The return of the non-prodigal son!

Here's another VPSer who has a blog that I was completely unaware of until today - my dear adopted son Mythril Knight! Which is doubly exciting, because I genuinely was just thinking about him today on the train on the way home from Cambridge. Go on over and say hello. If you know him already, anyway. If you're one of those readers I keep forgetting about who aren't one of my circle of friends from years ago, then you don't have to.

Anyway, it's been a fun weekend. There were twelve of us at the Christmas friendly othello tournament, plus Aubrey too wrapped up in interviews to play but dropping in for all the parts of the day that involved pubs. I got off to a cracking start in the first round, beating Imre 35-29. Regular readers will recall that beating Imre is a big deal in othello circles, and that I also beat him at the same tournament last year. That makes four times in total, I forget how many times I've played him and lost because I don't tend to remember statistics that don't make me look good, but I still think I've got a pretty darn good win-loss ratio against him.

Anyway, I soon came back down to earth with a thud when I played Geoff in the next round and got well and truly thrashed, although the scoreline of 39-25 makes it look like it was a lot closer than it really was. Still, regular readers will recall that he beat me 63-1 last year, so I'm obviously improving radically. After that, things progressed in the usual way, with me winning some and losing some, and I ended up with four wins out of seven and joint third place with most of the other competitors. Graham won with 7 out of 7, Imre second with 5.

My scores had a rather pretty symmetry in the first five rounds - 35-29, 25-39, 58-6, 15-49, 45-19. It occurred to me that if othello scores work in the same way as poetry, and I don't see any reason why they shouldn't, I was due a 8-56 drubbing in round six, but as it turned out I only lost 42-22. Which was much more satisfactory.

Apart from the actual playing of othello, there was the committee meeting too, in which I volunteered to organise the national championship next year in Derby. So now I'm on the lookout for a cheap and pleasant location for disc-flippers to descend on for a weekend next September.

Also this weekend, I had time for a quick buzz around the charity shops and found a few cartoon tapes that may or may not contain a Looney Tune or two - you can't really tell from the packaging in most cases, but it looks hopeful. Among them, brilliantly enough, is the Krypton Force Videotoons volume 1! I had deduced its existence from the fact that I own volumes two to five, but it was nice to actually find it. There's a Marc cover featuring his representations of both Bugs and Daffy!