I am a man of simple taste, but ‘rich pleasures’. My mind thinks spherically, never quiet, never idol and sometimes overwhelmingly too fast. So my hobbies are as rich and as diverse as my complicated mind.

I love the game of chess, I have collected chess boards and pieces for decades. My small collection is diverse and eclectic as I am.

I recently dig my collection out of storage to be displayed in my newly decorated front room. People visiting, almost always comment on the collection as it sits, idol on the shelve unit that I display them on.

I was an intense study of the game of chess, as a boy and into my teen age years, but opportunities to play other kids, my same age, were few. It seems in those days that chess was an antiquated pre-occupation to many of my contemporaries. So, reluctantly, I put the game to the back of my unquiet mind. But It did not temper my zeal for collecting the odd board occasionally here and there over the years.

Now that those boards are out for me to view everyday, so I too can not ignore the Royal beckoning of those intriguing pieces standing at attention on the fields of immanent battle.

So, I became creative in order to play the noble game of Kings and conquers by myself. Thus I now play trivial challenges based on chess masters. These test are laid out on the board as those famous chess-masters had played them in past. So now I am the challenging wanna-be chess player-champ. And thus to beat the lay-out of the board against the best players in the world. These boards ask, ‘what would your next move be to beat the board’?

I just wish I had more time to play the board before me. I have so many other challenges before me in the world that is my reality. Yet, I do try to find time to conquer those masters before me.

Now… for the Brandy. Brandy is a guilty pleasure that I picked up over the years of reading. You see Brandy or Cognac Is not an alcoholic beverage that can be drank but only sips but slowly and correctly.

I say correctly because cognac and even an aged Brandy must be appreciated with age. Age is the tell between the two liquors. Brandy is aged but modestly, Cognac is aged with intention and exactitude over many years, 10 at least and 20 for serious appreciation. If you are lucky more than 40 years.

Chess and Cognac are two pieces that enjoyed correctly, are a sublime marriage of taste and thought.

As such, reading is a also enhanced by the slow moderated consumption of Cognac or Brandy. It adds a level of relaxation and mental focal to your literature, the cognitive understanding of literature. Your mind is released to absorb the words floating through your head with a definition that elevates your emersion of the words, adding to the visceral understanding of them. It simply adds to the enjoyment of reading great books.

So if you see me pre-occupied and starring off into the background… You know I and dreaming and strategizing my next move and enjoying another sip of warmed aged Cognac.