Bow down and worship my othello-playing ability!

I've just stopped off at my hotel to enthuse about the othello tournament. I didn't win, but I came an even closer second than I did in Oadby, just losing to David on disc count. We only had the room until 5pm, so we agreed to have 20 minutes on the clock rather than 25, to make sure we could finish in time. Eight people there, so we started out on a seven-round all-play-all. Then Aidan turned up as well and rather threw things out of whack. In the end it turned into a nine-round all-play-all, with the last round played on the grass outside the school since we couldn't fit it all in in time.

I just seemed to keep winning, for some reason. I beat Imre again, although frankly that's happening so often nowadays I probably shouldn't even bother to record the fact. I also beat Phil and David, and was on 7 out of 7, until I lost my last two games to Jeremy and Geoff and let David catch up with me.

I've also just calculated the latest British Grand Prix standings, not for any big-headed kind of reason, just because I know all my readers are fascinated by the competition and it would be letting them down if I didn't post them here for the world to see. It goes:

Me 410
Phil 400
David 390
Jeremy 310
Geoff 300

I've never been in the lead in the BGP before! Even though you'd think I would, seeing as how BGP are my initials, so it's pretty much the law that I should win it every year. Two more regionals to go - can I keep it up?

Tomorrow's memory competition is going to be in the same room, although we don't get kicked out till six so, if everything goes really, really quickly and smoothly, we won't have to do the speed cards outside on the street. Hopefully it won't be quite as noisy in the room tomorrow as it was today, with infant chess players running around screaming in the background. It's the over-twelves chess tomorrow, so they'll probably be shouting and swearing and writing graffiti, or whatever teenagers do these days.

Guest of honour

I'm in my hotel in Cambridge, complete with wireless internet access in the room. Rather temperamental internet access that goes on and off, so if you're not reading this, it's because the connection died before I could post it. Went to the new Wagamama in Cambridge with Jenny tonight - it's a very cool place, and it certainly seems to be doing excellent business, there were people queueing up outside all night. Meeting Jenny, of course, is just the first of many social engagements while I'm here - it's the othello people tomorrow, and the memory people on Sunday (along with the TV people pestering me all day, of course). I feel like the Queen in America, only on a slightly smaller scale and with a more stylish hat.

I posted the above, then realised I forgot to write the bit that would justify the "guest of honour" subject line, so edited to add: when I checked in this afternoon, the man said "Oh, yes, they're coming to film you on Sunday," with a grin, and was excessively friendly and helpful. I also have the idea that they've put me in the nicest room (because it is very nice indeed). There are definite advantages to being a celebrity.

Inventory

There are lots and lots of things I need to remember to take down to Cambridge with me tomorrow. And unlike other times when I go away for the weekend, a lot of these things are essential, absolutely can't forget or the whole Cambridge Memory Championship will be ruined, kind of things. It's not like forgetting my toothbrush or to wear any clothes.

So, let's see. There's my laptop, lots of brown envelopes full of memorising and recall papers, lots of packs of cards, the snazzy timers for the speed cards event, my stopwatch so I can keep track of the time, my alarm clock so I can get up at the crack of dawn rather than oversleeping and missing the whole affair, scrap paper and pens, the prize money, the event timetable and rules, a map of the area so I can find the way from my hotel to the venue, my hat so that I look cool...

I bet I forget something. The laws of comedy demand that I forget something important and essential for the memory competition.

I was going to write about comics tonight

But the scanned covers I wanted to include in what would have been a very long and boring post won't upload, so I'll save it for another day. Although that does leave me without anything interesting to talk about at all. I'm watching the snooker at the moment, and as usual thinking to myself "I could do that. Easy." I tend to forget that I can't play the game until the moment I find myself at the table with a cue in my hand. It's a lot harder than it looks, you know.

On the other hand, becoming snooker world champion remains one of my ambitions. When I'm a millionaire (that's another one of my unfulfilled ambitions), I'll have a big house with a billiard room and two or three servants to keep the table in perfect condition. There will also be a log fire and lots of bookcases with three-volume novels, and everyone who comes in will be required to wear a smoking jacket, although you won't be allowed to smoke. Then I'll practice snooker every day and become brilliant at it and win the world championship. You see, I don't just have ambitions, I have practical plans to make them happen. That's the secret to success.

