Back home, surprisingly

I was planning to stay over in Cambridge tonight, seeing as I'm going to London tomorrow, but we finished the othello earlier than expected and I thought I might as well sleep in my own bed and play about on the internet tonight. The tournament was a lot of fun, though - held in a different room at Trinity College than the usual one, this one featuring a lot of glass not just on the walls but also the floor of the kitchen (up on the second floor, overhanging the edge of the floors below, so you could see beneath your feet down to the concrete outside. Groovy.) Twelve players and a non-playing-but-there-anyway Aubrey, and I ended up 4th on four wins out of seven, narrowly ahead of David Beck on Brightwell Quotient tie-break. I didn't beat Imre, although I was really hoping to do that three Christmas tournaments in a row, but did beat David (who's rated higher than me, so I won't have suffered too much rating loss from being comprehensively outclassed by Crichton Ramsay, who's rated lower). Nobody beat Imre, in fact, he squished everyone he came up against and won the tournament, with Graham second and Geoff third.

At lunch we'd all piled into the pub we traditionally go to before anyone realised that it had turned into an unnecessarily posh restaurant. We ate there and had the committee meeting anyway, and the meal, although unnecessarily posh, was nice (chips piled up like jenga blocks, I ask you...). At the meeting, Aubrey announced that it's silly him being such an absentee chairman, stepped down and said he thought Geoff should take over. Nobody complained, not even Geoff (probably rendered speechless by having the job thrust upon him like that), so the BOF got a brand-new big boss for the first time in however many years. Almost certainly the first non-British chairman of the British Othello Federation.

It's the world championship next weekend in Greece, and I wish I could be there (Imre, Graham and David are the British team, with Geoff there representing Australia) not just for the othello but for the hopefully rather warmer weather. It was extremely cold today, and I'd decided not to bring my jacket with me on the grounds that it isn't really properly winter yet. I'll wear it tomorrow, I wouldn't want to catch whatever you catch if you get cold.