Trains, planes and

There really is a more boring place than the departure lounge of terminal 1 at Birmingham International Airport! It's the departure lounge of terminal 2! I didn't get round to buying a good new book for the journey this time, so I'll have to make do with re-reading The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro. There are plenty of worse things I could be reading.

There's also cricket on little tiny TV screens dotted around the place, so I'm probably being much too harsh, calling it boring. Anyway, I probably won't get a chance to write anything while I'm in Paris, so this'll be the last entry till Sunday night, when you can expect either an account of the othello tournament or a thrilling commentary on whatever else has distracted my attention. Octopusses, maybe, and why that sounds so much better than octopi.

Racing from Uttoxeter

The trouble with Michael Page Recruitment, which I'd forgotten since the last time I was registered with them, is that they've got branches all over the country who all have access to candidates' CVs, and occasionally call people on spec to see if they'd be interested in relocating. So I got a call today about a job as management accountant with JCB in Uttoxeter. And since I can't say no to people over the phone (don't laugh at me, it's a serious problem), I cheerfully agreed that MP could send my details over and try to set up an interview. Knowing my luck, I'll get the job and have to commute or move there, which I can't imagine would be much fun either way.

I went to Sheffield this afternoon, just for fun. I haven't been there for ages, but it doesn't change much. The shop that my hat came from has closed down, though. I thought it had, but I wasn't quite sure. I did get the Thunderbolts comic I was looking for (#11, not #9 as I said whenever it was). It's rubbish, as I expected it to be, seeing as it's a House of M crossover, but I don't mind buying something irrelevant, meaningless and incomprehensible every now and then if it supports comics like Thunderbolts. Or like Thunderbolts is the rest of the time, anyway.

Paris tomorrow! I should hopefully get there with a bit of time to wander around the city, the plane's due to arrive at 3:40pm. I'll have to dash off before the finals on Sunday to get the plane back, because I seem to have booked an earlier flight than I really needed to, but never mind. It's not like I'll be playing in the finals myself, and the EGP might well be settled by then, unless Graham plays a lot worse than he has been doing all year.

Webcomics

One of my favourite things that I don't seem to have mentioned in this blog thing yet is the wonder of webcomics. I'm a big fan of comic strips of all kinds, and the kind that you can read in the comfort of your home without even paying for has to be the best kind.

Being me, I particularly like the furry comics with cute characters, and Newshounds, Ozy and Millie and Count Your Sheep are my current favourites.

The current story in Newshounds features Nigel, a supporting character with whom I'm head over heels in love. He's just such a nice guy that I'm pretty sure everyone in the world just wants to give him a cuddle. He's much too good for you, Alistair. But the strip has its appeal even for those who aren't attracted to male, fictional cats - it's a mix of political satire and character-based comedy-drama set in a unique world of its own.

I always love any kind of fiction set in a world like our own but with a strange little twist. I mentioned Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends the other day, set in a world where imaginary friends have form and substance, and Codename: Kids Next Door is another good example, where an ongoing war between kids and adults doesn't get in the way of the characters going about their everyday lives. In Newshounds, animals walk on two legs, talk, and can do anything humans can, but the way people treat animals is basically the same as in our world. It's like the old funny-animal comics and cartoons, only with a bit more thought going into the premise.

Go and check it out, I'm sure you'll like it.

Come on you Pilgrims

I see Boston Utd are playing Sheffield Utd at Bramall Lane tonight in the Carling Cup. I haven't been to a game for ages and ages, and I assume it's my lack of support that has led to Boston's atrocious start to the season so far (two points from four games), so I would have gone to this one if I'd bothered to check the fixtures and found out it was happening a bit earlier than an hour after kick-off. It's 0-0 at half-time, with Paul Ellender having been booked, which probably means that they've adopted the usual tactic of having him actively try to cripple the better team's best players.

I hope they win. A good run in the Carling Cup is always a boost, even if it's only by being lucky enough to be drawn against the many teams who don't bother really playing in that most pointless of competitions.