Nosferatu

I'm going to give blood. I've never done it before, and I've spent practically my whole life saying 'I must get round to doing that some time'. Which is exactly the kind of attitude I always criticise in other people. So I've decided to do it, next Tuesday when the blood-sucking people (I think that's the technical term) are next in town. Hopefully it won't kill me. I gather that it doesn't usually, but I'm not a big fan of having needles stuck in me.

I don't even know what blood group I am. I have a feeling that I'm A and my brother's AB, or possibly the other way round, but I'm not sure. I also have a feeling that mine is one of the more useless blood types to have, but that's probably just my natural assumption that nobody could ever find a use for bits of my anatomy.

Maybe I'll donate some platelets too. I hear that's all the rage these days. Or bone marrow. Or a limb. I've got more than I need already, and I wouldn't want to be selfish.

Be Prepared

I still need to print everything out for the Cambridge championship. It's surprising how much all those sheets of paper weigh, you know. Last year I felt like I was lugging a ton of bricks around with me. There's not just piles of papers, there's lots of packs of cards (at least it's just tens, not hundreds like the WMC), my laptop, and the snazzy timers for the speed cards (yes, we've got them this year, not the hopelessly 20th-century people with stopwatches). It's a good job I'm such a perfect physical specimen.

I wasn't going to write anything else tonight, but then I remembered that last night's blog entry was one of my occasional super-brief rip-off ones, and that makes me feel guilty about not giving my readers their metaphorical money's worth. So here's a second paragraph, for your reading pleasure.

I fixed my video!

That tape I trod on last week? Fixed! Thanks to Ravinder, who advised me that you can cut the clear plastic bit out without ruining it, and gave me permission to blame him if I did ruin it despite that.

Apart from that, I've done nothing else all day today, but I still have a great sense of achievement.

Windows, at all?

There are some things about Boston that are going to stay the same forever. The double-glazing saleswoman in the market who has spent every Saturday since time immemorial trying and failing to hand out flyers to passers-by with a forlorn, muttered "Windows, at all?". The graffiti on the wall behind Kwik-Save ("R.N. BOASTS WE SANK TWO IRAQI TANKERS") which has been there since the first Gulf War. The May Fair, on its way next week (notices already up telling people, all of whom must surely know already, that the market will move to West Street while the fair's in town. If people don't know, the complaining market traders will soon fill them in without the need for notice boards). George the friendly mentally-handicapped old guy who can always be found in the town centre somewhere on a Saturday, cheerfully saying good morning to everyone whatever time of day it is. The dishevelled exotic birds in the shabby aviary in the park. And a football team who can't win a home game against the worst team in the league who've had a player sent off in the first half.

When you support the second-worst team in the league, there are few occasions when you can look forward to a win with some trembling confidence, but this was one of them. And the omens were good - we had a whole eleven full-time players to choose our team of eleven from, Torquay had already been relegated and had nothing to play for but pride, the home fans had turned out in droves for once (attendance about 2600, roughly eight of whom were die-hard away fans who'd come all the way from Torquay) - and the Pilgrims started brightly. We could have had half a dozen goals in the first half, it's a long time since I've seen them look like they could actually score. David Galbraith in particular had an amazing curling shot from outside the area that Wayne Rooney would be proud of, which was tipped over the crossbar by an equally Premiership-worthy save from the Torquay goalie. Three or four more times the ball was somehow cleared off the line by their defence at the last second. Then one of their players was sent off for hitting Ernie Cooksey while the ball was at the other end of the pitch and he presumably hoped the referee's eyes were too. Still nil-nil at half-time, but it looked hopeful.

