Endgames for 5 Year Olds

There are some very talented young players around, and when you work with some of them you can be truly amazed at how quickly they pick up some tough concepts. A lot of it is trial and error, but by playing through similar types of positions, again and again, kids can improve heaps in this area of the game, and their pattern recognition generally.

Just to make all the adults feel good, here were a few endgames I was looking at with a 5 year old student. These are the ones he was struggling with.

White to play and win

 I like this puzzle, and it wrapped up a part of the session we were working on quite nicely.

White to play and win

This one took some prompting in the end, but again, it reinforced some important endgame principles.

White to play and draw

The concept of drawing is difficult for a 5 year old who only thinks in terms of winning, rather than 'not losing'. However, the same sort of principles apply, just in reverse. It's also good to make a student look through the eyes of their opponent.

My next post will have the solutions (I won't say tomorrow, as the last time I did that I never posted the next day).

Melbourne's Big Summer of Chess

There's going to be a mass of good quality chess in Melbourne, both to play in, or to spectate or follow this summer.

The fun starts this weekend, when Chess Kids, the company I work for hosts their National Interschool Finals. Actually, it's a huge junior chess festival starting on Sunday 29th November with a set of individual 7-round 15-0 allegro events. Then on the Monday and Tuesday the Chess Kids National Interschool Championship will take place. It is a 7-round 25-10 format with close to 300 players expected over both primary and secondary divisions.

All these junior events are being held at Queen's College, Melbourne University near the centre of Melbourne.

The weekend after this (5th-6th December) sees Melbourne Chess Club's amazing summer schedule start with the traditional Christmas Swiss. Perhaps the publicity for this has been overshadowed by other events coming to the club, but make no mistake that this tournament looks likely to be a good one. Visiting GM Arturs Neiksans from Latvia will be playing in the weekender. He is currently rated 2602, but might be even higher after his performance at the European Team Championship where he scored 4.5/7 including a draw with Arkadij Naiditsch. There are currently over 20 players entered, and this is a good opportunity to get some practice for the Australian Championships.

The MCC then hosts the Australasian Masters which will consist of two 10-player round robins. Chess Victoria President, Leonid Sandler has worked hard to get a GM norm event, and an IM norm event happening, and according to Leonid, this GM tournament might be the strongest ever in Australia. It certainly looks to be one of the strongest, with foreign GM's Neiksans, and Papin competing, and a strong local field including Melbourne based GM Darryl Johansen. I'll be playing in the IM event, so I should be able to bring some first hand reports of the goings on. The tournament runs from 12th-20th December

The Masters then goes out with a bang as it is immediately followed by the Victorian Blitz Championship which will also be hosted by the MCC. In recent years this tournament has proved very strong as players from the Masters join in with the best local players. I don't have details of this event, but it will probably be held Monday 21st December, a good lead in to Christmas.

The Christmas break will bring only a short relief to the summer of chess, as Box Hill Chess Club hold their traditional Australian Championship warm up event, the Canterbury Summer Swiss. After their move to Waverley/Essex Hills last year, Box Hill Chess Club have had to reinvent themselves a bit. One issue is that the club cannot hold weekend events at their current venue, but thanks to their strong organisational background, they have managed to find a venue for their summer event, the German Club in Windsor. For anyone who is short on practice before the Australian Championships, this is a must! It runs from the 27th December through to 30th December, and you can follow details here.

Then comes the big one, the Australian Championships and Reserves. Hosted by the Melbourne Chess Club in their 150th anniversary year, this is already shaping up to be an amazing tournament. Defending Champion, IM Max Illingworth entered early making it clear he intends to defend his title. But with 2 GM's and another 5 IM's already entered, Max will have to work hard to take the title again. I also intend to play in this event, running from January 2nd-January 12th 2016 at Fitzroy Town Hall. There is a rest day on 8th January when the Australian Blitz Championship will be held.

Phew...that's an unbelievable amount of chess this summer. But that's not all!!! (I've always wanted to say that, like in the adverts on the shopping channels). The MCC continues as Australia's premier chess venue to host the Australian Women's Masters event. Starting on 14th January, this will be 10-player round robin event and is shaping up to be the strongest ever women's event in Australia.