In other news, I'm definitely going to Paris at the weekend. I've booked the plane and hotel and everything. Which is nice, because it might turn out to be my last foreign jaunt of the year - there isn't going to be a Vienna memory competition, annoyingly enough. Someone needs to organise one in Britain and find a miraculous way to make it both popular and profitable. I suppose I might still qualify for the WOC in Iceland, although I haven't got round to my plans to improve my othello enough to give me a chance yet. I might try tomorrow.

Also, I feel the need to point out that Samoyed puppies are the cutest things in the universe. They're like happy little bundles of cotton wool with big smiley faces. In fact, they look so much like cuddly toys that I suspect they're made in a factory somewhere. Perhaps when I get that big house with hundreds of cats that I'm always talking about, I'll have a few dozen Samoyeds wandering around the place too...

Flime ties

I've been doing this blog for a whole month now, I've just realised. And I'd like to think it hasn't been nearly as boring as it could have been. I could have written about knitting every night, you know.

Anyway, Michael Page don't waste any time - they called me today with a job that sounds quite cool, although it's in Spondon, which is a bit too far out of town for my tastes. Still, assuming they get me an interview, I'll go along just for jolly old wouldn't you.

I'm a bit short of inspiration for things to write about tonight, to be honest. I hear from Jeremy Dyer that next to nobody turned up for the othello tournaments at the MSO, which sort of vindicates my decision not to go (although I might have won if I did...), and there's a meeting there tomorrow on the subject of 'Survival of the MSO'. I did think about going along, but I don't think any of my opinions would make any real difference. Also, I feel bad about not going in the first place, so I'd have trouble looking Tony Corfe in the eye.

Palm tree

My palm tree. Gone. Paradise lost. Carrion carcass corpse. Vultures circle for a taste.

I can't remember how the rest of it goes, but that's an obscure quote. And how did it get into my head? Well, I've got a plan for what to do over the next week. I'm going to clean my flat. Properly, with proper cleaning materials and everything. I'm going to buy them tomorrow. Meanwhile, I picked up the Incredibles poster my brother got me for Christmas, which has been lying on the floor since it fell off the wall four months ago, and stuck it back up again. And while I was in a poster-putting-up mood, I dug out the Nessie poster I bought a few weeks ago and put that up in my bedroom, and then hauled my collection of old posters from the cupboard they've been living in ever since I moved here two years ago, and stuck them up around the place too.

It looks pretty cool. Kind of a getting-back-to-my-roots feel, seeing as these are posters I thought were cool roughly ten years ago. Teletubbies, smiley faces, Pulp, Oscar Wilde quotes and a strange computer-generated thing involving a stack of spheres. I also blu-tacked up the two six-foot cardboard palm trees I got sent by mistake when I ordered the cowboy paraphernalia for the party in Nottingham back whenever it was. I didn't ever return them, because I figured everything happens for a reason, and if the universe wants me to have two six-foot cardboard palm trees, who am I to argue? They look quite nice too.

So tomorrow, if I'm still in a cleaning mood, I'll pick up the piles of comics lying all over the floor and put them back in my wardrobe. Pick up the pile of clothes from the other part of the floor and put them in the kitchen cupboard where I theoretically keep them. Then get some heavy-duty cleaning gear and clean the kitchen surfaces, which are so filthy I'm sure I must have salmonella by now, just on the general principle of the thing. I'm also inclined to pick up the piles of books from the bedroom floor and either rearrange them in the single big pile they're supposed to be in, or acquire some wood and/or a proper bookcase and arrange them a bit more tidily.

I might also have to get a new vacuum cleaner. The one I have was bought mainly because it's the same colour as a Constructicon, it's very small and probably not cut out for the kind of use it's going to need to be put to. I've only used it three or four times in two years, poor thing.

I'm not sure if all this domesticity is a sign of growing up (in which case please feel free to shoot me) or just of boredom (which is fine). But if it wears off, I'll go to Nottingham tomorrow instead and just wander around. I need to get a copy of New Thunderbolts #9, anyway, as Forbidden Planet in Derby have sold out. They seem to be doing that a lot lately - perhaps I should have a pull list, but I travel around such a lot that it'd be a real drag having to wait until I got back to Derby to collect my week's comics.

