Errata

 The thing about a documentary is that you take remarks out of context and string them together to make a good story, but I rather worry it might give the wrong impression to people who actually know me. I'm a little concerned that when memory sport people hear me saying I'm a legend in the memory sport community and everyone always flocks around me for autographs, shorn of the surrounding jocular dialogue, they might think I'm more than a little big-headed. And I'm disturbingly certain that my late mother's partner (who I don't think reads this blog but who might well end up watching the documentary) will think I'm being horribly dismissive of my mother when I only give her the most slighting of passing references as a preface to talking about my father...

In fact, since I'm in such an E. Nesbit mood lately, I think an Oswald Bastable quote would be extremely relevant at this juncture: "Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don’t care because I don’t tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all."

Having got that out of the way, let's talk about what I'm eating in that scene. I don't like mushy peas, as everybody should know, and would never order them in a pub. What actually happened was that I had a pub lunch with the film crew - I can't even remember what I had, but it certainly wouldn't involve mushy peas - and then they bought me another meal to pretend to eat while I chatted to the camera, and chose fish and chips because it looks so very nice and English. It wasn't intended to be a chat to the camera all about my dad, but that's how it turned out in the end, with no prompting at all from the director, and I rather like it when unintentional stuff like that turns out to be everyone's favourite part of the film. It's just a shame there was that little pile of mushy peas sitting there the whole time, making people think I eat them. Horrible stuff. Garden peas, if you're serving me fish and chips, everybody!

And then there's the matter of my getting on the podium. You see, while my physical transformation was an absolutely wonderful, miraculous result of the experiment, the documentary really wanted to back it up with me going to a memory competition and showing a similarly improved performance. And the problem with that is that there WEREN'T any memory competitions! I don't honestly know if the WMSC even exists any more (the only one I'm even vaguely in touch with is Phil, and last I heard he'd become Chief Arbiter Emeritus, which is a fancy-shmancy way of saying he's no longer actually doing it), and the IAM had rather gone into hibernation during the pandemic, though it's picking back up again now. I would have had to go far overseas to take part in a real memory competition - the only thing we had over here was the MSO memory event, which I traditionally organise myself (although, again, not since before covid).

Nobody else being able to take charge of the whole thing, we contrived a sort of halfway house where I put the little event together and took part in it too, and the documentary managed to make a big thing about my competing at the MSO memory competition for the first time in ages. Indeed, they got a tiny bit mixed up - what I said (and repeated myself often, explaining it in full detail) to the researcher was that the last time I actually competed in memory at the Mind Sports Olympiad was in 2004, which led the documentary to say I'd been out of the whole memory sports scene for 18 years.

I laughed at that, but then I explained that, although I'd been competing fairly regularly up to 2019, it was 2009 when I last considered myself totally seriously in training for memory competitions. And that really was THIRTEEN YEARS! Perhaps the documentary wasn't so laughably wrong after all...

But let's talk about my aim being to 'get on the podium'. I have NEVER gone into anything with the intention of only finishing third, and I hope I never will! Let's face it, that was how it ended, and so the script said that's what I was aiming to do from the start. In fact, I'm still aiming for the real goal, of actually WINNING competitions!

(Similarly, Kassa points out that he's beaten hundreds of grand masters - this is a common thing to happen when one is a high-ranking international master, although god knows I've never come close to winning a game against a GM or IM when I've played them. His aim, which he's getting ever closer to achieving soon, is to become a GM himself)

And what on earth was that bit about my taking 22 moves to do the Tower of Hanoi? They must have got a number mixed up somewhere, because I only did the basic three-disc version, and I did it in seven moves, of course. You don't get to my age and level of associating with nerdy puzzle-lovers without learning how to do the Tower of Hanoi.

Still, the important point to take away from Mind Games: The Experiment is that I most certainly improved my physical performance, probably also improved my general mental state, and got some really cool trainers too!