GM James Plaskett presents another of his
coincidence files.
Room 425.
On Tuesday Jan 18th 2000 we returned from a
weekıs holiday at The Dolmen Hotel in St Paulıs
Bay, Malta. We stayed in room 425. I mistakenly
took the room key with me and binned it on Friday
Jan 21st, but my wife fished it out and posted
it back to them on Sat Jan 22nd. That same day
I checked in to The Royal Angus Hotel in Birmingham
and was allocated room 425.
Leighton Buzzard origin queries on the train
On February 11th 2000, the day that we visited
Allan and Draga and passed by Leighton Buzzard
and spoke about the obscure possible origins
of that name we also scooped up a discarded
copy of The Mail in a train and on its quotes
and queries page came across a letter from someone
asking just this and also the correct explanation.
Svengali and pupil
The following day Fiona answered my question
about the precise meaning of a Svengali reference
upon which I chanced in a paper by saying exactly
where he appeared in literature and who his
pupil was.
Shortly after that I came across a crossword
clue pertaining to Svengaliıs pupil.
Dear John letters.
The same day as Andrew Meldrum told me of his
receiving a Dear John letter from Who Wants
To Be A Millionaire? producer Colman Hutchinson
(Meldrum using the term incorrectly) I came
across an article in a Sunday paper on actual
Dear John letters.
Manesh Goldberg.
At the Deloite and Touche Jersey chess tournament
of 2000 I agreed with Manesh Goldberg to send
him a copy of my forthcoming book on coincidences.
I then said farewell to him and travelled back
from Jersey to Gatwick the following afternoon.
To my surprise as I walked from the plane to
baggage reclaim I passed him and two other Dutch
players from the tournament. I asked how he
came to be there and he recounted a tale of
woe involving their all being told at Jersey
airport that they had arrived too late for departure
to Amsterdam and had therefore to buy a new
ticket to Luton (where I still had a flat!)
and then taxi to Gatwick and now they were still
waiting for the departure of a flight to Amsterdam
that should already have left 40 minutes before.
A.D.Martin's Chess cheese.
In Feb 2000 I was chatting with A D Martin via
internet and he made a mispelling of cheese
for chess. I commented that I had made the same
mistake in the ms of my book The Sicilian Taimanov
in my notes to my game with Peter Large.
He commented that he had been instantly put
in mind of that for he had that very book in
front of him.
White King to e8.
On the evening of Sunday March 5th 2000 I was
playing on ICC and, for, I believe, the first
ever time, entered into a brief chat with Luke
McShane. Almost simultaneously a guy with the
handle Snowdog said to me that he wanted to
move his opponentıs king to His king square
during a game before mating it.
This formed a coincidence with Norwoodıs Telegraph
column of a few weeks earlier when he had given
a blitz game between Luke and David Howell where
Luke had driven the white king to e8 before
Howell resigned as it was to be mate next move.
Recognised at Rugby railway Station on March
26th whilst reading a Speelman book.
On the last weekend of March 2000 I was recognised
by a chess enthusiast at Rugby railway station
as I was reading a chess book of J.Speelmanıs.
Sex with zebras.
On April 15th 2000 I was chatting in the Internet
Chess clubıs channel 103. I asked a player with
the handle Pyr whether he was an orthodox Christian.
Dudge responded that he was a Catholic.
I said that he must be a liberal one, for the
notes about himself which he had provided on
the ICC were all about love.
He replied that all sorts of sex are acceptable
to him.
Grant then said "With Zebras."
Pyr commented on that remark.
About twenty minutes later I noted on TV a woman
historian talking about medieval bestiality
and its punishments. She mentioned that a donkey
might be punished for it.
Alongside her was a stuffed zebra.
The TV presenter salutes.
Around 1 a.m. on January 20th 1989 I happened
to recall something which the journalist Simon
Hoggart had written in one of the Sunday papers
several months earlier in an article about an
American TV presenter. He wrote that the guy
was ³... a little strange... not bonkers; just
odd. As an example of his eccentricity he said
that he had once ended a news broadcast by giving
a salute ³fingers atremble at his right temple.²
At 3:19 a.m. a TV presenter on Anglia, known
for his bonhomie, gave such a salute. He explained
that the last programme had ended with the 20th
Century Fox theme musuc, and that he always
feels like saluting when he hears that.
Myra Robinson: Was she happy?
On the morning of January 30th 1989 I watched
the Kilroy discussion programme on BBC1. It
was about people who have met up again with
long lost relatives. Many of these reunions
had been happy but some were not.
Listening to a woman speaking of such a not
too emotional reunion made me think of something
that I had seen on the now defunct BBC programme
Nationwide many years before - probably at least
ten. It was where two women had agreed to be
guinea pigs in an experiment where they swapped
lives for a week or two. The one was an aristocratic
type living in London: the other an ordinary
housewife from the North East. I remembered
seeing footage of their meeting each other at
a railway station at the end of the experiment.
They had been all smiles and had thrown their
arms around each other, but I had wondered then
just how genuine this display of emotion had
been. The whole project struck me as a bit daft.
At 10:36 a.m. the following morning I was watching
another discussion programme called The Time:
The Place. The topic under discussion was ³Homesickness².
The presenter asked a lady about her experiences...
and it soon became clear that this was Myra
Robinson; the very lady from the North East
that I had thought of the previous day. She
said that she had not enjoyed the switch and
part way through her stay in London she had
felt so homesick that she had asked the film
crew whether it might be possible for her to
return home.
I had not seen or heard anything of her since
her Nationwide experiment, neither have I since.
Two Knights versus a pawn - for the first
time.