When a team comes out after the interval and plays much, much better, people tend to attribute it to an inspirational manager's speech. So I can only assume Steve Evans delivered the exact opposite in the dressing room, because the Boston who came out again for the second half were woeful. Torquay were still awful too, so it shouldn't really have mattered, but then they got a goal out of nowhere, to everyone's surprise. Another of their players was booked for shoving Cooksey in another off-the-ball incident (he's not much of a player, but he must be great at annoying people). The crowd, who'd been enthusiastic all the way, switched to yelling abuse at the Boston players, especially the defenders who seemed very reluctant to tackle the opposing strikers, or even move at all unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

But Drewe Broughton got an equaliser in the 83rd minute, and it ended up 1-1. Which could have been worse, I suppose. Basically, this means that it all comes down to the final game, away at Wrexham next week. If we win that, we'll avoid relegation (at the expense of Macclesfield or Wrexham themselves). If we don't, we won't. Goodbye, football league. And it's five years to the day since we won promotion, too. I personally don't think we have a chance of winning that game. I know it sounds disloyal, but bluntly, we suck. I'll keep supporting them to the last, but... gah! Maybe I'll switch to Derby County.

Movie star, a movie star...

I've been talking at great length just lately with Ravinder about this documentary. It does look like it's definitely going to happen, and it's really definitely going to involve filming me and everyone I come into contact with in Cambridge next weekend and Bristol the weekend after. And probably elsewhere, too. Actually, it's only really occurring to me right now that this might get annoying pretty quickly. It probably won't - I could tolerate Nick following me around, and Ravinder's more fun to talk to (and I'm not just saying that because he reads this blog). Although it is going to be a director in charge of the filming, rather than Ravinder himself, and I might not like her. And then there's the worry that I'm going to end up looking bad, and the billions of people watching the documentary will be thinking "gor, lumme, what a complete eejit that Pridmore person is". I'm assuming all the viewers will have a sort of cockney-cum-Irish accent, naturally.

I was actually thinking of emailing all the friends I can think of to see if they want to be filmed hanging out with me, working on the theory that the less of me and the more of other people in the film, the more watchable it'll be. But then last time around the VPS people were all rather reluctant to be taped at one of our get-togethers, just because they generally involve drunken and unseemly behaviour. I suppose we could hang out and be sober and seemly, but then it would just look boring.

Anyway, I'm going to the football tomorrow. An even more crucial, must-win game than the numerous other crucial, must-win games I've mentioned so far this season. If we win this, and it's only against Torquay so we darn well should, it'll lift us out of the relegation zone with one game to go. Woo! Now if only we can find eleven fit players, we're sorted. We'll survive for another season and then get relegated next year (about to go into a voluntary arrangement because of the huge debts, which will mean a 10-point penalty).

Noone know what I do, but everyone calls me "boss"

For some reason, everybody in the world has emailed me about the Cambridge championship today. Okay, partly my fault since I posted on the forum to confirm that the event is being filmed for a Channel 5 documentary (woo!), but also Aubrey has volunteered me to organise the rest of the Cambridge MSO event on the Sunday (he's somewhere exotic prolonging the human lifespan). It's just a case of telling the other competitions where to go, but that's liable to make me unpopular, because there's the big sports hall and a separate room, and I'm having the latter for the memory competition. However much the go and shogi players complain about having to share space with backgammon and chess. There's only a separate room at all because I pestered Aubrey into arranging one the other day when he sprung it on us that he'd only arranged the sports hall. If there was a bit more time before the event, I'd find another venue in Cambridge, but at a week's notice it'd be hard to come up with a cheap, quiet and small place. I hate being in charge of things. How did I end up in charge of things?

Creative fervour

I've spent the whole afternoon doodling. That comic strip I was artist's-blocked with last week - I suddenly had the urge to sit down and draw and not care how bad it looked, so I did. And once I'd started, I obviously didn't want to stop in case the enthusiasm evaporated.

Also spent an hour and a half talking on the phone with Ravinder about this documentary, and he specifically asked me to mention him in my blog, but I'll go into more detail about that tomorrow, because all that scribbling has taken up too much of my time.

Oh, and I don't think I'm quite ready to actually SHOW anyone what I've been drawing yet.

Tradesmen and the scraper still troublesome

I'm watching "The Diary of a Nobody" on BBC4. It's not a dramatisation so much as Hugh Bonneville reciting edited highlights, Talking Heads style, and I don't think it entirely works. It's not a book that really lends itself to TV adaptation (although it has been done before), but it seems pointless to do it like this. It's a lot more enjoyable to read the book yourself - this version doesn't really add anything and takes quite a bit out. It's part of the Edwardian season on the BBC, although I'm not sure what definition of "Edwardian" they're using, since the diary dates from the late 1880s. But on the other hand, that's the kind of pedantic observation that Mr Pooter might have made himself, so I probably shouldn't say anything.

