How can I be sure I’m here?
The pills that I’ve been taking confuse me,
I need to know that someone sees that,
There’s nothing left, I simply am not here.Porcupine Tree – Fear of a Blank Planet
Imagine you are a child, would a preference to play chess instead of play with an xbox remain simpatico after being offered both? For me yes. Some evidence, perhaps anachronistic perhaps not, is corroborated below.
Yep that’s me, very early 1980s at Xmas party against a drunken family friend. I say that because I remember the photo being taken.
Another Xmas party. That’s not my father, I never had one. I come from a broken Scots/Irish immigrant family on the roughest street of my whole town. Again I remember the photo taken, the gentleman in it was called Brian, I liked him very much.
Don’t try engaging me,
The vaguest of shrugs,
The prescription drugs,
You’ll never find a person inside.Porcupine Tree – Fear of a Blank Planet
But if you watch the video below, shot about 15 miles south of where I am as I type, you may see that the youth of modern day England, if well-represented here, have an altogther different preference to mine -and just look at what it does to them! Deranged they are and a very sorry sight indeed! Those poor souls grow up in my same country as me but one that is rather foreign it must me said.
‘The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’ L. P. Hartley
Pity them you must and enjoy the guitaring you shall should you click on the video below.
Whilst the undefeated chess champion of my school, one of the very first things chess taught me about life is that society is hierarchical and that to ascend from circles predominately working class, to the acquiescent middle & upper-classes is essential because therein a communal interest can be embraced by those more distinguished, more able to broaden your horizon beyond what is intrinsic & extrinsic to our beautiful game as well as the community which flourishes within it and whatever remains extraneous to that…before I left school, unlike the kids in the video above, I learnt that life is contingent but subjugated by my own relentless and solitudinous study of chess and only chess.
A champion enraptured by a solitudinuous study of chess with a fantastic taste in music already, don’t you think Metallica fans? I was already tactically astute at this stage: 9 months before this photo was taken, when Luton A played Leighton Buzzard C on March 24th 1988, I was playing on Board 3 wearing a green jumper and tore Lynn Rose apart over the board, he was rated 130. He couldn’t even make it to the time control!
“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
Nietzsche
McCreadyandChess 
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