Speaking of travelling, I'll decide tomorrow whether to go to Paris or not. It's a bit expensive, and I should really be keeping my savings in case I don't find a job. I calculate that I'll run out of non-savings money right around Christmas if I don't. My savings amount to another couple of months of high living after that, so I've got plenty of time for job-hunting. Besides, worrying about money is even more grown-up than cleaning. So I think I'm going to go anyway. It'll be fun.

Oh, talking of jobs, another thing on the to-do list for this week - sit down and write a bit of How To Be Clever, the book I've been meaning to write for years now. I'll write more about that some other time.

The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down

I've had the theme tune to Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends (a brilliant cartoon series) stuck in my head all day. It doesn't have any lyrics or a title, as far as I know, which is why the subject header is a different tune entirely that happened to be on the telly at the time I was trying to think of a title. But the Foster's theme is quite catchy, and surprisingly non-distracting - I've been memorising cards and numbers with it playing in my brain but not getting in the way at all. I'm going to go off and do a bit more in a minute, while I'm in the mood. Who knows, I might keep this up all year, think up a better system for numbers, and win the WMC by a mile next time round!

I've also sent my CV to one agency, Michael Page, who got me my job at Parkhouse. I know I said I'd send it to agencies, plural, today, but it's such rubbish that I don't think I could face multiple agencies telling me so. I'll just let MP criticise and ridicule it, then let them make improvements and then I'll send it to other people. There's plenty of time yet.

I'm now watching The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee, to see if it's any good. It's created and written by Judd Winick, who's done some great comics in the past, so it might be, but the opening couple of minutes of this episode aren't looking all that great. Rather than jump to hasty conclusions, I'll give it a bit more of a chance, though...

I should talk a bit more about Foster's - it's very original and witty and clever. But I can't be bothered. Just go and watch it, it's on Cartoon Network.

A more important subject is what I'm going to do next week. I've got the week off, it seems I'm not going to the MSO, and I haven't really got anything that urgently needs doing. 'Looking for a job' is not going to take up all my time. Memory things, maybe. Perhaps I could swot up on pi and see about maybe breaking that record later this year. Not really in such an othelloey mood right now, so I'm not feeling like memorising classic games like I was talking about doing.

Chinese whispers

Actually, I think that title is politically incorrect nowadays, so I apologise. Also, sorry that the content of this entry is once again themed around the subject of me appearing in newspapers. But don't worry, I'm pretty sure that's all over and done with now, so this'll be the last one.

But the Derbyshire Evening Telegraph have a big long story about me again this year. It's mostly a reworking of the story they did last year, with added new details borrowed from the BBC News website, which had published a somewhat garbled brief story based on the official press release before the competition. To top it off, the reporter phoned me at work and asked a couple of questions, then quoted me as saying something else entirely. I'm intrigued by some of the things attributed to me - none of the things in quotation marks are actually what I said, although they're mostly vaguely similar paraphrases. I never said anything like "I had to book an extra day's holiday off work just to recover," though.

Even more fun, they repeat the BBC story's claim that "As well as making sure their brains are finely tuned, competitors have to ensure they are at maximum fitness levels." Which I really don't.

But the best of all is the fantastic photo (reused from last year) of me looking particularly scary. Check it out. Maybe I could make a new career in horror movies?

And no, I haven't done my CV or anything. Tomorrow. And then next week everyone reading this can thrill to my adventures in job-seeking.

Squashed Frogs

Apologies for not posting anything last night - I realise there's a devoted audience out there hanging on my every word, but I was out with the people from work. Actually, I sneaked off at around 10pm, but not before I'd introduced everyone to the delights of squashed frogs, the world's best shot. Always good for a couple of cool points in any social gathering.

So I thought I'd do a bit of blogging from the office, rather than, say, working. I feel justified in this since a) my immediate boss didn't make it in until ten o'clock this morning after last night's shenanigans; b) I would have done it at lunchtime if I hadn't been down the pub celebrating Phil's last day, and it's the thought that counts; c) nobody here is doing any work anyway. The drawback to this is that the IT guys can (and probably will) spy on what I'm doing and so will be reading this, but I don't mind. I'm leaving soon, anyway...

