UKMC, episode four: Am I Still Writing This Thing?

Seriously, I'm going to have to spend next week catching up with blogging all the things that have happened to me this week. And then the week after that blogging all the exciting things that will happen to me next week. And the week after the week after that... well, you get the idea. Maybe I'll just spend all day blogging tomorrow instead of packing up my stuff because I'm moving house next weekend.

That's something I haven't blogged about yet, because I've been writing about the UKMC.

Anyway, last Sunday morning, it was the final day of the competition. After another very nice full English breakfast at the swanky hotel, I went over the road to find that I was comfortably in the lead. So in five minute numbers I went for a "safe" 360, only to forget an image half way through the final line, so I only wrote down 339. And had a mistake in a previous row, so ended up with a score of 299. Which is still pretty good, really. Wasn't long ago that 280 was my safe-ish score and 324 was my risky second attempt. Which just goes to show how the standard at these competitions is going up at a staggering rate, like I always say.

I was reasonably confident of a halfway acceptable score in abstract images, having done a bit of practice before the competition. I said to Boris that he was going to get 200 or so, wasn't he, and he replied that no, he wasn't going to do that, 150 would be a good score for him. Accordingly, he got 205, while I ended up with 144. Which is still a personal best, and a halfway acceptable score by any standards.

Around this time the media throng started arriving, in the form of that BBC documentary I've probably unwisely agreed to allow to film me, and also another person with a camera from the Sun. I spent most of the time in between disciplines (and there wasn't much time, since we were hurrying to finish before the chess players moved into the room) talking to people and not really being sure who I was talking to.

So, we got on with the historic dates, which went pretty well, and the spoken numbers, in which I got a quite acceptable 99 in the first trial (Boris got a perfect 100, but I always struggle with that last digit, since I memorise them in threes and have one left over that I have to remember by just repeating it to myself). It's always fun to watch memory competitors after a spoken numbers - everyone stands outside the room in a group, reciting the number to each other and exclaiming "Drat!" or "Woohoo!" depending on whether what they remembered agrees with the group consensus.

Which left us with speed cards. I had a lead of around 1200 points, so I was safely the UK champion unless I failed to memorise anything and Boris did a pack in 25 seconds or so. But I was in with a good chance of knocking Gunther off the world number one spot, with a time of (according to my rough calculations) 50 seconds or so. So the sensible strategy was a safe, slow first pack to make sure of that, followed by an amazing world record to blow everyone away.

And so I went through the pack twice, really really quickly, in 47 seconds or so, which should have been safe, but my brain wasn't really up to speed, and I didn't pay attention to the last few cards both times I looked at them. So I got the recall wrong and was torn between attempting another safe time or saying to heck with it all and going for that world record. I really wanted to break the world record and make "Superhuman Genius" out-of-date before it was even broadcast. Besides, it annoys me that they bullied me into making a record attempt outside the competition and ending up with a sort-of-semi-official-but-not-counted-as-a-100%-real world record.

In between speed cards trials I escaped the cameras long enough to get my historic dates score corrected (the arbiter had somehow stopped marking my recall paper about a third of the way through the final page, possibly distracted by a butterfly)* and recalculated that a speed cards time of about a minute would still be enough to take that number one spot. And, on the advice of James, I decided to refrain from attempting the world record anyway, and just play it safe.

*[see my post of three days ago. The arbiters were great. Really they were. Just ignore me.]

So, I did 56.41 and recalled it without a hitch. Woohoo, UK Champion, World Number One, Really Great Memory Person, and so on. Woohoo! Boris did 54.41 to ensure his second place and to move back into the world top ten (at the expense of Dominic O'Brien! That's a cool achievement to put on your CV!), and Gaby did 54.50 to narrowly snatch third place from Katie.

James Ponder won the battle of the Jameses to take fifth place and the coveted third-best-British-entrant trophy and prize (another thing I forgot to mention about the arbiters - arranged lots of sponsorship and some extremely cool prizes again!). Jürgen, Ameel (have I mentioned Ameel Hoque? Another excellent newcomer to watch out for in future competitions!), Mark Channon and Mia rounded out the top ten. Two-time Polish champion Tomek Krasinski was a close enough eleventh that I'd feel like I'm being rude not to give him a namecheck too. Mark Aarøe Nissen (who I haven't mentioned here before, but who was competing in his first real-life competition after taking part in the Online Memory Challenge) got an excellent 87.11 seconds in his first ever real life speed cards. Everybody else, I'm sure, had good reason to be proud of their performance. Give them a round of applause, if you're reading this!

Of course, by the time we ended we were overdue to clear out and let the chess players in, so they were huddled outside muttering dire imprecations in Russian (most of the competitors were British, but I assume chess players of all nationalities curse in Russian), and I was decidedly overdue for an othello tournament quite some distance away elsewhere in London.

Final episode tomorrow! Thrill to my attempt to make a quick getaway from Simpson's!