The Women's Masters finishes on the 22nd January, which leads nicely into the last event of the summer, Melbourne Chess Club's Australia Day Weekender. The Australia Day Weekender is, and has traditionally been, the first weekender of the year, even though it will seem like the last in a long line of chess events. Another great field is promised by the very first entry, hanging around after the Women's Masters, WGM Julis Ryjanova of Russia rated currently 2387!

That is an amazing amount of quality chess in Melbourne for players of all standards of players, and at various time limits. Long play chess fanatics have a dream summer coming up. And with the Victorian and Australian Blitz Championships being held here, the fast players should also be satisfied. And even if you are not a fan of long chess, nor the very fast chess, the MCC holds it weekly allegro 15-0 chess tournaments, and these will continue over the summer of chess! I'll be trying to follow as many of these as possible, so stay tuned :)

Pugilistic Chess

Yesterday saw the inaugural bouts in Australian Chess Boxing. I didn't attend, but it was apparently a great success with a decent crowd of people, media coverage in attendance including The Project and Channel 10, plus the competitors had an absolute ball.

Today I was talking to one of the fighters, Anthony Hain, who was talking about the event, and he showed me the chess game he played. He played the black side of a Two Knights Defence very well, and came away with a small material deficit compensated for by a huge lead in development. (to be honest,  don't know why sane people risk the Two Knights with white or black, but these guys were throwing punches at each other in between chess moves, so a combative chess game seems reasonable.

The Two Knights Defence is an ancient opening with many tricks and traps associated with it, and it starts with the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6

Whether you play this opening or not, it is good fun to look at with many typical opening tricks. It is a favourite among young juniors who are attracted to the possibility of a quick win when someone falls for their trap.

4.Ng5 [The pugilistic way of playing. 4.d3 is more likely to be seen in a 2700 GM encounter] 4..d5 [If this isn't crazy enough for you, then look up the Wilkes-Barre with 4..Bc5] 5.exd5 Na5 [Anthony, as black, opts for long term compensation not tempted into playing 5..Nd4 (Fritz, my favourite) 5..b5 (Ulvestad) 5..Nxd5? which allows the kids favourite Fried Liver Attack, 6.Nxf7] 6.Bb5+ c6 7.dxc6 bxc6

So far the players had made the fans happy with their aggressive chess (though the fans were probably more intent on seeing two chess players beating the crap out of each other!). In this position white's bishop must retreat, and the knight on g5 will also get chased away which will hand an initiative to black fort he sake of a pawn, or maybe 2. The question is, where should the bishop go? The traditional retreat has been to e2, but recently there has been a lot of attention placed on d3. On d3 the bishop looks to impede white's queen side development, but importantly it controls e4 which is where white's knight will drop back to when it gets kicked by h6.

All well and good, but in this chess boxing game, the bishop went a different way! 8.Ba4 I have to admit to knowing hardly anything about this move, once having read somewhere it was bad and never having looked at it again. Time to have a peek now :) Stockfish reckons that after the moves 8..h6 9.Nf3 e4 10.Qe2 black has a big advantage -1.34.

All well and good, oh great silicon monster, but you'd lose a chess boxing bout within the first minute of the first round of fighting! Unbelievably, the 2 chess boxers reached this position, from which Anthony continued to develop his advantage to winning proportions. Unfortunately, Chess Boxing Australia President Rafael Ward was the better boxer, and won the match on points, though I feel he would have had  struggle to hang on to the chess game for much longer.

Anyway, here's a great game with a great finish from a time when the Two Knights would have been all the rage, the middle of the 1800's. The black winner of this game is the relatively unknown player Edward Pindar who was nevertheless, very strong. He won the Manchester Chess Club Championship in front of players such as the great problem composers Kipping and Horwitz, the latter being of world class playing strength, having beaten Bird in matches. Anyway, Pindar was born in Russia (no surprise that he was good at chess!) but moved to England where he was a teacher, and very good chess player. Look at the climax to the game!

Black to play and win, see if you can find the best line for black before looking at what happened in the game!

Chess Tactics (cont)

The joy of writing a blog by oneself is that you have complete control over what you do, what you say, the direction and content. The downside is that when you suddenly become busy with life and work, the blog becomes redundant. That's what happened over the weekend. I mean, I can't complain, it's good to have a full life. It's just when I say that the answer will be posted "tomorrow", and on that day I don't even see my computer, it is a bit frustrating!

