PINS - Rule Eight: Moving - But Where?

(I beg your pardon, Mrs Harden, there’s a rabbit in your garden.)

The last post (rule seven) seems to show some confusion about what, or how many orders we have to write out. But be of good cheer! Let us now determine that the opening part of the game requires the writing of three orders in total, and leave it there. We all know that order needs an architect.

Another photocopy in the archive tells us that, after the 1st move is ended and move 3 is written down, we can proceed with move 2. BUT, “move 2 cannot be altered, except by Pin and Local Decision.”

I have to admit, I am excited. We have moved, even if we don’t know it. Especially if our moves had no objective (see rule six). And I have no idea what a Pin actually is, or a Local Decision for that matter. There is plenty to unravel.

I think the best way to deal with all of this is to slide into a state of idle imagining. Dealing with what a Pin is, or how to make a Local Decision, will need a lot of time to think about in the nearest pub. 

We do know we have moved. But what have we moved? And how, or where?

We moved to Clitheroe, to Low Moor, for two years, to avoid the bustle of the early-to-mid-1990s. The chippy at the end of the road was run by two avuncular middle-aged Irish women, who would wrap our chips in page 3 of The Sun. We then moved away, back to the rough end of Accrington. The landlord’s sons nicked the electric fire out of the grate.

We moved from the tap room to the saloon bar of the New Inns pub, after we started receiving phone calls from friends and family. The woman who fielded them grew increasingly impatient. She was a regular, and happened to stand stoically by the telephone (affixed to the wall next to the bar, and by the hallway leading to the outside jakes). The idea of her moving from the spot she’d claimed over the years was unthinkable, and conversations - usually a set of admonishments based on where we were and what we were doing - would be conducted in a hunched position staring at the greasy plaster of the wall immediately facing us. Luckily, the admonishments we received (usually a tirade of some form) meant we could only grunt in affirmation, or offer sardonic one liners in response. In any case, no secrets spilled in the tap room, ta very much. The tap room is there for sloshing down serious misery in silence. That’s the unspoken rule. Secrets are for gossip in a full saloon bar where the hum of polite conversation adds a discreet auditory veil to your revelations, or for a modern open-plan pub, where loud music - normally the thuds and groans of an Oasis track - crushes anything said, outside of a nagging suspicion that someone has just told you they want to kill you because they think you fancy their partner. One final thing: the badges of various county and rural associations were placed in a line on the woman’s deerstalker, and had clearly been polished.

We moved to digs in a huge old pub near Wakefield Kirkgate station. Was it on South Street? We can’t remember exactly but the landlady was in her nineties and wore a black dress with a white pinafore and cap, and served the same breakfast for everyone whether you liked it or not. That was the early 1960s for you. No-one had heard of Cliff Richard!

We caught the bus to Burnley and got off at Rose Grove. We walked down the hill to town.

We moved around the Metro when it opened, we got on at Felling and got off at Central Station. The seats were new and felt like the modern world, or London. A treat.  

We have moved our forces across the Froidal Ocean. (If only James Anderton knew what we were up to.)

We moved the ball quickly, through a series of precise, well-executed passes to the left wing, looking for Donovan United’s captain Arthur Baker, who had slipped loose of his regular position (Left Half) and joined Albert Yen, United’s brilliant if erratic winger in a raid forward. This doubling up was a move worked out on United’s training ground that week, an attempt to unsettle Ben Clarke, the opposing captain of local rivals Donovan Rovers. Clarke, playing at Right Back and not the quickest, found himself having to choose who to clobber first.  

 

Finally, in preparation for future posts, let us imagine a local decision.

Standing on the beating breast of the starling it has plucked from the tree, and oblivious to the death screams, the sparrowhawk pauses. It must sense you are watching it, your presence by the backroom window is somehow made manifest. Head to one side, it cocks an inquisitive look your way. You stare back; its facing eye a glittering amber void. What to decide?

Photocopies to accompany this post can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.