Waiting in a central Bristol car park on Thursday night, I began to question the choices that had brought me to that point.

Why did I say yes to covering a match in far-away Whitchurch?

Why did I say yes to filling in for absent captains, thus cutting off the tried and tested "my cat is sick" escape route?

And why did I suggest to Aldrin, kindly giving me a lift, that we meet in one of the city's least well-lit - definitely a bit dodgy - locations?

Fortunately Aldrin and Alexis soon arrived and your correspondent was rescued from both his predicament and his doubts about playing. South Bristol are always a welcoming, friendly club and Thursday was no exception. After a brief chat with the opposition to confirm order and junior time controls, we settled down to business.

I have to confess that my attention was mostly on my own game for the first part of the evening, but I did chance a look around at the openings on the other boards.

I was very pleased to see that Mark, finally getting his maiden game for the club after a couple of walkovers, had conspired to win an exchange and a considerably better position out of a classic Knight fork on c7. Good work that man!

I was also glad to see Alexis trying for an Accelerated Dragon, an opening played only by the very best. However, his opponent had opted for the early e4-Ng8 line that takes matters out of traditional Dragon water and requires Black to know a bit of theory. I wasn't sure how booked up our young dragon rider would be on those lines, but still, he had plenty of options available.

Nigel's game upset me greatly, by contrast. His position was fine, better even. The source of my discontent was that he had willingly chosen to play the French, a decision I remain philosophically opposed to in all circumstances.

Alexis (I think) was first to finish. He had indeed got into a bit of trouble in the opening, but he did a very good job of finding the right moment to play d6, showing good understanding of these fianchettoed Sicilian positions as well as central dynamics. His opponent rewarded him by taking the proffered d-pawn, thus hanging a knight which became, in time, a full rook for little compensation. White later tried to make the case for his position by pushing his advanced pawn to d7, but Alexis had already conspired to set a trap and win the White queen. A few more moves was all it took before mate was on the board. 1-0 to us.

As things progressed, it became apparent that Mark's game was never really in any doubt. He methodically opened up the position to allow him to press his material advantage, liquidating pieces when it was sensible to do so but not at the expense of pawn structure or development. Once the Queens came off the writing was on the wall. 2-0 to us.

I should probably say a word about my game at this point. I had played the opening fine, but not brilliantly, missing a couple of opportunities to punish Black's opening choices in favour of just getting pieces out and not blundering horribly. Once Black eventually castled queenside though, I knew I was going to have to step it up a notch or my king would be staring down the barrel of the gun shortly. The move I'm modestly proud of finding was 13.c5 - not a hard spot, but it tied together a few tactical and positional ideas revolving around opening up my bishops.

After that, I'm afraid I didn't press my advantage as well as I could have done, liquidating too quickly and allowing counterplay that Simon tenaciously found, but ultimately I did enough to bag a piece and he didn't make me grind it out further from there. 3-0

So it was just Nigel left to finish and I'm sorry to confess, reader, that we really did have to leave him to finish. His game had turned into a helter-skelter marathon, with the advantage shifting from one side to the other on numerous occasions (at least according to the Lichess evaluation graph, reminiscent of a hedgehog's hairbrush!) until the endgame where, according to my computer, the position was a theoretical draw.

What I will say is what Aldrin and I agreed on in the car on the way home: White was playing for a draw and Nigel was the one with winning chances. He had engineered an endgame where he had three connected pawns, a bishop and a rook against a solitary queen. He also had more time. Engines will find a way to sneak a perpetual check out of these positions, but against a human player we thought Nigel would have the edge. And so it proved: an hour later the result came through on WhatsApp, giving us the clean sweep 4-0.

A good evening's hunting then and something to celebrate for everyone: Mark winning his first game for the club, Alexis making it three on the trot and Nigel grinding out an endgame like a seasoned pro. For myself, I shall be gladly handing the acting captaincy back to Greg/Dan and not for a moment gloating over my 100% record as skipper. Definitely not.