Faster, Pussycat! Memorise! Memorise!

After really quite a long time of hoping I'd manage to get obsessed with something memory-related again, I've finally managed it this last week - someone pointed out that I was down to position 10 on the Memocamp speed cards high-score list. Tenth? I mean, I never really used Memocamp with any kind of regularity, but I DID do a sub-30-second time on it once, and that's now only good enough for tenth? What is the world coming to?

So I set myself a target of getting back up towards the top of the list, and because I'm approaching it in a slightly different way, it seems to have circumvented the ennui effect of memory practice I've been suffering from of late. For possibly the first time ever, certainly the first I can remember, I'm not having the official one minute of mental preparation time and then waiting for the whole five minutes of memory time to elapse before starting the recall - my aim isn't to practice the way I'm going to be memorising in a competition, it's just to get a good time on this website, by hook or by crook.

(But not by cheating; that would sort of defeat the object.)

And I have so far managed to get a very impressive 22.21 seconds! I'm trying to get used to going at that kind of speed, because mostly I have more gaps than filled-in-spaces when I do that, but I think I'm gradually getting better. A little more of that, another unusually-memorable combination of cards, and I'm sure I can edge just slightly closer to the golden 20-second mark.

Because 22.21 seconds is still only good enough for 5th, nowadays! I still have Alex, Simon, Lance and Marlo all sitting there above me, with times under 20 seconds (something I never managed to achieve, even in my heyday), so I've got them in my sights now. My enthusiasm is back! Ssssssh, don't scare it away...