Sunday 25th May 2025, 4.35pm (day 5,022)
I don’t care that I haven’t captured him actually picking up the piece. Somehow it works just fine like this, and chess is an intrinsically black-and-white subject matter.
Concentration
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: chess
Chess and poppies
Sunday 19th June 2022, 12.30pm (day 3,951)
On the move again. A scene on the train to London, where I will be for the whole week to come. The field of poppies outside — somewhere near Doncaster — was so extensive that I had time to see it, get the camera out, set up the shot and still capture it OK, despite moving at around 75 miles per hour at least. I believe black won the game in the end.
The marquee
Saturday 23rd April 2022, 2.35pm (day 3,894)
Located behind one end of Tonbridge Angels FC’s ground, this looks like a peaceful scene although there are at least eleven hundred football fans in reasonably close proximity. I like the muted colour scheme and the chess-board pattern reflected in the ball above.
The blacks and the whites
Tuesday 1st February 2022, 7.05pm (day 3,813)
Serious combat in the Railway this evening. Somehow black and white photography seems appropriate for this subject matter.
United Nations (sort of)
Wednesday 7th June 2017, 11.45am (day 2,113)
The conference I’m attending here has been organised by UNESCO (as was the one I went to four years ago in Moscow) so we get to feel like the United Nations with our own little flags marking our place on the table: spot my Union Jack, there on the left… Cynics might also say that the general absence of activity is also redolent of the real UN, but hey, even they need refreshment breaks now and again I am sure.
If there are any chess fans out there you might like to know that in this room the Chess Olympiad was held in 2010 and will be again, in 2020.
Old enemies
Wednesday 3rd September 2014, 2.45pm (day 1,105)
It began in 1964. The prison camp in the Urals, when chess was their only distraction, and they could suck the damp off the pieces to stay alive. Igor (on the left in this shot) was a double agent; his opponent, still known only by the codename “King’s Pawn”, had been picked up trying to infiltrate Tomsk dressed as a Mongolian sheep herder. The Cold War thawed and half a century later they still meet once a week on this field of combat, speaking only rarely, but both with an inner shiver as they recall the white hell of February in the Petropavlavravmavstok encampment.
Chess v Jenga
Friday 12th July 2013, 5.45pm (day 687)
“So we turned up for work this evening, like, and there was this bleedin’ great pile of BRICKS on the board. Well, not my problem. No point asking me to shift it, is there, when I can only move forward one square at a time.”
Monday night Chess Club
Monday 7th January 2013, 7.00pm (day 501)
Another of my occasional drinking haunts, the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, has yet to feature on this blog, but let’s allow it to sneak on today with its regular weekly chess club, held in the back room and run by the impressively bewhiskered gentleman (John) you see here. A black and white photo for a black and white subject.
Being 42 