The google search screen this morning features a graphic about the game of go, a game in which I used to take an interest during my late teens, that is to say getting on for fifty years ago.
Wondering why this might be, I put in the search term 'go game' into google and turn up various information about playing the game in this country. I learn, for example, of go challenge finals to be held quite soon at the Milton Primary School, Humphries Way, Milton. I associate to the Milton Road School, a quite different place, which was responsible for the first year of my own school life. I further associate to our own Pound Lane School which I think to be of comparable age and appearance, but taking a peek at http://www.miltonroadschool.org.uk/ I find that the former has moved into new buildings, so the school that I dimly remember is no more. Not a trace of what I remember on streetview, so I must refresh aging memory next time I am in the area.
However, this rather drifts off the point, so I next try the rather incestuous search term 'google go' to learn that this morning's 'Independent', a paper I buy only rarely, says that 'Google has celebrated the 185th birthday of nineteenth century Go player Honinbo Shusaku - widely considered to be the greatest player of the board game during its golden age'.
During my golden age, I used to play mostly on a quarter sized board, suited to lunch time play, made out of three slices of 3/8 inch birch ply, about 6 inches square. A top slice with the array of play holes, perhaps 11 by 11 rather than the full size 19 by 19, a middle slice consisting mainly of a large hole to hold the pieces - half inch inch engineering bolts in two colours - black steel round head and white aluminium countersunk - and a rotating bottom slice which in its closed position stopped the pieces falling out of the middle. Sadly, this fine piece of juvenilia has vanished, although I still have a set of plastic pieces, a DIY board for the adult game, probably not used for the aforesaid fifty years and a book of instruction by Edward Lasker, an international master of chess who made a lot of money out of inventing a breast pump in the 1920's. I am clearly one of those people who finds it hard to let go of such stuff.
I must ask the sprogs whether I tried the game out on them. I suspect that I am now too old to bring the game back to life, but I shall perhaps ask google whether there is a beginners club near me.
PS: presumably there is someone in the googlearium who is keen on the game; it seems quite likely that the sort of geeks who would be interested in search engines would also be interested in such a game. Bit more pzazz about it than chess. Perhaps they even run to a minor league.
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