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Last update: Friday June 3, 2005 9:44
Wednesday 8 August I went on one of my periodic visits to Gibraltar.
Thursday I passed over a giant chess set on behalf of the sponsors of the GibTele.com Festival to the Senior Citizens Club. The Minister of Tourism, Joe Holiday responded. We then had a pleasant lunch at The Caleta Hotel, the instigators of the whole series.
Friday was a holiday, being the Tercentenary of Gibraltar becoming British. This is of great importance to the population. The threat of The Rock being given back to the Spanish seems to have receded. Of course there were speeches and parades. The highlight of the day for GM Stuart Conquest and I was an open-air concert by Elton John in the evening.
Saturday Stuart gave a simultaneous display against 50 local children. He won 48 and drew 2. The youngsters will have to work hard to overcome that contributory score in the Match of the Generations. This event, again in the open air, was attended by The Minister for Education. Would that the British politicians showed such interest.
When we started the Gibraltar Festival two years ago there was little interest shown in chess locally. Brian Callaghan, Franco Ostuni and Judy Whurr have worked tremendously hard to popularise the game. The sponsorship is being considerable increased for next year's event which takes place 25 January to 3 February and that bodes extremely well for the future.
Sunday I was back in London running another open air event at Paddington Sports Ground, this time on behalf of the BCF. The whole event was put together by Westminster Council to extol the benefits of local activities. Quite a number of players came along and learnt the rules, played some games and enjoyed themselves.
Although it was early September, it was virtually shivering time in London. What a contrast to Gibraltar, where my main concern for the players, including Stuart, was that they would get heat-stroke. Perhaps that was why he was so ruthless, finishing his display in barely 3 hours.
Stewart Reuben