Still Around

The last month or so have been a bit difficult for me, and this blog has suffered. I need to start it again, and there's a lot to write about.

First, I'm travelling to England later in the year, partly as a holiday and partly to see family. My Dad has not been well recently and it's time to go back and see him and the rest of my family. I'll be travelling with Caroline, and we'll be spending some time in France as well as England, and popping into some other countries as well. There'll be some plans about this trip, and some Francophile posts coming up in the build up to this trip.

I've also signed up for the Puffing Billy run that I took part in a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, a couple of days after signing up, I cracked a toe and couldn't run for the best part of 2 weeks. Thankfully, today I managed to run 6 km, albeit pretty slowly. Still, it's a start and I'm hoping that I'll be able to make the 13 km distance of the Puffing Billy run without too much hassle. Last time, I didn't quite make it all the way up the second hill, and ended walking for about 2 minutes. My aim this time around is to run non stop, whatever the time I run. I will use this as a stepping stone, as I try to run the half marathon distance. I'll be filling pages of this blog with runs, kilometres, aches etc.

However, this blog is mostly about coffee and chess, with chess winning out.I'm currently working like mad for Chess Kids, and playing at 2 chess clubs in Melbourne, Glen Eira Chess Club, and the Melbourne Chess Club. I'm currently publicity officer at the MCC, and Secretary/President/Treasurer/Arbiter/general dogsbody of Glen Eira Chess Club, so I'd better start writing some material for these clubs here. I've had a few interesting positions in these events so far, and done pretty well. I'm on 4/5 at the MCC Championship, and 3.5/4 in the Glen Eira Summer Swiss. I've been lucky that much of the preparation I did for the Australian Masters in December, and the subsequent work after, has allowed me to get into some ok positions.

Here's a position that could have happened in one of my games from Glen Eira. I'll admit I was trying to calculate a winning line for white but couldn't quite see to the end. Would I have played the winning line? Hopefully, though this position was never reached and the question was never asked of me. But I'll ask it of you:

White to play and Win 

(answer on Tuesday)