Newsflash

On the train on the way home, the conductor announced over the tannoy "Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you interested in the test match result, I'm pleased to tell you that England have won by three wickets."

It did occur to me that there might be people on the train who were planning to watch the highlights when they got home - this was half past six, and the train was only going as far as Sheffield, with plenty of time for everyone on it to get back home in time for the 7:30 highlights. Still, it's nice to know the train people care about keeping us all up to speed. The only other time I've known someone to make an announcement like this on a train was when the Queen Mother died while I was on the way back from London one time.

Anyway, I'm back now. With hindsight, The Unconsoled wasn't the best choice for something to read on the journey. When I'm reading a good book, I tend to start thinking like the central characters, and my usual nervousness with planes (I'm not worried about bombs or crashing, but I'm always terrified that I'll miss the plane or get on the wrong one by mistake or something) combined with Ryder's constant confusion and terror that everybody will realise that he doesn't know what he's doing all combined to get me almost panicky at Charles de Gaulle airport this afternoon. It didn't help when the security people pointed out something on the x-ray of my rucksack and asked me what it was. That's never happened to me before, and I had no idea what it could be, since as far as I could remember there was nothing but clothes in there. Turned out to be my alarm clock, which I'd forgotten all about. Perhaps it looks like a bomb from certain angles.

As for the othello, it's fair to say that I did terribly. 2½ points out of 11 is just abominable - I don't think I've ever in my life done so badly in a tournament, with the possible exception of the MSO back in 1999 when I didn't really have a clue what I was doing and found myself competing against the strongest international field you could hope to meet outside the world championships. Still, you can always learn from things like this. I can get pointers from the players who beat me - Kazia Zieba, during her exciting endgame against Tim Hoetjes, picked the right move by means of the time-honoured technique of eeny-meeny-miney-mo (or the Polish equivalent). But while I was losing to small girls, there was an exciting tournament taking place. I haven't seen the results yet (as previously mentioned, I had to dash off early), but the final was Graham against Stéphane Nicolet, and I'd be willing to put money on Graham. For all his claims that he always comes second in these things, he's won just about everything so far this year. I'd put money on him for the world championship too, if only because these hypothetical bookies would give pretty good odds.

My train of thought in the game against Monique Lecat went a bit like this: "Okay, I've lost my first three games, but that's okay, because I was playing reasonably well, my opponents were all pretty tough, you should expect to end up against someone a lot worse than Bintsa Andriani after losing two games in the swiss system. Anyway, this should be a good time to start winning - I play Monique on the internet all the time and I usually win."

The opening: "Heehee, Monique Lecat plays the Cat opening. I wonder if Marcel Sneek will play the Snake? Come to think of it, I don't know what the Snake looks like, so I wouldn't know if he did. Anyway, I know how you're supposed to play this one, and I happen to know I'm winning at this point."

About 20 moves in: "Hang on a minute. We played exactly this game on the internet last week and I ended up losing. I can't remember how, but it all went wrong at about this point, didn't it? I'd better play something different. How about... this?"

A few moves later: "Hey, this isn't so bad. As long as I can run her out of moves, there won't be any problems."

About 40 moves in now: "Aargh. This is what the experts call over-minimisation, I think. Am I going to be able to get back enough pieces? In fact, what exactly am I going to do in this position?"

Shortly thereafter: "Lose horribly. That's what I'm going to do here. Sheesh."

End result - I lost 61-3. End result of the tournament, I came 25th out of 26 players. That's just bad.

All this othello reminds me that I need to do the annual accounts before the nationals next month. It's not like it's a big undertaking (and it's not like anyone's really interested in the end result as long as I tell them we've got money and we're not likely to stop having money any time soon), but seeing as it's my only real job as treasurer of the BOF, it's something I need to do properly, and it will take a bit of time. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow, seeing as it's a bank holiday, or maybe I'll just stay in bed. I'll see how I feel.