Anyway, continuing with things tactical, I posted this position:

I solved this puzzle on Chess Tempo the other day, and thought it was trickier than it looks. The problem has a rating of about 2040, so you can gauge your tactical strength based on that. It's white to play and win, but that is the only clue that you get. It took me just over 3 minutes to solve it, but my thinking was skewed at a couple of points.

I instantly saw the pin 1.Be4 and was tempted to play it straight off, but my time on Chess Tempo has taught me to search deeper, to look for your opponent's ideas, and to look for other opportunities. This is a thought process that can help maximise results if used properly. "When you see a good move, look for a better one", as the great world champion Emanuel Lasker famously said.

So I started to think about the f7 square, I noticed my rook on f1 is attacked, I considered taking on g6, and even 1.h5. This is what I like about Chess Tempo, the fact that you are in a game situation. You are still trying to find best moves, but have no idea in which way they are best, and often, the obvious try is not right, or the first move is right, but the following moves aren't as your opponent finds defences that you hadn't taken into account.

Eventually, I found the forcing line:

1.Be4 Rxe4 [pretty much forced or white is just taking on g6 with check] 2.Qxe4 Bxf1 [Again, virtually forced as black is already an exchange down, and white threatens Qxg6+, the main theme of the puzzle]

So this was the position that you had to envisage at the start of the problem, and calculate. Once I saw the idea 3.Qxg6+! I knew I'd solved the puzzle, but you had to see it before making the first move. 3..fxg6 4.Rxf8 leaving white an exchange ahead.

So, use Chess Tempo to:

- extend your vision
- develop tactical awareness
- practice your calculation skills

Chess Tempo

Every chess player should work on their calculation and tactical ability. Most chess playing sites have a tactical solving element, but the one I use at the moment in Chess Tempo, and I advise my students to use it. 

While it has a number of features, the one I mainly use is a tactical solving training element, and I prefer to not work against the clock, although I will sometimes test my vision in timed tests.

You get a solving rating, and the site rates puzzles and then tries to match each solver up with a puzzle of roughly an equal level. If you correctly solve the puzzle your rating goes up and you'll start to get harder puzzles, while if you get it wrong your rating goes down and you'll get easier puzzles. (the puzzle rating also goes up or down depending on whether it is solved)

Solving puzzles like this helps a player to develop their imagination and improve their calculation skills. Or put another way, you work on diverse ideas, and how to accurately employ them.

Here's a puzzle that I was given today. See if you can solve it, I'll post the answer tomorrow. And improve your tactical ability by joining Chess Tempo and solving puzzles.

It is white to move, black has just played Rg8-g6. You don't know what your objective is (mate, winning material, saving a lost game etc), you just have to find the best line for white.

TIP: make sure you look at your opponent's ideas and resources.

Chess Events

Time to promote some events, and catch up some chess activities I've seen. I've always been of the opinion that I owe it to the chess community to give back some of my time and energy for all the enjoyment I've got out of it. A karma type of thing. It's great anyway meeting people with a similar interest.

I've been really lucky to be involved in chess coaching for the past 10 years and find out about lots of events for young players. Like in many countries the challenge for chess organisers in Australia is not developing new players at primary school level, but maintaining interest into high school and beyond. As a result, here in Melbourne, we have thousands of primary school players, but a small number of players making it to adult game.

At the end of August, the Victorian Inter- University Championship took place at RMIT. It was a pretty strong tournament held in a really friendly atmosphere, and in wonderful surroundings.

On the left, 2 of the favourites Zhigen Lin and Simon Schmidt

The amazing ceiling of the venue, Storey Hall

The winner of the tournament was Sunilson Suderson of Deakin, who wasn't the only strong unrated player in the field. Dara Akdag from Denmark studying at Melboure Uni has a FIDE rating of 2182 and finished second, ahead of local boy Thomas Feng.

At an even younger age group, I recently visited Hobart, Tasmania to help coach at a chess camp. There were about 25 kids, some of whom were getting pretty good, ranging from about 7 years old through to about 13 or 14. A Tasmanian Chess Camp means lots of coaching, and lots of outdoor activities, a blitz tournament, a simul, a barbecue and lots of fun. This is all thanks to the Hobart International Junior Chess Club, and especially the efforts of Mellissa Harvey.