I realised this morning that I still haven't made a decision on whether or not to go to the MSO. But since I would be travelling down there tonight if I was going, I suppose the decision's sort of been made by default. Which means that the thing will be starting some time around now, not graced with my presence for the first time. Very sad. But I really don't want to spend £470 (including the late-entry charge) on a week of games with a handful of other people. I might still go to Paris next weekend for the othello, but I haven't quite made up my mind yet.

What I'm definitely going to do, hopefully, is get my CV polished up and submitted to a few agencies tonight. Then I can spend next week going round and talking to them and see if there are any jobs going. I'm resigned to the fact that I'm hopeless with interviews, so I think my best bet is still to hang around here till we finish, find a temp job and hope they take me on permanently again. But it's still worth looking around now, just in case my dream job is out there.

Speedy Gonzales, why dontcha come home?

I feel the need to defend Speedy Gonzales. He gets a lot of bad press, and a lot of people are very rude about him, saying either that he's an offensive ethnic stereotype or that his cartoons are dull and repetitive. Or both. He's the only A, B or C-list character who doesn't get so much as a cameo on Baby Looney Tunes, which I think is shockingly unfair. He'd look good babified, possibly with an oversized sombrero.

Also, the DePatie-Freleng era cartoons with Speedy and Daffy aren't nearly as bad as everyone says they are. Okay, the animation's not up to the high standards that had been set over the previous thirty years by the WB studio, and the jokes and set-pieces are mostly stolen from earlier cartoons, but funny is funny, however many times you see it. And 'A Taste of Catnip' is genuinely original and brilliant. And there's nothing wrong with Daffy's characterisation in those cartoons either - he's a complex guy and you can still sympathise with him.


In other news, I seem to have reached the point in time where I was supposed to get my CV together and start looking for jobs. Shudder. I'll do it tomorrow. No I won't, there's a work party thing. The day after. Probably.

Home again

I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow. I always get like this after a memory championship or MSO - the whole job just feels really frustrating and dull at the same time. I'll be okay after a couple of days back.

Plus I'm late in tomorrow, because I'm doing an interview on Radio Derby. I'm also having the Evening Telegraph phoning me up, and maybe coming round to photograph me again. But after that, hopefully, the whole thing should go away until next year. Freedom!

Also, this means I can talk about something else in this here blog. It's not been very balanced so far. But just one more memory-related ramble: I'm feeling much more motivated to win next year's championship now. I'm going to put a lot of work into preparing for Vienna in November, hopefully. If I can win that, it'll be a great boost.

Adventure

"Hurrah for the holidays!" enthused Purvis, idly throwing a sharpened stick towards Dennis's eye.

"Bogging holidays," grumbled Figg, "getting in the bogging way of whatever it is we do when it isn't the bogging holidays..."

"Don't talk nonsense, Horace," said Beetroot, who was under the mistaken impression that she was talking to the film star Horace Goldenrod, "the holidays are the best time of the year! Why, just this afternoon we're going to Wigginsford-on-the-Sands, which while it isn't actually the seaside has the world's third-largest artificial pebble beach!"

"That's true," confirmed Greebo unnecessarily, "and I'm sure we'll have a marvellous time!"

"Look out, Dennis," said Tailor, much too late to be of any use as Dennis, blinded by the sharpened stick, blundered into a ditch and knocked half his head off on a jutting rock. Everyone chortled.

"Somebody pull him out, before he goes and drowns himself," laughed Purvis, kicking Dennis's elevated backside for good measure.

"Yes, and hurry up about it," added Greebo, realising that the people who gave the orders were less likely to have to do the actual work. She reinforced this reluctance to do any heavy lifting by wandering off down the road towards their home.

Since Tailor had no arms or legs, and Beetroot was busy asking a butterfly for its autograph, believing it to be the popular musician Greaves Poltergeist, it was Figg who had to haul Dennis from the muddy water in which he was buried up to his neck in the opposite of the usual way. Complaining all the while about the bogging effort and inconvenience he was being bogging put to, he dragged Dennis's insensible body after their siblings.




Back home at lunchtime, while Mother patched up Dennis's injuries, Father doled out generous helpings of roast beef and yorkshire pudding to the other children, and ordered them not to eat it. "You can't eat if you're going swimming this afternoon!" he barked, pouring gravy on his own plate of food before throwing it in the bin.

