Pride

Matthew was at the 'Southern Scotland' chess 'megafinal' today. To get there, players had to get through an earlier qualifying round. The standard of play by this stage is pretty high, and there's a lot of kids vying for a relatively small number of places in the next round.

This rosette might not look like much to you, but what it means to him is that he qualified for the next stage - the 'gigafinal' in Manchester. He was extremely happy and justifiably proud. I confess that I didn't think he'd get any further.

Poor kid hadn't had the greatest of weeks at school (more of the interminable bullying/teasing) so this was a great lift for him.

For anyone who plays chess, he clinched the qualifying point with an utterly outrageous and audacious queen gambit - it was such an elegantly laid trap that it was a work of absolute beauty. Having fallen for the trap, the checkmate came four moves later with absolutely no chance of escape. I can only imagine the other kid's dismay as the horror of what he'd done dawned on him. I know I'd have fallen for it, and I bet a large number of players would too. What really amazed me was not that he saw it but that he had the balls to play it.