I forgot Blue Peter, and also that Canadian thing

If the Canadian thing was ever on telly - they didn't tell me about it or send me a DVD if it was. I think they probably told me the name of the show at one point, but I don't remember it.

Anyway, I've done a healthy load of memorising today, and if I do the same kind of amount of work tomorrow, I might just start to think I'm in with a chance of winning the world memory championship. I'm still very much not up to speed - I did an hour numbers today and only got 900, which isn't even up to grandmaster standard, let alone the sort of super-ultra-grandmaster standard I expect of myself, but I was deliberately attempting more than I know my brain is capable of, just to see what my limits are and whether I can keep that concentration going for a three-hour period. And it all went pretty well. Also did a 30-minute binary and got the kind of score that would beat everyone except possibly Gunther if he's at his very best, so I was happy with that.

Of course, my trouble this year is that I don't know which of my main rivals are going to be at their best. I'm assuming Gunther won't be, just because I wasn't the year after I won the world championship, and he hasn't competed at all since then, and he hopefully won't be thinking he can beat me again (and positive thinking is 90% of memory competitions). What's Andi going to do? I'm thinking maybe something exceptional. Just how good is Hannes these days? He's the dark horse that's scaring me the most, after the German championship. And what about all these Chinese people I don't know? We really need to spend more time hanging out with the Chinese competitors, exchanging emails, chatting on forums and so on. The only one I'm in any kind of contact with is Haizhan, and he's not even coming this year. The memory world is seriously in danger of turning into an 'us and them' kind of situation. Maybe I'll learn mandarin and go to the next Chinese championship. If they let me in the country after my previous joke on this blog about overthrowing the government.

And speaking of jokes and governments... I know I have a rule about not talking politics on here, and I know I have another rule about not quoting news stories and commenting on them, and I know I'm nearly thirty-two years old and shouldn't giggle at things like this... but I love the headline "Mandelson Return 'A Risk' - Balls"