O Desdemon! Dead Desdemon! Dead! O!

I wanted to start with a quote from Othello, so it was that or "Here is my butt."

Anyway, Sam in his much-more-interesting-than-mine blog today commented that he's not sure exactly what Othello (the game, not the Moor) is, and wonders what the difference between Othello and Reversi might be, so for the education and entertainment of my readership, I thought I'd replace my promised essay about the nationals with a brief guide to what Othello basically is.

It's Reversi. More or less. The long story behind it can be summarised as follows: The game of Reversi was invented in the late 19th century in England, it was played for a while by fashionable Victorians before they found better things to do with their time (opium, probably) and then faded into obscurity. In the early 1970s, Japanese board game creator Goro Hasegawa was looking around for new games to "invent", and discovered Reversi. He made a couple of very minor rule changes, renamed it Othello so that he could make money from the trademark and launched it on an unsuspecting world.

It was extremely popular for a while in the seventies and remains fairly popular today. Obviously, the internet people wanted to include it with chess, draughts and other public-domain games, so they sidestepped the trademark issues by calling it 'Reversi', although if you want to be pedantic the 'Reversi' you'll find anywhere on the internet incorporates the new 'Othello' rules. So basically, the two games are one and the same. Being old-fashioned in the British Othello Federation, we haven't yet considered renaming ourselves to appeal to the internet generation like Sam, who only know the game as Reversi. Maybe I'll bring it up at the AGM tomorrow.

Incidentally, I had no idea that there were TV adverts for Othello. The new licencees, Character Games, must be trying to give it a publicity boost.

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I'm the treasurer of the BOF in my spare time, and a poor-to-moderate player of the game too. There are five or six little tournaments in Britain every year, plus two big ones, and the British Championship falls into the latter category, at least in principle. We've got 18 people signed up for it this year, five of whom are non-British people who just live here at the moment, so it's probably unfair to say it's a really big event. But 18 is 50% better than the turnout last year, so we can't complain.

In other news, I've got the job with Nord Anglia, if I want it. Whether or not I want it is a complex question that I've got to find out an answer to this weekend. I might write more about this on Sunday, depending whether the Othello excited me enough to write at length about it, but my reservations about the job basically revolve around three things: a) It's in Burton-on-Trent, which means I have to either commute (15 minutes train then 15 minutes cycling) or move there; b) I'm still not convinced that the job's going to be a permanent thing; and c) I don't know if I'll be any good at it. That last one's a pretty big deal - I might find that I hate the job, I don't know what I'm doing and I'll make a mess of everything. I have a reputation for being extremely competent, but that only applies when I'm doing a job that falls within the narrow band of things that I'm capable of doing. Anything outside that, I'm rubbish, and not being naturally disposed to asking anyone for help, I make mistakes of vast proportions before anyone notices.

On the other hand, the job has good points: a) It pays £4,000 more than my current job, plus benefits. They've offered me the upper limit of the pay scale they advertised for the position, which suggests they think I'm some good; b) They're happy for me to start after my contract with Parkhouse finishes, meaning I still get a big chunk of redundancy money with no break in my regular earnings; and c) It's a job, and if I take it I don't have to go to any more interviews or revise my CV for the SF Group.

There's a d) too - the guy from Michael Page is going to phone me on Monday morning for my answer, so unless I can contrive to be out of the office and have someone take a message, I'll be saying yes.

I'm pretty sure I'll take it. Everything happens for a reason, and if the universe wants me to have this job, I'm not going to complain. What to do with the aforementioned redundancy money is an interesting question, though. There are plenty of worthy causes who could do with it, but this scare has convinced me of the benefits of actually keeping some money in my savings account in case I find myself jobless in the future. Or if I move to Burton, I might splash out on a bigger flat, buy some decent furniture, make it a place fit for human habitation for a change. I might even find a place in time for my birthday, and combine the party with a housewarming! Decisions, decisions...