"But we're not going swimming this afternoon, Emily," protested Beetroot. "Wigginsford-on-the-Sands doesn't have actual water on its artificial beach. There are just men who throw buckets of blue paint over the holidaymakers every few hours to simulate tidal waves."

Father swore vigorously for the next fifteen minutes, without ever pausing for breath or repeating himself, while he retrieved his dinner from the bin and ate it. The others ate up too, discussing the relative merits of two modern composers among themselves while they did. Tailor considered that Ventura's use of deliberate atonality gave his pieces a predictability that Venezuela's more conventional work was spared, while Figg felt that the only bogging thing worse than bogging deliberate atonality was the bogging tuneful drivel that bogging Venezuela came out with. Greebo, having never heard of either composer, forcefully expressed the same opinion as the last speaker, and Beetroot, addressing everyone else at the table collectively as Ventura, speculated peaceably that perhaps everyone was free to hold their own opinion on the subject.

Only after everyone had finished eating did Tailor notice that Purvis had turned into a goat. A ten-foot-long, stuffed toy goat with fluorescent green horns and seven eyes. Casting their minds back, the children realised that the transformation had happened gradually over the previous fifteen minutes, starting with the head and spreading gradually downwards. "That explains why he didn't say anything," observed Greebo, quite some time after the others had come to the same conclusion without feeling the need to voice it.

"It's still queer that he should change into a goat like that," mused Tailor. "Perhaps we should cancel our trip to the artificial beach and see if we can change him back?"

"We're not calling off the trip!" Father screamed from the bathroom where he was trying to wash the taste of potato peelings and old boots from his mouth (he had eaten the entire contents of the dustbin, not sure which bits were his lunch and which weren't). "I've already bought a car for us to drive there in!"

"We've already got a car, Father!" Tailor called back. Father resumed swearing, cursing and lamenting his needlessly dented bank balance.





"What ho," said Dennis, limping into Purvis's bedroom where his brothers and sisters were gathered. Mother had fixed his head as good as new, but had accidentally reduced the length of his right leg by three inches in the process. "It'll grow back," he added cheerfully. "What's been going on, then?"

Figg and Tailor gave surprisingly contradictory accounts of what had happened at lunchtime. Dennis was able to piece together the most important details by discarding the version of events which seemed less plausible - Tailor's otherwise reliable narrative featured several people whom Dennis knew had not actually been present, and Figg's digressions on the subject of Father's bogging waistcoat coming to life and eating all the bogging muesli, Dennis soon realised, were based on a television programme they had watched the night before. Interestingly, Figg and Tailor were both mistaken as to the identity of their sibling who had been transformed into a goat - they both assured Dennis that it had been Greebo, who was sitting cheerfully on Purvis's bed in plain sight, reading a religious text.

"You know, I remember Purvis saying something about goats last Christmas," recalled Dennis. "Didn't he say he wanted to be one?"

"No, he said he bogging hated goats," countered Figg rather more aggressively than the situation demanded, "and if he ever bogging turned into one, he'd kill him-bogging-self."

"Let's go and see," suggested Beetroot, restraining Figg from taking a meat cleaver to Dennis's groin. She took the cleaver, which she thought was the racing driver Gerhard Grantley, back to the toy cupboard it had come from, and then led the way to Greebo's bedroom, the window of which looked out on the garden of six months previously.

Happy!

I notice, looking back, that the titles of my last four entries were "Sheesh", "Tired", "Bored now" and "Forget fame, fortune and things". This I think gives the entirely false impression that I haven't been having fun lately. I love the hectic buildup to a world memory championship, even if it involves people pointing cameras at me!

Anyway, I didn't win. Not enough training, plus Clemens and Gunther being better than me (always a problem) conspired to strip me of my title. Still, it's been fun being the World Memory Champion, and I'll have to do it again some time. Got a world record in the speed numbers, god knows how. If you asked me which event I was least likely to break a record in, names and faces aside, that would have been it. Just goes to show you never know what you can do until you've done it.

Lots and lots and lots of things to write about, but I'm in a net cafe in Oxford and I've got to go to the stupid prizegiving in a minute or two, followed by a non-stupid party at Ed's family mansion. So I'll just give the news in brief and say more when I get home tomorrow.