Nearly empty scout hut, most of the kids were outside having a break from chess coaching.

I focussed on simple messages, though some of the material was quite tricky, including some very advanced ideas about pins. Although talking about such a basic concept as the pin might not seem that inspiring, when you show pins in game situations, and then set some tough puzzles about creating pins, exploiting pins, defending pins, and checking whether pins are good or not. Tactics are always good for juniors, and adding real game settings give the concepts some context, and kids love hearing stories about famous chess players (or not so famous chess players).

A blitz tournament was held on the Saturday evening, with some adults taking part to add some tough competition for the kids. It is great that adults should take the time to do this, as kids need role models, and targets in their development. Here's my game against the player who came second, Ross George. Please remember, this was a 5 minute game, and as far as I can remember, the move order is right!

There have been some films about chess over the years, and last week there was a showing of the film, "The Polgar Variant" at my local cinema. International arbiter (IA) Gary Bekker had the bright idea of running a chess demonstration in the foyer of the cinema before the film started, and I brought along some clocks and checked things out.

Zhi Lin Guo taking on members of the public

Gary Bekker playing Charlotte Dilnutt with publicity, all good for chess.

And finally, in the red corner...

The President of Frankston Chess Club, Rafael Ward, also happens to be the impetus behind Chess Boxing Australia. Here we get a combination of chess and boxing with the first to either checkmate or knock out being the winner. This weekend sees the inaugural Fight Knight. While boxers would have a good chance of knocking out chess players, apparently a competitor has to have a certain proficiency in both disciplines to compete.....shame :D

Panchenko's Endgame Defence

This was the position I left on my blog yesterday, an exercise from Panchenko's book, "Mastering Chess Middlegames". Black is in a tough spot and has to find the best defence. So let's look at some candidate moves.

1. If black tries to defend the pawn on b6, there are 2 ways to do it.

- 1..Rb8 pinning the pawn on b6 doesn't look good and white can simply advance his c-pawn to exploit the pin 2.c4 Kg8 3.c5 followed by cxb5 with a winning advantage
- 1..Rf6? is strongly met by 2.Rf1! forcing an exchange of rooks. This is what actually happened in the game. White's king is more central, and his pawn structure is better. The game finished. 2..Kg8 3.Rxf6 gxf6 4.Kf2 Kf7 5.Ke3 Ke6 6.Kd4 Kf5 7.Kd5 1-0

2. Counter attack

- 1..Rc8! this gives the best chance for a draw, activating the rook, getting the king into the game, while trading pawns. To go for this, these basic endgame principles needed to be followed, and an assessment of the position with 3 v 2 pawns as a draw needs to be understood. 2.Rxb6 Kg8 3.Rb5 Rxc4 4.Rxa5

This is actually a good position to study and practice, as well as positions with an extra pawn on the king side. Black should be able to hold a draw here, but getting to know some technique wouldn't hurt!

Have a look at this classic position from the game Ftacnik-Littlewood Hastings 1982. The attacking rook is placed passively, and Littlewood decides to protect his passed pawn with his king. Ftacnik uses this to get his own king moving on the other side of the board.

It's white to play. Perhaps you could try this position as both black or white against a computer, or friend of about a similar strength to you before you look at the game continuation which is here.

Steinitz

When I was in England, I met up with a chess friend of mine, James Pratt. James, for his sins, is currently editor of the British Chess Magazine and mine of chess information. He showed me around his extensive chess book collection, and we talked briefly about the typical chess subject of who your favourite is. I remember James mentioning Morphy, and possibly Alekhine of the past masters, while I said Steinitz and Rubinstein. As soon as said Steinitz, James got a book for me to take home, "Steinitz move by move" by IM Craig Pritchett.

IM Craig Pritchett's "Steinitz Move By Move, Everyman Chess

I didn't really take much of a look at the book until later when I noticed a couple if things that annoyed me. First there is an index of Steinitz' opponents in the complete games, but there is no mention of any of the part games mentioned in the text. Now this wouldn't normally be too much bother, except that arguably Steinitz most famous game, versus von Bardeleben from Hastings 1895, isn't one of the complete games. To be honest I couldn't believe this, but I found the game as a note to a later Steinitz-Schlechter encounter from 1898. Pritchett says about Steinitz-von Bardeleben:

"The moves...often complete with fulsome annotations, can be sourced in innumerable books and websites and...needn't be repeated here."

