joe French.

Joe had been putting his heart and soul into junior chess in Basingstoke and Hampshire since I was a kid, and it is partly his influence that makes me coach the way I do today. Joe's strengths were his tireless energy, his enthusiasm for the game, and his inspiration to the kids who he brought through his ranks. Chess, like all pastimes, needs people who are willing to devote themselves to their passion, and Joe did this spending masses of time organising Saturday morning Junior chess clubs, and helping to run the Basingstoke Chess Club.

After I left Basingstoke, Joe extended his efforts to include Junior Chess administration throughout Hampshire and finally won the ECF President's Award in 2004 for services to chess.

I was lucky enough to meet up with him briefly when I visited Basingstoke in 2012, but I have no photos of Joe, just memories. Since that time when I wrote about my visit to the club, Basingstoke Chess Club have a new website. There is more information about Joe French, including a photo, on the club forum.

Glen Eira Chess Club

As a Junior in the southern English town of Basingstoke, the first chess club I went to was not far from where I lived. At Westside chess club, I was able to develop my game against players of various strengths, juniors, seniors, beginners, and international competitors. I learned much chess wisdom there as well as etiquette and  chess culture. Unfortunately, Westside chess club ceased to exist, though chess clubs carried on. I moved from Westside to Brighton Hill Chess Club, where a new group of players broadened my horizons, and I followed to a number of other clubs.

I envisage Glen Eira Chess Club providing the same opportunity to players here in the South East suburbs of Melbourne. A very nice core group of players have now developed at the club and there is a great vibe on a Friday night when we meet. I originally started the club partly to meet the needs of a group of juniors who were getting too good for school chess and needed a different environment to develop their game. A number of these have become loyal members of the club along with some adult players.

We meet at 6.30 pm on a Friday evening at Carnegie Library and start tournament games about 7.15 pm. The games are rated on the ACF rating list and are played at a rate of 60 minutes + 10 seconds per move. We are currently coming to the end of our first 7 round event of the year. There have had 18 players competitors and full standings can be seen on the tornelo site. The first 3 players will qualify for our end of year championship and I'm currently playing very well and leading the event with 4.5/5. Half a point behind on 4/5 is FM Domagoj Dragicevic who was last year's Championship runner-up. Jerzy Krysiak is currently in third place on 3.5 but a large group of players are just behind, and with 2 rounds left to play, more than half the field could still qualify.

There will be 2 further 7 round swiss qualifiers throughout the year before the Championship final which starts in October. I'm sure the juniors in this event are getting invaluable experience and learning important lessons.

A position not unlike this was reached in a game between 2 of our junior players last week. It is one that all players should know how to defend, but easier to understand once you have played it and lost, just like the young player with black did!

The points to understand are that black's rook is cutting off the advance of white's king, but white's king can advance under cover of his pawn. However, when white advances his pawn black has another method to attack white's king. Black's king is cut off on the back rank, but it is positioned in front of white's pawn.

1.c6 Ra1! Black's rook takes 'checking distance' from behind white's king. This is the technique that must be remembered. 2.Kd6 Rd1 and white cannot escape checks while simultaneously defending his pawn.

Losing a position like that above, and then learning the proper technique so that it sticks in one's mind, is a great lesson for a young player and one that will regularly occur at a chess club.

In the Town Where I was born...

At the moment the chess world is seeing an absolute glut of top class chess. Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana starred at the Grand Prix final split between the cities of Sao Paulo and Bilbao, while World Champion Anand disappointed. Finishing just before that was the London GP event where Boris Gelfand showed that his World Championship was no fluke as he came equal first with Mamdyarov and a resurgent Topalov. Going on at the same time was the Karpov tournament in Poikovsky, won by Russian Jakovenko, who is now playing board 1 for his team Ugra in the European Club Cup in Israel. This is an unbelievably strong team event, reminiscent of the big soccer leagues of Europe where home town allegiance is not a prerequisite.

So it is with this in mind that I noticed my birth town of Basingstoke is holding an international event in a couple of weeks time. The Basingstoke International is being organised by e2e4chess and it might just be the strongest event ever to be held in the vicinity of Basingstoke. So far there are already 4 Grandmasters entered and with live coverage and extensive pgn downloads, this is one event I will be following closely.

For those who don't play chess, the area is lovely. Hook is a village to the east of Basingstoke just on the far side of Old Basing which is itself an ancient village mentioned in the Domesday Book and the site of a battle in 871AD! There are Roman remains throughout the area and an abundance of excellent country pubs!

Coach and Horses, Rotherwick

The Fox Inn at Ellisfield

The Mill House, North Warnborough