An evening of rampant mingling

The Plague has thrust many a barrier in the path of NLC chess recently. The Chess Circle has bounded over each in turn, displaying grit, tenacity and all round good humour in the face of much disruption. This should come as no surprise. After all, the NLC couldn’t have survived so many Hamilton Russell hammerings without being able to find the pearl in the oyster.

And so, with the new ‘rule of six’ freshly in force and our dear Home Secretary suggesting that Government had outlawed mingling, it was uncertain quite what would happen.

But after fevered correspondence with various functionaries at the Department of Health it was determined that we could indeed mingle, so long as we did so with no more than five others, and in a (wait for it…) “fully-covid-secure-and-risk-assessed-manner-compliant-with-government-guidelines” sort of way.

And, oh my, mingle we did.

The evening sailed on at a brisk clip. 10 minute games. A quick rotation. Liberal amounts of booze. An awful lot of hand sanitiser.

There is no public record of who won or lost, nor who played who (the wine seeing to it that Mister Widdicombe’s sole and abiding memory is playing white against Mister Giffin QC MA (Oxon) and finding his king on b6 within the first 15 moves…a position not often seen in the textbooks). But it was a good fun night of NLC chess. Squint, and it almost looked normal.

Yet whatever happened with the chess, it was not the chess that took centre-stage, but the welcomes extended to three new NLC players.

We had new member Mister Arthur Drury, who made his first visit to the Clubhouse, played his first NLC chess game, and had his first drink on the terrace. In that order. The boy clearly has a bright future.

Also appearing was the much-feared Mister Nic Iounnou, bringing his devastating brand of online chess to the Lady Violet Room for the first time.

And in flew the chess circle’s Swedish correspondent (and occasional Tuesday social chesser) Mister Nahuel Marisi, fresh in from Stokholm and eager for some Lib chess action.

There were also some old faces there playing their usual calamitous mix of daring-attack-leading-to-swift-collapse: Messrs Giffin, Taylor and Widdicombe. But they are far too boringly commonplace to write anything else about.

Beer and brandy were taken on the terrace (although not necessarily by the same person at the same time), which brought an excellent chess evening to a close.

We play again in about three weeks time. Will you be one of the chosen six…?