18 August 2012

Brighton Day 8 - emotional swings

The day started out sombre but finished with all the fun of the speedball

I had the afternoon off and this enabled me to travel to London for my godmother's funeral. This was an internment in a large North London cemetary, like something out of Dickens. The weather was great and we could listen in peace to the readings and prayers. (When you see these scenes played out in films, it is always raining.)

I arrived back in Brighton for the end of the afternoon session and was in time to do a final score correction and post the results to the internet. Then on to the main event with four sessions and two sections over two floors, and lots of scope for scoing issues. There were a number of disputes during the opening matches - this often happens at the start of a long Swiss Teams events.

Sorting out the scoring for the main event overlapped with the start of the Midnight Speedball pairs, which I was supposed to be in charge of. My colleagues rallied round to kick the event off and when I got there Gary had everything under control. During the speedball, Gary managed to pick up two appeals: one from the main event and one from the speedball itself (but both relating to alerting). I managed to get a “referee” from the bar, and the appeal from the speedball was resolved during playing time, with the referee talking to the players between rounds. Play finished in the regulation 90 minutes and results were available on the internet before 01:45. At some stage during the speedball I tripped over a glass: my foot was ok but the glass was unequal to the encounter with my boot!

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