There's an interesting term occasionally used amongst married male chess players; that of the 'chess widow'. When you marry a real chess fan, you have to be prepared to spend a certain amount of time doing your own thing while he spends time with his mistress. There are certain dates in the chess calendar when you might as well don those black gloves as he disappears into that proverbial black (and white) hole. There happens to be one such date coming up very soon. The World Chess Championship starts in a week's time in Germany.
For the past few weeks I've been entertained (and I do mean entertained) by a 36-year old man behaving very much like a 6-year old does in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I've discovered one of the best ways to get him to do anything I want is to threaten to cut off our Internet connection before next week (and I know how to do it so he couldn't fix it, too). I suppose it's something along the lines of 'if you're not good, Santa won't bring you presents'.
His latest brainwave is to take leave from work every afternoon that a championship match is being played; that's about 9 afternoons altogether! He will leave work at 1pm and rush home, all the while praying (even though he doesn't actually believe in a god) that public transport goes his way, so he's able to catch the start of the match at 2pm. He will then spend the next several hours following the match and blogging about it in real time for other chess fans to follow. During the course of these matches, he will expect his poor, suffering wife to stay out of his way completely until he needs her to prepare or cook the regular supply of meals and/or drinks which he will need to keep his strength up.
If I may say so myself, he doesn't deserve me!
By the way, honey, if you're reading this - you're going to owe me BIG.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
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