Curse my clumsy great clodhoppers!

I trod on a video tape and now it doesn't work properly any more. It's one of the ones with cartoons taped off the telly, and there are some good ones on it too. The most irritating part is that I have a feeling I could maybe fix it, but that if I tried to do so I would almost certainly ruin it for good. The tape itself is all fine, it's just the plastic casing that's cracked and sort of pushed in a bit, and not in a way that I can just pop it back into the right place. Now when I try to play it it stops after a few seconds and starts rewinding.

I suppose this might be a lesson to me to store videos on a shelf or on top of the telly or somewhere other than just lying on the floor, but I don't have a history of learning this kind of lesson. But darn it, what if I want to watch "Go Fly A Kit", or "Johnny Smith and Poker Huntas" or "Scaredy Cat" or "High Note", or about 40 other classic Looney Tunes? I'm annoyed now.

Supermarket Sweep

Doing my shopping at Sainsbury's today, I found myself at the till behind a large, elderly woman whose credit card was declined. Obviously, this is an embarrassing situation for anyone to be in, so I did my best to pretend I didn't notice anything as she rummaged through her handbag looking for money. When she only turned up a single two-pound coin, I decided to volunteer to pay for her stuff myself. Random acts of kindness are always good. But while I was considering whether that was really, definitely a good idea, she was looking through her groceries to find the most important item and came up with a four-pack of cans of stout. This cost £3.29, and she asked if she could just have two cans for £2. When the woman behind the till said no, she demanded that another shop assistant go and fetch her a single bottle of Guinness, and wasn't prepared to listen when the assistant told her they don't sell those in singles either. She eventually stomped off to get one herself. I decided to save my money for a worthier cause. Having paid for my own shopping, I was just leaving when I saw her coming back with a single bottle that she must have pulled out of a six-pack, and contemplated hanging around to see the rest of the story, but decided to beat a tactful retreat.

Another consequence of me entirely running out of food items last night was that I had to go to McDonald's for breakfast because the supermarket doesn't open till 10:30 on a Sunday. I burnt my tongue horribly on a cup of tea and it still feels all burnt now. Perhaps I should sue them. Or perhaps I should just get into the habit of drinking tea more often, so that I can judge how hot it is without taking a full mouthful.

Wedding belles

Yes, I said Sunday. Consider this a bonus. The civil partnership ceremony and subsequent festivities finished early enough that I decided to get the train home today rather than staying another night in Norwich like I'd been planning to. This way, you see, I can do lots of serious work tomorrow. (I don't know who I think I'm fooling when I write something like that, I really don't.)

I could have been back even earlier, actually - the trains from Norwich to Nottingham leave at 57 minutes past the hour, every hour, except the 15:52 which for some mad reason is five minutes earlier. And I got to the station just in time to see it leaving. Still, that did give me time to go and look around the charity shops, although Norwich's selection of cartoon videos was frankly terrible.

Enough complaining, anyway. The do itself was wonderful, and the crowd of people attending were all fun. I had a surprisingly good time, all in all. Everyone reading this now has to chorus congratulations to my mum and Pam, the happy newlyweds who've been together for 24 years.

I'm on the road again

Norwich this weekend! Never been there and have no idea what it's like. Still, hopefully I'll have time to poke around the charity shops and see what cartoon videos people have been getting rid of lately. Judging by Derby at least, the official period you have to keep an unwanted video you got for Christmas is just under four months, because the shops are full of second-rate Christmas cartoons on VHS at the moment. That said, in Ashford after the othello I found one excellent tape - a W H Smith exclusive from the mid-nineties that I'd never heard of before, with three hours of Looney Tunes including some quite obscure ones I still needed to collect.

So no more blogs until Sunday night from me. I hope you'll survive. I did consider taking my laptop with me and using it in the hotel, if it had internet access. I could pretend to be a businessman on an important trip. But then it probably does me good to get away from the internet every once in a while.