On the afternoon of February 25th 1989 I noticed
that Bill Evans-Evans was reading from the latest
issue of a magazine called Pergamon Chess. I
had read it and recalled that it contained an
article by GM Stuart Conquest in which he annotated
a game where from a recent Greek event where
he had won the recondite ending of two knights
versus a pawn. This was the first time that
this ending had ever occurred in a game of his.
I said to Bill that I had never yet had this
ending, although I had once anticipated it occurring
in a game of mine from the 1986 British Championships.
The following day I played GM Mihai Suba in
the last round of The Barnsdale Country Club
Young Masters chess congress and the final position
of the game was Suba (White) : King f3, Pawn
h6.
Plaskett (Black) King g8, Knight e6 and Knight
f7.
This is a drawn position, for the pawn stands
outside the winning zone. Nevertheless, it was
still the only occasion in any game of mine
that the ending of two knights versus a pawn
arose.
The blatantly sexist reference to Lady Antoniaıs
appearance on Question Time.
On the evening of June 15th 1989 I several times
found myself thinking back to an amusing incident
from 1982. I had been travelling by car with
Jill Triggs and Byron Jacobs and I had made
a spoof resumé of Sir Robin Dayıs introduction
to the previous weekıs Question Time TV panel
discussion. The panellists had been three senior
politicians plus the biographer Lady Antonia
Fraser. I had listed some of the political achievements
of the three men and then said ³...and then
we have Lady Antonia Fraser, as the blonde with
the big knockers.²
At 11 that evening I switched on my TV and caught
the end of that weekıs edition of Question Time
where Sir Robin Day was announcing who would
be on the panel the following week. he listed
Michael Heseltine, Michael Foot, Dr David Owen
and lastly ³... Lady Antonia Pinter, well-known
biographer and beauty.²
In the interim the lady had married Harold Pinter.
The Morecambe and Wise finale.
One evening in late January 1986 I was talking
with Graham Hillyard in the kitchen of a flat
that he was renting in North London. Of an instant
the daft idea struck me to recite the piece
with which a fat lady had always closed The
Morecambe and Wise TV shows of the 1970s .
And so I announced ³Iıd like to thank you for
watching me and my little show here tonight.
If youıve enjoyed it then itıs all been worthwhile.
So until we meet again, Goodnight, and I Love
You All!!²
Graham went very quiet.³Thatıs amazing², he
said ³Thatıs the second time tonight that I
have had that said to me.² He went on to explain
that earlier that evening he had been talking
to a friend on the phone and that he too had,
out of the blue, produced the same speech.
The Long Good Friday (1)
On January 26th 1986 I was peeling some potatoes
in the afternoon when into my mind came the
memory of a scene from the film The Long Good
Friday where a London gangland leader, played
by Bob Hoskins, has had other gangsters hung
upside down in an abbatoir.
It was not the entire film but only that scene
that I found myself thinking about.
That evening I watched The London Standard Film
Awards on T.V and this very clip was shown.
N.Owen and E.Snell lie down.
On June 3rd 1986 I was staying with Angela Julian-Day
in The Great Eastern Hotel in London. At around
6 pm she left the room to fetch us some Kentucky
Fried Chicken and was gone for about 15 minutes.
During her absence into my mind came the memory
of an incident from 1972 at Bedford Modern School.
Two boys, who would then have been about 11
or 12, were misbehaving in class. Their names
were Neil Owen and Edward Snell. I have not
seen either of them since 1976. The master taking
the lesson was Dan Dicky, famed for his eccentricity.
He punished the boys by the extraordinary device
of having them lie face down on the floor. He
explained to us that after a time this becomes
extremely unpleasant.
The Mestel family.
In the summer of 1986 I was hailed outside Liverpool
Street station by Jonathan Mestel and his wife.They
crossed over and chatted.He was with his parents
and at least one other sibling.
Bumping into Keene
Lamford et al at Kings Cross One morning in
1986 I was browsing at a bookshop in London
Kings Cross railway station when Raymond Keene
and Paul Lamford and some other chess people
came up to me. They asked me what I was doing
there. I disguised my true intent by saying
that I was going to Peterborough. They then
said that so were they. I lied again and said
that I was going on a later train.
C-H-I-T.
On July 7th 1986 I thought back to a scene from
the first of the Carry On films, Carry on Sergeant
. One soldier is telling another that he has
a chit for this and a chit for that. ³Blimey!²,
exclaims the other.²Youıre just a heap of chits!²
This line depended for its comic effect upon
the play on chit and shit.It struck me how remarkably
vulgar a line that is for a family film from
the 1950s.
Later that evening I continued my reading from
Samuel Beckettıs novel Murphy. On page 53 I
read this - ³Dr Fist laughed copiously and said
³I giff you a shit to Killiecrannie.² Dr Angus
Killiecrannie was R.M.S to an institution on
the outskirts of London known as the Magdalen
Mental Mercyseat. The chit proposed that Ticklepenny,
a distinguished indigent drunken Irish bard,
should make himself useful about the place in
return for a mild course of dipsopathic medicine.
I wanted to be like that when I was 94.
That afternoon I read this on page 380 of the
Byron book- "Yesterday, the woman of 95
years of age, was with me. She said her eldest
son (if now alive) would have been seventy.
She is thin- short, but active - hears and sees,
and talks incessantly, several teeth left -
all in the lower jaw, and single front teeth.
She is very deeply wrinkled, and has a sort
of scattered grey beard over her chin, at least
as long as my mustachios."
Do you agree or disagree with Plaskett's arguments?
Add your comment | | | | |
| From: |
James Plaskett | Subject: | 2001-02-10 13:54:38 |
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| From: |
David O | Subject: | 2005-11-08 07:39:57 |
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| From: |
Myra Robinson | Subject: | 2007-03-23 14:56:32 |
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