Perhaps it was the slow, inexorable drift in intellectual capability that comes with age… perhaps it was the bright, inexorable rise in intellectual power that empowers each succeeding generation… perhaps I was distracted by a Border Terrier vs. Sulphur Crested Cockatoo battle at the balcony bird bath… perhaps it was pure carelessness… or perhaps he is just better at chess – despite his tender age.
Read it how you may, but my 11-year-old grandson had just ‘taken’ my treasured Queen – indeed, he garrotted her by stealth – and on the 6th move! From this point on, my path toward victory will be hard.
So… stung by my inability to see the impending garrotting, I decided it was time to clear my head and take to the beach for my daily hour of allowed exercise – this time with my eyes wide open. Moreover, what could be better than to take a slow ‘walk of curiosity’ along the empty beach at North Lorne during an Easterly.
These first days of lockdown in Lorne have coincided with one of the most powerful easterlies – always Lorne’s wildest weather – that we have had in years. Hitting right on the heels of a cold front that brought snow to Benwerrin and the Sabine spine, both have kept all but the most hardly inside. Dishearteningly, the storm has added a sense of desolation to a town already in lock-down.
Thus, still smarting from the untimely death of my Queen, I emerged onto a beach emptied of humankind for a doubly enjoyable hour of exercise. I found it to be teeming with the glories of storm-tossed nature, some living, some last-gasping, and some sad but beautiful in death.
While listing my ‘finds’ would take volumes, included in them were:
- endless varieties of seaweed… kelp, grape weed, sea poppers, and delicate tufts of soft-weed in the palest pink
- a carnage of cuttles, their size ranging from one or two inches in length up to giant cuttlefish husks close in size to a cricket bat
- huge drifts of ‘Father Christmas’s Whiskers’ – my dad’s name for the natural stearate foam (or spume) that is generated by wild seas
- a myriad salps glistening in diamond-like chains at the high-tide mark
- a puffer fish, its skin distended and drum-stretched, its spines pointing upwards in death
- shells, shattered and whole
- multiple varieties of sponge
- a profusion of shore-strewn barnacles, bending and twitching to the touch, contracting and weaving in desperation for a tide high enough to return them to the sea before death can claim them
- a sadly injured gannet – left to its devices in the knowledge that, in the Covid-19 lockdown, the wildlife rescue team would be unable to attend
- a tiny, pink, complete, and still living cuttlefish but five centimetres long that squirted black ink at me as I returned it to the sea
- one escapee mask
- a multitude of dog-treasured, sea-tossed, lost tennis balls… or does Poseidon play?
- tree trunks moved
… all discovered, marvelled at, and enjoyed within a 40-minute stroll. All despite a constant battle with an errant earlobe that thwarted all my efforts to sustain my mask in place. As the mask-struggle waxed and waned, I couldn’t help musing the incongruity of a regulation that requires ‘the wearing of a mask’ on a deserted beach in the teeth of this, the strongest of easterlies… a regulation that seems oddly counterproductive when a lung full of saline-misted, Covid-19-free, sea-air would seem a very cogent remedy for both health and soul.
Still, ‘them’s the rules’, and ‘them’s the breaks’, as C J Dennis’s ‘Bill’ might have said to ‘his Doreen’ in Songs of a Sentimental Bloke.
Suffice to say my observations are that the good citizens of Lorne have been conscientious to a man, woman, and child in dealing with this Covid-19 ‘poor hand’ and have fully complied with the mask and stay-at-home regulations. Well done, Lorne.
As I packed the dogs back into ‘Subie’ and headed home to light the fire, pour a glass of red, and settle in front of the footy, my mind cast back to that digital chess board… and my slowly-forming, dastardly plot to conjure victory from jaws of disaster.
Despite the lock-down, the chance to remain in contact with my Aged Care-protected beloved, my too-distant-to-see-them children, and my four precious grandchildren through the modern marvels of Zoom, Whats App, the Chess App and email/SMS makes my isolation bearable. Along with beach walks-of-discovery, the chess battles with my smarter-than-his-grandad grandchild both will be key planks in maintaining my mental acuity through these long weeks of state lockdown and national vigilance.
So… I whisper a silent aha! … for little does he know I have determined my path to rescue! A ‘sacrifice’ feint with a pawn to lure out his Rook, an out-flanking lateral swoop with my Knight to trap his King! My dream: to exclaim a loud, triumphant ‘Aha!‘ on the chess-chat facility … ‘see, James, there is life in the old Codger yet’!
All he has to do is play his part and fall into my trap!
John Agar
Late News: Since writing this piece, the challenge has taken place, the strategy worked and I was able to exclaim, “CHECKMATE!
