A dark day in the annuls of NLC Chess.
It is with overbearing grief that the Editorial Committee bring you the sad news of the complete loss of the entire NLC friendly team somewhere in the environs of Roehampton, on or around 25 April.
The cause was noble. For months the expedition had been planned – to travel past the borders of the known world to the wild ravages of Mortlake, so that the shining light of civilisation can be spread through chess play.
Some said it was folly and that the team would never make it, let alone come back. Roehampton was just too far, too wild, they said. Think of the vast distances, the disease, the lawlessness of that godless land.
The Liberals were not put off. A grizzled band of hardy NLC chessers was assembled, and with Gladstone looking over them it was felt that the risks were worth taking.
The expedition began well enough. The team were waved off from the steps of Whitehall Place by a thronging crowd of NLC members, the women throwing roses for good luck and the fathers shaking their sons’ hands whilst supressing a noble tear of pride at such bravery.
And so begun the arduous three-hour journey into uncharted territory of the Roehampton Club. The risks of playing in somewhere so wild as Roehampton were well known to the players: the barely mapped land; the still untamed bands of investment bankers lying in ambush; the ferocious and wild speeding Range Rovers (reputed to be as large as a house); the frankly baffling fixation with tennis.
Initially all was well. Despite the extended and unreliable lines of communication, some telegrams did initially reach NLC headquarters to say that the team had reached the frontier outpost of Earl’s Court and that spirits were high.
But then, communications ceased. A final, broken, and hardly intelligible message was received from the expedition at 6.45pm saying something about ‘battling with Mick Lynch on Thameslink’. Readers can only speculate what horrors might be entailed by such words.
Then no more.
Concern mounted in Whitehall Place that some calamity had befallen the team. Desperate rescue efforts were mounted. A search party of porters was sent out, hoping to find any survivors. But all that was found on a pavement in Mortlake was a scattered set of chess pieces and a charred biography of Lloyd George. After three weeks of increasingly frantic searches, the effort was called off.
So there is no record of any games, no photographic records to mark their sacrifice, or any match result to honour those lost. Indeed, no record whatsoever of any chess activity that evening has made it back to civilisation. It must now be concluded that all is lost.
And so it is with great sadness that the Editorial Committee has to break the news to the public that – alas – the flower of the NLC friendly team is no more. Roehampton has claimed them.
A benevolent fund will be set up for the grieving widows and bereft children. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.