Nimble fingers!

Woo! I memorised a pack of cards in 23.05 seconds today! I should have switched to that shuffling-the-cards-between-my-fingers method years ago! It really is a lot quicker than turning them over two at a time, and it didn't take long to get used to it at all. I've hardly done any practice since the world championship, and I'm well over two seconds better than my previous best. I might just beat 25 seconds in a competition next year!

I also did a perfect 200 in spoken numbers today, for the first time ever. So all in all, I'm extremely happy with myself and in the mood to boast to everybody else in the world that I'm better than them. On the other hand, what I actually need to work on if I'm going to win the blasted WMC next year is the long events - it wasn't really the speed cards that lost me the world championship this year, it was the mess I made of the hour cards, and that was all down to me not having practiced the long disciplines enough, and built up the stamina you need to memorise for hours and hours over a three-day period. I would vow to spend all this weekend doing hour cards, hour numbers and half-hour binary, but a) you all know I wouldn't do it anyway and b) it's my birthday and I don't want you to think I'm a complete saddo.

Although I'm not having a party for another fortnight, and I don't actually have any plans for Sunday. Maybe I am a complete saddo...