A few days away

Tomorrow I’ll be heading to the country with Caroline for a few days. Holidays come in all forms, but ours usually involve walking or driving long distances to see things that other people might not find very interesting. Like we once went to the North East of the USA and ended up driving about 2000 miles in 3 weeks, but we saw some amazing things like the fall colours in the White Mountains. This week we’re heading to Bright in the Alpine region of Victoria to see some snow. There’ll be plenty of walking, quite a bit of driving, lots of photography and some time to clear the head ready for the challenges which will come up over the next 3 months.

When I get back, I’ll be playing some chess in the Victorian Championship. And of course I’ll be back to coaching chess and I need to start thinking about some programs. And I’m even playing a couple of games against Paul Cavezza that I’ll be thinking about.

I’d love to write a chess book, or any book for that matter, though I know my biggest problem is seeing something through to the end. So perhaps I’ll finally get round to writing that book inspired by the Melbourne Chess Club Endgame Group that I run. For inspiration I have been looking at the Bulwer-Lytton contest results for 2010. The Bulwer-Lytton contest is an annual competition for the worst opening line of a novel inspired by the opening line of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s novel “Clifford”:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

From all the entries, in various genres, a grand winner is announced, and this year Molly Ringle of Seattle won with the inspirational:

“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

You can check out all the winners since the competition began in 1983. My particular favourite is from 1986, but they are all great.

“The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn’t heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn’t reacting yet to let you know.” – Patricia Presutti’s 1986