I'm sorry, but that is just absolute tosh! If you are going to write a book, essentially as a tool for club level players, about the "extraordinary life and games of one of the greatest players in history" then it seems a bit of a cop out to mention his most famous game, en passant.

I suppose I should really be happy that the game gets a mention at all. The game which probably brought Steinitz to the world's attention was his brilliancy prize winning effort against Mongredien from London 1862. This one I can;t even find in the notes of any other games. This is the first game mentioned by Kasparov in the section on Steinitz from "My Great Predecessors: Part 1". Apparently, none other than Adolf Anderssen called it "the most bold and brilliant game" while Chigorn, in 1890 stated that "Games that were deemed brilliant in recent international tournaments were no match for this one."

So why leave out a such a seminal example from a collection of a player's games? To be honest, a lot of what I've looked in the book I've liked, though "move by move" isn't quite accurate, and should probably be amended to "move by move, when something interesting comes up". It's a shame because what on the whole is a pretty good effort by Pritchett to show Steinitz' chess development through his career, and to educate his readers through challenging questions about the games at various times and good tips and ideas, is spoilt for Steinitz fans because of the omissions.

So here is the moment when a young Austrian player became a name on the world stage. Steinitz as white played 16.Rxh7!? winning brilliantly after Mongredien didn't find the best defence of 18..Qe8! (Kasparov still proves that even the best defence wouldn't have held out for Mongredian, though Steinitz would have had to find some difficult moves!).

Here's the game, and you can judge for yourself whether it deserves to be in a section of games from his early years, or a book about Steinitz' life and games.

Back to Chess

My plan was very simple. I took a break from playing, studying and writing about chess and intended to enter the 2016 Australian Chess Championship and start to work towards that. In reality, the break lingered for a couple of weeks more than I'd intended and I've found myself struggling to get back to work again.

Today that changes! Yesterday (a few days ago now, as Google created a protocol which prevented me editing and posting this blog last week) I paid up and entered the 2016 Australian Championship and currently the field is strong. My FIDE rating of 2166 is a long way behind the next lowest rating of FM Gene Nakauchi at 2244. I understand that many more players will probably enter, but I'll still see myself in the bottom half (probably the bottom quarter) of the field. So unless humiliation is my one goal in playing this tournament, I'd better get down to some training.

Training vs Coaching

As a chess coach a subject that has always interested me has been the compatibility between coaching others and self improvement. I recently got a copy of Alexander Panchenko's excellent new book Mastering Chess Middlegames. Panchenko was offered a position as a chess coach in the early 1980's not long after becoming a Grand Master, and he set aside playing goals to achieve coaching goals. This suggests that the 2 are not compatible. If one is always looking at the needs of others, preparing training materials for players often at a lower level than the actual coach, and devoting analysis time to improving weaknesses in other players games, then there is little time or energy left to work on your own game.

This is what I found when I started working for Chess Kids as a coach 10 years ago. Working on teaching methods, learning philosophies, presentation skills has enabled me to be a respected school coach, and junior coach, but it initially affected my own game detrimentally and I'm not sure my game fully recovered. I have managed to differentiate between coaching and playing. They are now 2 different activities. Coaching is work, playing is fun, coaching is a job, playing is my hobby, etc. But, of course, as an amateur player, how far can I expect to improve, especially at the age of 49? In fact, should I even be thinking in terms of improvement, or just looking to enjoy the playing side of things?

While I do enjoy the playing side of things, I am still motivated to strive as much as possible to achieve the best results I can, so I'll be putting in as much work as I can spare to my own game, and maybe my students might be rewarded with some new materials that I find! Can I improve? Well, I guess that it is possible, but it gets increasingly harder as the years go by. By assessing my weaknesses I suppose I can strengthen my game, much like the way I try to get my students to improve. However, I am critical of my play in all areas of the game. If I really narrowed things down a bit, I suppose at the level I'm at, I have a weak knowledge of openings, and my calculation is sometimes blurred by assumptions about positions. I'm overly fond of space as a concept (and subsequently a poor defender), and struggle to find reasonable plans in messy positions.

I'm sure other players might have different ideas about my weaknesses, and I know there are many other weaknesses in my game, but these are some big ones to be getting on with.

