Getting awards!

The Galician chess season came to an end for Phil yesterday. So that’s it for another year, for him anyway. No veterans’ prizes this year but an odd award for being a “Chess Legend”, which we think means having played in Mondariz for years and won the veterans’ prize several times over.

Some people are carrying on with more competitions, one young chess-playing companion squeezing in another week of chess before he has to return to school in mid-September. There was one tiny boy playing in Mondariz, ten years old but very small for his age, playing the socks off people older and more experienced than he was. Phil played and won a long game against him early in the tournament and, as the week went on and the child defeated others, grew more proud of his achievement. We shall look out for him over the next few years: no doubt a future grandmaster!

We waited in this morning for a workman to arrive to fix a wonky shower and a couple of cupboard doors. Our landlady had told him he did not need a stepladder to do the repairs as the cupboard door was low enough for him to fix. We think she was distracted by her cranky toddler when she came to assess the problem as one of the cupboards is so high that I have difficulty reaching it.

No stepladder? A bit of improvisation with a kitchen chair and all was well!

So everything will be back in working order in time for us to go back to England next week.

The workman told us that he has visited England. Where has he been? London! Hardly truly representative. And Edinburgh. Which is not in England at all!

I read a story about a policewoman in Argentine receiving a promotion after breastfeeding a baby while on duty. Not her own baby, mark you! Officer Ayala was on duty at a children’s hospital near Buenos Aires when she heard the baby crying and asked permission to comfort him. Realising he was hungry she fed him. Not the kind of thing police officers do on a routine basis!

It turned out that the baby was one of six siblings, all undernourished.

One of her colleagues posted a picture on Facebook of her feeding the baby. He wrote: “I want to make public this great gesture of love that you made today with that baby, who you did not know, but for whom you did not hesitate to act like a mother. You did not care if he was dirty or smelly … Things like that are not seen every day.”

Indeed they are not.

The post has been shared more than 100,000 times.

And this took place on 14 August, which coincidentally is national day of the female officer in Argentina.

Another one of those DAYS!

Announcing Officer Ayala’s promotion from officer to sergeant, Cristian Ritondo, the minister of security of Buenos Aires province, tweeted: “We wanted to thank you in person for that gesture of spontaneous love that managed to calm the baby’s cry. That’s the type of police we’re proud of, the police we want.”

Also a bit of good publicity for the police force, I think.

But I wonder what happens to the baby and his brothers and sisters now.