1000 SHARDS

When I moved to Melbourne in March 2000, I lived irregular hours while studying postgrad history at Melbourne Uni and working nightshift at the local paper. It meant I missed plenty of big weekend parties, which was a real drag for a newly arrived 20-something. The upside was that I often had weekday afternoons off. I'd wander down the street, through the manicured St Kilda Botanical Gardens, to Acland Street, where I would sit at one of the many cafes and read, sipping coffee or a glass of wine without the weekend crowds.

On one of my first journeys through the St Kilda Botanical Gardens I was delighted to discover a small community of ageing men huddled around an oversized chess board, the knee-high pieces obviously arranged with an intricacy and importance that only they could fathom. Their accents were dense, mostly Russian and Eastern European, and they were there every day of the year, as far as I could tell. I once saw them playing in driving August rain – I'd gone there with the specific intention of establishing just how game they really were – and drew a curt nod from one of the senior gents after our eyes locked through streams of umbrella run-off.

A few of the younger regulars had a whiff of desperation about them, as though this was their few hours break from a grim life of petty crime and graft. I pictured them wandering away as the sun set, peering furtively in the windows of parked cars for potential bounty before arriving home and opening a can of something for dinner then kicking back to plot strategic revenge over the old masters who had wiped the floor with them earlier that day.

That was a decade ago, but the memory is still so fresh. Walking through the gardens a couple of weeks ago I was thrilled to discover that The Check Mates are still at it. Better still, I recognised several of the original crew – still plying their craft, outflanking the enemy, deflating brash newcomers, staying agile and hungry.

They barely looked up as I snapped a few photos. Perhaps they are used to being photographed by tourists, but I prefer to think they were so engrossed in their game, in the urgency of the present, that they were oblivious to the outside world and how it might regard them. The same as it ever was.