Here's an example of Panchenko's training technique. In the chapter on 'Defence' he says "one should never forget about the possibility of sacrificing material to create a fortress", and then shows the following classic example:

 White to play can draw by sacrificing the bishop and then covering all entry squares.

1.Kd1 Rh2 2.Ke1! Rxg2 3.Kf1 Rh2 4.Kg1 Rh8 5.f3 leaving the following position where neither black's king, nor rook will be able to penetrate.

Panchenko says in the introduction to the chapter on defence:

The defender should strive for a type of position where the drawing chances are greater(opposite coloured bishops, rook endgames, fortress set-ups, etc).

Of course, it takes study and experience to know which sort of positions are more drawish than others. Here's the first exercise from Panchenko's chapter on defence, which I'll give the answer to tomorrow (assuming Google doesn't decide to create protocols which prevent me posting - apologies to you all for taking so long to work out how to overcome said protocols)

Black to play and draw

Roadtrips

Before this blog gets back to chess, and I really want it to get back to chess, I still have a couple of thoughts to pass on about holidays. The whole experience of holidays is for me a set of events which starts in the planning of the holiday, the build up and excitement, the travel, and the way the holiday affects or changes you.

Marion, who we hadn't seen for over 10 years with her daughter, Natasha, who we'd never met before

My niece, Vanya, with another newcomer to Caroline and I, Amelia.

Caroline and I once went on a week long trip to the Canary Island of Fuerteventura, to a resort in the sun, by the sea. After about half a day, we realised we'd made a terrible mistake. The next day we hired a car, and drove to every nook and cranny on the island, and I guess we knew that we were not the sort of people who can happily go to one place for any length of time, without a lot of things to do. Since then, we have chosen short breaks or roadtrips. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising that type of holiday, I'm just saying what type of holiday suits me, and Caroline.

Just some steps down, but seen in the right light...

This time we planned to go to Europe, partly as a holiday for ourselves, and partly to see family. I've posted on this blog about the places we went, things we saw and people we met. The trip we took was a culmination of a lot of planning, discussion, ideas and, in the end, decisions about what was feasible. Things that were in the pipeline and never happened included trips to Venice, Berne, Bordeaux and Brittany. However we came up with the right trip for us which involved a lot of driving, a lot of walking, but a few occasions when we could just relax.

Which would you rather see? Sunrise in the alps?

Or sunset on the Mediterranean? Take your pick!

A great thing about a roadtrip is that you find places that you never even knew existed that you pass on your way, little hidden gems. On our first drive from Amsterdam to France we passed through the beautiful Meuse Valley in Belgium, an area that it was our intention just to drive through. Instead we had to get out regularly and just wonder at the beauty. When we drove around western USA a couple of years ago we had a similar experience. We were driving on a long stretch out of California and through Nevada towards Yellowstone. We had envisioned a long, boring drive, but instead were wowed by the stark landscape of the Sierra Nevada, and even loved the gambling towns such as Winnemucca.

A visit to Reims Cathedral was our "punishment" for a wrong turn

A holiday should charge the spirit, invigorate the soul, and leave someone with the drive and direction to take on life when they get home. While our holiday was physically exhausting, it was a psychological cleansing, a kaleidoscope of colours, shapes, languages and people which completely stripped down emotional barriers and refreshed them. We were sated from a travelling point of view and were ready to come home and carry on with life. But life would be different for both Caroline and I after this trip. We had both lost close members of family since our last trip to England which made visiting family a little different. As we'd been away for so long, it might have been more apparent to us, than those who were still living near home. Both Caroline and I decided on a course of action to take back here in Melbourne. Caroline has started creative writing, while I'm working on preparations to play at the Australian chess Championship in January. We're both a little obsessive about our pursuits, and after thinking about them on our trip, jumped straight into them on our return.

The side of the road is always good, like here in the Auvergne

 And next? Yes, of course, the end of one holiday spells the start of plans for the next one. But where to? Next year might see us do something more local. Japan, New Zealand, and parts of Australia are all possibilities. Another roadtrip? The next big one will probably be to Glacier National Park in the USA and Banff in Canada. This would probably be my number 1 choice of destination at this moment in time (coinciding with seeing the Northern Lights in Edmonton would be good). When will that be? I suppose I'd better get saving!

Some Autumn colour in Basingstoke Memorial Park, the town I was born