President Mark is on a European Odyssey

What’s Happening at North Shore Bridge Club

Normally I think I’m supposed to tell you what is happening, what with me being the President and all that.

However, this time it is more of a question.

You see, after an unfortunate incident at the AGM, I was pulled aside and it was suggested that for my own safety, and in the best interests of the club, I should go as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. The incident I am referring to, was of course getting accidentally elected President for another year.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde:
“Electing Guthrie as President for one year may be regarded as misfortune, letting it happen for a second year looks like carelessness”.

So, at the start of May I snuck off to the airport under cover of darkness and headed to the other side of the world, leaving Mike and the committee to get on with it. Well, not the whole committee, as I met Rod at the airport, and he was heading away too. I didn’t ask him what he was running from, but I did sneak a look at his boarding pass to get some ideas for destinations and as a result we are both in the UK.

I’m writing this on a train from London to Edinburgh, so I am in danger of going so far from Sydney that I start coming back again.

Have you noticed how when people get on trains or even more so, on planes, they suddenly need to call someone for no reason, so they have an excuse to tell them that they are busy travelling somewhere for important business? The woman next to me has just done it, “Hi, I’m just calling about the cheese I left in your fridge three weeks ago, did I mention I was on the train to York?”

Anyway, I’ve just done exactly the same thing, only instead of phoning someone, I have written about it in a newsletter for no apparent reason.

And I’m not really travelling first class on a train with Julie up to Edinburgh drinking champagne, we are on a Greyhound bus travelling overnight and not sitting together. I’m having to hug the homeless bloke in the seat next to me just to stay warm.

Julie always likes to play bridge when we travel, and it is a good opportunity to check out the competition. So far, we have been to London, Bath, and Portugal. I forget how totally spoilt we are having so many sessions to play. It has been a real struggle to find a game anywhere. In Portugal they have the Internet, but in the place where we stayed it was too slow for RealBridge, so we played a few games on BBO. Ironically, we lost to a pair from Portugal which seems very unfriendly when the Algarve depends so much on tourism.

In London we played at the Young Chelsea Club. Only one word of their name seems accurate since they have moved to Hammersmith, but it was a very nice friendly club, and we had a really enjoyable time.

It is hard to draw comparisons with other bridge clubs without sounding like a bit of a tool, but I do spend some of my time on the web looking around at bridge in other countries and seeing what sort of turn out they get for their games, how often they play, what they charge, etc. It brings it home more clearly when I am actually in another country and trying to find a game to play in. When I am in Sydney, it is easy to think, “I’ve got a free morning/afternoon, I think I’ll play bridge”, but in a lot of places you need to plan your life around bridge if you want to play, and not the other way around.

London is very up and down in terms of costs, you can pay north of $30 for a glass of house wine in some places or get lunch with a pint for about $10 in a Wetherspoons pub, but I don’t think the Young Chelsea is particularly expensive when it comes to bridge in the UK. We played in one of their longer events (no food or drink provided but they had a really nice bar, not Wetherspoons prices!). It cost us 20 pounds each to play 36 boards. That is approximately double what we pay per board at North Shore.

Anyway, enough of telling you that you’ve never had it so good!

We also played rubber bridge, but with 5 players I obviously didn’t get a game. I was allowed to shuffle and when I got bored with that, I went for stacking the deck and going for more and more outrageous hands. I combined two packs and spent about fifteen minutes setting it up so that everyone got a Yarborough.
Annoyingly, they passed it in.

They weren’t bothering to cut the deck so on one hand I gave everyone an entire suit, in order. That is when we switched to playing Scrabble.

I can’t find a game in Edinburgh this weekend, so we may be back in Sydney for our next fix of bridge.

As far as I know the club is doing well, but (as usual), what would I know. You tell me. I should have put a question mark in the title of this one.

Cheers Mark