TUESDAY
Christmas Day. A friend came for dinner last night (Barry cooked a duck in my kitchen – a first, while I had to make do with a fishcake and mashed potato) and stayed over, but we are all up and out by about 10.30. Barry gets his wish – to spend Christmas Day on his own! Toby and I drive off to Newport, Essex, to spend the day with eldest son Ben, wife Gemma, and grandchildren Hayden (nine) and Parker (two and a half). We have a traditional Christmas (mine goes into the blender before it goes on my plate!). The boys both had scooters for Christmas so we go out for a scoot. Then open presents, and generally slouch around eating leftovers, drinking red wine and watching TV for the rest of the day.
WEDNESDAY
We leave Newport at about 10 and have a smooth ride home, arriving back about 11.30. Then I go out for lunch with Barry to meet Cypriot friends who want us to help promote their bridge tournament. Back in April I wrote about playing in a tournament in Cyprus with Zia. It was a really good tournament with excellent all-inclusive accommodation near Girne/Kyrenia in northern Cyprus. Anyone interested could contact me for details ([email protected]). After lunch it is back to the flat for a bit of time doing nothing. Toby is in charge of dinner – or at least his and Barry’s dinner (my frozen fish pie doesn’t need a lot of work). I bought some extremely expensive rib eye steaks and Toby cooks them by sealing for one minute and then oven-roasting in a really hot oven for four minutes. They turn out really well and I am feeling jealous. Then we watch The Darkest Hour – also excellent, I think.
THURSDAY
I have a couple of online teaching sessions in the morning, and then set off to the Royal National Hotel for the Year End Congress. I am playing with Debbie. We meet for a coffee first and then it all starts. Our first two matches are dire. Despite losing the first 4-16, we draw a top-class pair in the second, and lose again. But thereafter things cheer up and we win the next two matches to finish exactly average. After the bridge a group of us go out for a good (but very slow) Italian meal.
OK – 55% or so and in 11th place.
It does include the most magnificent Grosvenor coup. A Grosvenor coup is a play that gives an opponent an opportunity to make or break a contract that he can’t possibly capitalise on because he can’t believe the perpetrator would do something so silly! All it achieves is to be supremely annoying.
This hand is played against us in 4♠️:
| West | North | East | South |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1NT* | |||
| Pass | 2❤️ | Pass | 2♠️ |
| Pass | 3NT | Pass | 4♠️ |
| All Pass |
*12-24
Barry leads the ❤️7 and declarer plays dummy’s ❤️Q won by my ace. I switch to the ♣️2, won by declarer. He should play a diamond now, setting up a ruff in his hand, but instead he draws trumps ending in hand and plays a diamond to the jack and my queen. I return the ♣️Q. Declarer wins in hand, discards a club on a heart honour and, instead of playing a diamond and making a guess for his contract, he ruffs a club, establishing his eight as a winner. He now has no legitimate play for the contract and forlornly plays the ♦️9 from the dummy. But … look at it from my point of view … should I expect declarer to have taken this no-play line? Or, does he hold the ♦️10 in his hand and if I play low on the nine he will win with the ♦️10 and play his good club pitching dummy’s ❤️K and making an overtrick – surely giving me a complete bottom at matchpoints. So I go in with the ♦️A and his no-play line succeeds.
The second session is fairly miserable, however. We get no luck and most of what we do turns to dust. This is an early board:
Although we both feel that 7❤️ will be a decent contract, we are happy to buy it in 6❤️ because the sacrifice is obviously going to be very cheap (only our side is vulnerable). However, when they sacrifice in 7❤️ we are probably not going to score a lot of matchpoints anyway, so we take the push to the grand slam. It is a pretty good contract, but fails when clubs break 5-1 – and any matchpoints we might have scored completely disappear when East doubles for good measure.
Afterwards we leap into a cab and go to Margaret’s for her birthday dinner. Instead of catering at home, she has decided to go to a private dining room in the pub over the road. We have an excellent meal – and as they charge her only £20 a bottle corkage, which is cheap these days in London, she has provided a great deal of extremely good wine.
SUNDAY
The quality of the wine speaks for itself in that although we drank heavily no-one has a hangover. We drive to the bridge as it is a Sunday and parking will be easy (and free). This time I am playing in the Swiss teams with Gilly, with Barry and Gary as teammates. The first two matches are more or less draws, despite being against some very weak opposition. The next is even worse. I stop keeping track of the score after that. I would say that for this session the fault lies mostly with our other pair, but after the break we join in too, and the standard of play is dire.
Barry and Gary do well on this one, though:
Our opponents sail into 6❤️, after a 1❤️ – 2♣️ – 2❤️ start. That goes two down. Barry and Gary bid:
| West | North | East | South |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1❤️ | Pass | 2♣️ | |
| Pass | 2NT | Pass | 3♣️ |
| Pass | 3NT | Pass | 4♣️ |
| Pass | 4♦️ | Pass | 4❤️ |
| Pass | 4♠️ | Pass | 6♣️ |
| All Pass |
That makes comfortably as declarer can discard his potential heart loser on a diamond.
We finish just below average and then drive back to Shepherd’s Bush and eat at Barry’s local Indian restaurant (the Raj of India, on Shepherd’s Bush Road – highly recommended if you are ever in the area).
MONDAY
The last day of 2018. I get up rather lazily. Toby is going to a New Year’s Eve party this evening, and spent yesterday morning making some rather delicious looking cheese and pancetta puffs to take. I offered to take something to the party we are going to – and suggested ‘nibbles’. When I get the thumbs up I decide to copy Toby – puff pastry cases around pancetta, onion and mushroom. They turn out rather well. Then there are a few domestic chores, and an afternoon snooze in preparation for a late night tonight. We go to a party at Ben and Dana’s new home in Whetstone. It’s a bit of a tedious journey on the tube, followed by a bus, but we get there only a little late and have an excellent evening with plenty of food, drink and good company. I lazily insist on an Uber home (half an hour as opposed to an hour and a half – at two in the morning), and we stagger to bed at about three. 2018 has been a pretty good year actually, but there is plenty of exciting stuff awaiting us in 2019 I am sure.
