Well, I did it.

I bought a new rucksack. I hated to do it, but I had to face facts - my beloved old rucksack is now essentially just a scrap of cloth that, at best, can be wrapped around things and carried in my arms without dropping too much stuff from it. It's not actually going to be possible to take my clothes, cards, toothbrush and other memorisation accessories on the plane to Paris in my old rucksack.

This is terribly sad, but I suppose I have had fourteen years of loyal service from my rucksack, and before that it put in a good three or four years carrying my brother's PE kit to school. Maybe I'll give it back to him now, seeing as I borrowed it temporarily from him in autumn 1994, or maybe just keep it in my box of treasured memories.

Apart from buying a rucksack, incidentally, I am completely and totally unprepared for the French Memory Open, or whatever it's called. I've done no training, I haven't planned out what journeys I'm going to use or how much I'm going to attempt in each discipline, I haven't even printed out my e-ticket details, map to the hotel in Maisons-Laffitte and useful stuff like that. I don't really feel like I'm going to be getting up early tomorrow to get the train down to Birmingham airport, then spending a day in Paris. I'm sure I will, but I'm surprisingly underprepared. We'll just have to see what happens.

And you, blog readers, will just have to see me on Sunday, because I won't be blogging till then. Au revoir!