Hi Sam
! Thanks for being the first person to post a comment! Anyone else who actually reads this, feel free to do the same!

Good journalist of the year award: Josh Foer, the American guy who's writing a book. I mentioned a while ago that I'd already told him everything there is to tell, but he managed to keep me talking for three hours the next day, while I was hungover and sleep-deprived, without me once getting bored or wishing I was somewhere else. He asks intelligent questions, takes a genuine interest in the subject and doesn't mind at all if I digress and start explaining what's so great about Daffy Duck.

Bad journalist of the year: The BBC director mentioned earlier. I won't give her name in case she's one of those weirdos who type their own name into Google to see what people say about them, but the woman's terminally dense. She also says things like "You're doing really great, you must have done this before!" whenever I show signs of annoyance with being filmed doing the same thing more than once.

Great book recommendation: Anything involving Fidget and Quilly, by David Melling. Sheer genius. The Dinosaur Game might be the best.

Slightly worrying: Spending ten minutes chatting with someone I didn't think I'd ever met before, only to have him end the conversation by saying "Well, we'll talk on the internet again. See you!"

I'd skip the prizegiving and go home right now if it wasn't so rude. Andi, who doesn't care how rude he is, has already left. The pains of politeness. Anyway, got to run! As an extra bonus tomorrow, I'll post the first chapter of the thrilling book I wrote last night.

Forget fame, fortune and things

It's nice to be reminded why I don't want to be a celebrity. Spent the best part of two hours tonight being filmed pretending to memorise numbers, cards and so on, while talking about the brain and learning and how generally great it is to have one and do it.

The layout of my flat not being appropriate for the camerawork she wanted to do, we had to drag my desk out into the middle of the room and put my computer up on it (as opposed to on the floor), shine my desk lamp on me (I don't usually use the lamp, it just sits on my desk to look nice) and do everything several times over so as to get different camera angles. And she took exception to my Zoom-Zoom T-Shirt, possibly because of the big holes, and made me wear a shirt and my playing-cards tie. So people will think I sit around the house in a shirt and tie, with my computer on my desk, taking the whole memory thing really, really seriously.

Annoying, the whole thing. I'll try to get out of the follow-up filming she's threatening me with, outside in the park.

This might be my last entry for a few days. Going down to Oxford tomorrow, back on Tuesday. A bit doubtful about my chances now, but we'll see.

Bored now

If I was a more assertive person, I'd tell all these interview-happy people pestering me at the moment to collectively bog off. I didn't sound too bad on the Steve Wright show, but I've turned down another interview on Radio 4 tomorrow, and I've still got the Telegraph going to phone me up, followed by the TV people coming round to film me. Which is seriously annoying, not just because it cuts into my cartoon-watching time, but because the director hasn't got a clue what the WMC is all about, meaning that I have to explain everything from first principles. Most people at least have a vague idea what a memory competition involves before they talk to me. I did fill her in on what the binary competition, and others, actually involve, which seemed to disappoint her somewhat, but she still thinks there's something filmworthy there.

And also, they want to film me practicing memorising cards, and I need to be not memorising things right now, so as to keep my brain clear for the weekend. I'll just have to pretend to be training and not really look at the cards.

Still, how cool is this: "Our guests on the show today are Ben Pridmore and Natalie Imbruglia!"

Tired

And can't think of anything to write, but I've been doing so well at this daily diary thing that I'm not going to stop now.

I was thinking of writing some nonsense, but I'm too tired even for that.

Sheesh

You see, this is why I wouldn't be a very good celebrity. I've spent way too much time today talking with and emailing the radio and TV people - the latter now want to film me talking to the former, which I think is taking things to extremes.

What I need, obviously, is an agent. But the understanding kind who won't mind if I refuse to do any kind of interviews or performances for months on end because I don't feel like it.

In other news, I think I'm really going to work on othello as soon as the WMC is over, and see if I can put in a good performance at the nationals in September. I'd really love to go to Iceland for the world championships, although that would take twice as many disappearing acts from the really good players as last year, since we only get to send three people this time round. Three men, anyway - it seems there'll be women's teams too, although that's not much help to me.

