Sunday is a day of rest. The only exercise required is pressing on the remote control of the TV when the cricket has finished and the football is starting. That, and jaw movement to take care of the grub that the missus serves up. But last Sunday was different. After an all-nighter from Perth, and with the England rearguard firmly in my mind, I'm on a mission: It's the National Club Championship, and I'm driving.

The National Cup in question was the minor section of the National Chess Cup and I was part of the Hackney team drawn to play the might of Wycombe on their home boards. We had Pepe leading us from the front, his grading shot up last year to 121 and he's in form. And he's managed to persuade Graham to play Board One. Graham is the Shane Warne of Hackney Chess Club: brilliant on the board, a tad wayward off it. We're going for broke playing him as he's a 155 grade, which means that with Pepe's 121 we have to play two 100s on the bottom boards.

Enter Dylan, literally, from his all-night DJ-ing. I mean to say, how many National Cups have someone performing who has just come off a night shift? I'm on Board Four - solid, dependable, upstanding member of the community ... and the only one with a car to get us to Wycombe on a Sunday morning. But I like to think that isn't the reason I am playing.

While London is getting up to the News of the World and bread pudding, we are sailing down the M40. When we play our league games in the London and Middlesex Leagues, we meet normal people -- people who hail from every corner of the world. One game you'll be playing a Pole whose name would give you 96 in one go in Scrabble. Next game you are up against a Colombian and after that a Malaysian. You see orthodox Jews playing orthodox Muslims, Americans playing Russians, black playing white (well, you see that in every game), but you get the drift. If ever there was a cultural leveller, it's over the chess board. Once the clock is ticking you are full on in battle - they should put one in every registry office in the country.

And then we arrive in quaint old Wycombe, in a suburban community centre, the type of place that would make John Betjeman salivate. There we meet our opponents - the Wycombe Chess Club. They have done everything just right: rounds of sandwiches, quality biscuits (not the cheap ones we give our opponents at home games), cakes, fruit, real orange juice (that's real, without two kilos of sugar in every cup that we serve).

But hang on, they've got a kid in the team. We retire back to the car for a strategy meeting. When you are an adult chess player, and you see a kid over the table, you know you are in trouble. They can still be in nappies or twiddling with some stupid Japanese console, it makes no difference. The fact that they are opposite you is enough to send you looking for a rope, tree and do-it-yourself will kit. These kids are lethal, they know all the opening theory, they are fearless and they hover over the board eating crisps while you are thinking. So here is the strategy, guys: whoever gets the kid, play something out of theory, string it out and if it gets complicated he'll have to go home for hair-wash night.