This week saw BGiE officially take up residence at The Rose & Crown, W5.
To celebrate there were drinks on the club, cake (thanks Jimmy), UKBGF-branded giveaways including doubling cubes and score pads, and lots of jars of jam made from blackberries from Sion's allotment which happens to directly neighbour the new venue.
On reflection, cake and jam are two pretty good metaphors for the way our game is played, so it's fitting we started off with them to the fore at our lovely new venue.... bear with me.
Apparently "jam tomorrow' comes from Alice Through the Looking Glass, where the Red Queen offers Alice a job with a reward of twopence a week and jam every other day. The line "The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today" sums up the concept. In backgammon terms this is all about timing - and just how important a concept is that?
Meanwhile, "You can't have your cake and eat it" (much older roots, probably 1600s) means you can't have two good things that don't normally go together at the same time. So, you can't eat a cake and continue to possess that cake once you've consumed it. Very often in backgammon we have to make choices like giving up an anchor (a good thing to own) to hit (a good thing to do), or as Magriel says it in Chapter 16 Safe Play or Bold Play..... there's a time and place for everything, but not all at once.
There was a large crowd last night, so amongst all the cake eating and jam jars, we played 4 Swiss, won by Jimmy, Zigi, Neculai and Kees (who was visiting us from the Netherlands.) Congratulations to all of them and thanks to everyone else that joined our inaugural night at the Rose & Crown.
We will be playing there next Monday evening too, despite it being a bank holiday and the UK Open still underway - hope to see you then. No cake or jam on offer though - only what you're able to conjure over the board yourself.
Comments