Anyway, enough. I'm going to go and play Sonic the Hedgehog. I know I said I'd practice hour numbers tonight, but I've decided to do it tomorrow. I'll be finished recording the radio thing by 1:00, apparently, and if I can escape the TV people quickly, I might be back here before four, with plenty of time for a bit of last-minute training. I just did a perfect 100 on spoken numbers, which I don't usually manage, so I'm still upbeat about my chances.

One more thought - the TV people want to film me at home on Thursday night. Should I clean the place up a bit, just so as it doesn't look like one of those places you occasionally see in news stories about people living in shocking squalour? Or should I leave it filthy and try to pass it off as loveably eccentric?

Memory stuff

I've had a great weekend's training, and the conclusion is that I'm not at quite the level I was last year, but I'm getting the idea that I might, if everything goes well, be good enough to win, touch wood.

I'm torn between resting my routes from now till Saturday, or getting a bit more practice in after work tomorrow. I think I'll go for the latter option, just because I'm still not completely confident about how much to attempt in the hour numbers (8 234-digit journeys to play it safe, or 9 and hope it goes better than it did on Saturday? 8 won't be enough to match the best results, I suspect, but I think it's the way to go).

I've also altered my new journeys so as to skip two sections that are much too similar to each other, and dredged some more old journeys from the back of my mind where they've been lying unused since last year. So I've now got close to thirty of them, which should be enough. The old ones still work better than the new ones, so I have to decide which disciplines to use them for...

I also have to work tomorrow - it's going to be a busy day, particularly with not being in on Tuesday or Friday, and the radio and TV people both probably going to call at some point. Still, stress always helps me think better.

PotterPuffs!

I was planning to write about my memory training and plans for some last-second changes to my techniques tonight, but then I discovered possibly the greatest artwork ever created: PotterPuffs!

I just love this kind of thing to bits, and this is the best example I've ever seen. I am completely in love with that website.

Fame and Fortune

Everyone's after interviewing me now. The BBC want to do a bit about the world memory championships for the 'Child of our Time' series, apparently to show what the human mind is capable of. Although it's flattering to be considered an example of the pinnacle of human intellect, I can't help thinking they're in for a rude awakening when they see what the WMC is really like. I got copied in on an email from the director, which contains a couple of choice lines:

"From first glance the binary numbers, faces and names, and random words look most appealing for the television audience."

Now, I'm not sure what they think binary numbers involves, but if you didn't know, it's a room full of people looking at sheets of paper with lots and lots of 1s and 0s on them, for half an hour. Then the invigilators take away the sheets of paper and give the competitors blank paper. Then the competitors spend the next sixty minutes writing down all the 1s and 0s they can remember. If you're the kind of weirdo who likes this kind of thing, then it is a lot of fun. If you're watching it on telly, you will not be enthralled. Believe me.

In the same email, we have "At the moment I feel it may be good to follow a British child and an adult who are looking like hopeful."

Obviously it would be natural to think that the dozens of people competing in the WMC would contain a reasonable selection of Britons. In fact, while there might be anything up to fifty competitors there, Team Britain will almost certainly consist of me and Ed again, with the possibility of Andi showing up to round it out to a whopping three. Britain always provides the world champion (a tradition I'm determined to keep going), but for the last few years we've been decidedly short on numbers.

As for children, there aren't any in Britain who are interested in 'memory sports'. In fact, I doubt there are any who even know such a thing exists. Not like in Germany and Austria where people like Gunther Karsten, Franz-Josef Schumeckers and Luise Sommer train huge hordes of enthusiastic littluns in memory skills, organise children's championships with big prizes, lecture in schools and everything. If there was someone over here who could be bothered to do that, perhaps memory tricks wouldn't be a dying skill in this country.

Not that I'm complaining - the WMC will doubtless move away from Britain for good, and I'll get to travel abroad a bit more. And all the above complaints aside, it's great to see it getting a bit of coverage on the BBC. I'm sure they'll find something to entertain and enlighten the viewing public, and I'll look forward to seeing it. I might try to persuade them to follow Ed around instead of me, though - he's more of a character, and that's what we need if we're trying to make the WMC a bit more popular.

Anyway, I practised binaries tonight, and it went very well. Practically no mind-wandering all the way through. This weekend, the hour events. Fingers crossed.