Checkmate!

On what would of been the week we'd return to school after the Christmas Hols there's something I feel like talking about.

During the period when I was in school there were a number of recess clubs and activities operating as typically we'd have an hour  lunch break midday around fifteen to twenty minutes mid morning and mid afternoon before formal schooling shut and any day children left.
The big one for me in Juniors was the Chess Club which really took off during the period of US and Russian rivalry with people like Bobby Fischer not just in space but for being the best in chess.
We had a stack of fold up chess boards, some of which did double up for Checkers which I also played and usually you provided your own full kit nine was full sized in plastic and lived in a reused ice cream tub.
They'd be two sets of games going on, an all school championship and friendly games played as much to brush up on our strategies and understandings of the rules as to give newcomers a grounding in the basics of the game.
One sign of it's importance to me in Juniors and Junior High was I had a small black with red trim plastic fold up chess set that used magnets embedded in the plastic pieces to stick to the aluminum under the plastic board that I took out on school trips and vacations  to play with others or to practice moves.
It's an important memory of boyhood with me.