Colin Maclennan

I first encountered the game of Go way back in the 70s. A colleague at work, a keen chess player, one day brought in a Japan Airlines leaflet about the game and suggested we try it out in our lunch break. So that is what we did, using squared paper and drawing circles that we shaded or not to represent stones.

It was a cumbersome way to play and we did not get far, although we did begin to realise that building walls enclosing watertight areas in one part of the board while your opponent did the same in another part was probably not the best strategy. But it was enough to stimulate me to visit a Go club that was currently meeting in a house in Croydon. It was a long way from where I lived, and I only managed a couple of visits before family pressures took over and I relegated Go to the "RIP" section of my brain.

Years later, after I retired from the Department of Transport (I was a traffic engineer), I took over the chess club at our local junior school which my youngest daughter attended. Her initial interest in the game soon evaporated, but by that time I was locked to running the club and it was several years before I got away!

I thought about taking up the game myself, but a couple of visits to the local chess club discouraged me. At this point I recalled my brief encounter with Go all those years before. A trawl on the Internet, which we had just installed, and I was soon visiting the Twickenham club on a regular basis. The rest, as they say, is history.

May 2011

Email Colin at: club-equip@britgo.org