Chess and Library Diary

The Chess World resounded to the news of Friday evening's LiChess <1700 1+1 Arena Tournament as BorderIncident claimed second place with DWWWWWW in the allotted 27 minutes. It's true I've had a few tries and today's 20th place out of 200+ is more like it but it felt like something.

LiChess 10/6/22 1700 1+1 Arena 

Sadly it's not possible to find any way of saying I should have won. The winner took three more games to get one more point and had a lower tournament rating but third place was 100% and thus beat that rating and I eventually lost the game that was in progress when time ran out so that doesn't count but was no use to me anyway. Still, exciting times in this mid-division although it might be some time yet before another such run comes together to challenge for a gold trophy.

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My new little studio upstairs seems most amenable with the Haydn Piano Sonatas on order to be provide the soundtrack. It even comes complete with its own board to put across the chair's arms in the way that Larkin wrote of an evening, just in case some lines need to be applied to an old envelope.

The board is part of an old wardrobe from another room, dismantled as part of the knock-on effect of creating this new facility. That space will be required to accommodate papers moved to make space on the previously cluttered floor. So, I'm in the market for a couple more bookcases and can then embark on the biggest reorganization of the library for some years.

Poetry biographies now need two shelves. The 'favourite living novelists' - Barnes, Swift, Faulks, etc. - need better housing than the landing carpet. Auden, maybe Mahon and Kleinzahler, could get shelves to themselves like Larkin, Gunn and Shakespeare biography have as well as the Bishop, Tonks, O'Brien section.

The sorting of old papers is an endless job. I'm reluctant to throw things away and gradually, articles kept from newspapers can get put with the books they refer to. Looking at some of them is like visiting a disappeared world. From the folder of first year Classical Studies, I find an essay on the 'triumvirate' that I have no memory of doing for a tutor I can't remember either.

A mark of 55 and comments including 'thin', 'repetetive' and 'reading done?' make me shudder but also pity the poor tutor who would far rather have been progressing with his work on Augustine and Boethius than wasting his time on my paltry effort. And maybe I had more pressing priorities, too, like making my debut poetry reading at the Lancaster Literary Festival or going to see The Clash.

But 55 translates into a 2:2. Ye Gods and Little Fishes. If you could serve up such undercooked drivel 43 years ago and get away with it what on earth are they dishing out degrees for these days.