I want to be an artist!

I've been trying to draw a comic strip. I sometimes get the impression that if I sit down and try to draw things I'll acquire great artistic ability in the space of a couple of minutes. Then when I don't, I get all annoyed and discouraged and vow never to pick up or even look at a pencil again. It's very frustrating. One of these days I'll do the sensible thing and go on a course to learn to draw halfway properly.

I just have a mental block on the whole subject of art, though. It, like most of the great wrongs in the world, is entirely my brother's fault, because he was always better at drawing than me even when we were little, and it gave me a lifelong complex. If he'd had a good memory I would now be completely unable to memorise a one-digit number. Although come to think of it, he also always had a better memory for things like Transformers' mottos when we were young. Oh dear, I feel a complex developing...

A further example of my uselessness with computers

I had a phone call yesterday saying "hello, this is the Maid's Head hotel, we had you booked in to stay with us last Friday...". I thought to myself, what the heck? That's not the hotel I stayed in in Ashford. Did I book another hotel and forget about it? Am I quite that forgetful? Then it struck me that that's the hotel in Norwich that I'm staying in this coming Friday. A short conversation later, it turned out that I'd booked it for the wrong weekend over the internet. Good thing they called, really. If I was a hotel, I would just have charged my credit card and thought no more about it.

I'm sorry, I thought the above anecdote was interesting when I started to write it. Now I come to look at it, I realise it's the dullest thing you could ever possibly want to read. I do apologise.

Anyway, I'm busy with "historic dates" for the Cambridge competition. Have you any idea how difficult it is to dream up one hundred and ten one-to-five-word phrases describing ficticious historical happenings along the lines of "peace treaty signed"? Well, once you've got your head around how difficult that is, double it, because I've also got to use phrases that I didn't use when dreaming up the previous year's dates. And then after I've composed this list of fake events, I still need to ask the only Russian of my acquaintance whether he can help me translate them - I've got a Russian competitor coming! Okay, he's a student in Germany, where everyone seems to be mad about memory, but he's still Russian, which counts as a whole new territory for 'memory sports'!

Also, yay, they're repeating Ripping Yarns on BBC4!

Speed

I did a pack of cards in 25.98 seconds today, which I think is possibly a new personal best. That I can't remember for certain whether it is or not bothers me a little. You'd think I'd keep track of this kind of thing, seeing as memorising cards as quickly as possible is basically my sole purpose in life. Still, I'm sure I've never beaten 25 seconds before, and I'd really like to achieve that some time. Or maybe I should be focussing on finally beating 30 seconds in a competition, so that that stops being the holy grail of card-memorising? But then what would we do without a nice round number of seconds to aim towards. I suppose we could all start aiming for 25 seconds, but that's not as catchy as exactly half a minute, somehow.

Pins and needles, needles and pins

The hotel I was staying at in Ashford is a swanky enough place to have a sewing kit in each room, sitting on top of the Corby trouser press for guests to avail themselves of. At first glance I thought, as I always do in this kind of situation, "What kind of person comes to a hotel and sews things?" I'm more the kind of person who allows clothes to remain buttonless if a button falls off, you see. But then it occurred to me that this might be a good opportunity to try to fix the increasingly noticeable hole in the crotch of my jeans, so I did. And then, while I was on a roll, sewed up the hole in the pocket too. That'll save me a fair bit of money that would otherwise end up down my trouser leg, out the end and down a drain when I forget not to use that pocket. And then for a coup de grace, I sewed a button back on my shirt. Using the pink thread since I'd used up all the blue and white on the jeans (it's a blue shirt with white buttons, so the pink stands out in what I think is a quite stylish way).

It's been middle-of-summer hot around here today. I might just have to break out my unflattering shorts from their winter hibernation and appall the people of Derby. This also raises the question of what to wear to the wedding on Saturday - I was planning to wear my "smart casual" outfit, which consists of all the more or less presentable clothing I own, all of which is black. I'm pretty sure black still looks stylish, and people won't think I'm going to a funeral instead, but it'll be a bit uncomfortable if the weather's like this. Maybe I'll wear the shorts instead.