Check mates: how chess saved my mental wellbeing
My grandfather was a man with a tut as loud as a dropped plate. He'd deploy it whenever you fell short in some way: a length of the pool finished too slowly; a garden bed not weeded well enough; a portion of vegetables left unfinished. But he softened over chess, a game he bequeathed to me over long sessions, played in our pyjamas by the fireplace. Across the board, his sternness would melt into a kind of pensive calm, the admonishments replaced with instructions and then a small smile when he saw the move that would win the game and send me to bed.
He played chess all his life and was chairman of his local club right up until he entered the retirement home where he died, but I didn't follow his example myself until some 25 years later. By then it was too late to thank him.
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