Why do these things always involve horses?

Flat 7, Gordonstoun Court, Suffolk Street, Oulton Broad, Suffolk is the subject of an interesting law, enacted in 1537 by Henry VIII and still in effect today. The law requires two living horses to be within the flat at all times, failure to adhere to this law carrying a minimum twenty-year prison sentence for the owner, occupants and any visitors to the property in the previous seven weeks. The last time anyone was prosecuted under this law was in 1987, when building works forced the then resident Humphrey Dalmas to briefly move one of the horses out into the corridor in order to access a leaking gas pipe. The team of twelve police officers who constantly monitor the flat sprang quickly into action and had Dalmas taken into immediate custody.

The current owner, hippopotamus breeder Hugo Bugeleisen, has made sure to keep at least four horses in the flat, so as to avoid prosecution should one or two of them spontaneously drop dead, and describes himself as "happy" with the situation, "although not as happy as those whose flats contain no horses at all, obviously."

The law was introduced at the request of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, whose cousin, Derek Tunstall, lived in Pakefield and kept a mistress in Camps Heath. Oulton Broad being roughly half way between the two locations, the law enabled Derek to ride as quickly as possible to his mistress's house every Saturday afternoon, changing his tired horse for a fresh one at Oulton, steal a quick kiss and return home again before his wife had finished her weekly bath. The law originally applied to a large country house with attached stables; this was destroyed in the war and a block of flats built in its place in the early fifties, when it was ruled that for the purposes of the Living Horse Law, Flat 7 should be considered the successor of the original property. A small, one-bedroom, three-kitchen flat, the presence of two or more horses leaves no room to swing a cat, let alone breed a hippopotamus.

The law serves no practical purpose today - Derek Tunstall lived to a surprisingly ripe old age but was eventually executed in 1667 on the posthumous orders of Oliver Cromwell for treason and unlicensed dispensing of rat poison - but an attempt to pass a bill through parliament invalidating the law was unanimously defeated in 1992, with even the MP who introduced the motion deciding to vote against it.

Fun fun fun

I feel bad about devoting a whole blog to a TV review, because I like to be a bit more unconventional than that. But I feel that I should mention the comeback of Red Dwarf that was on tonight, seeing as I loved the original series (with the obvious exception of the last couple of seasons). It was fun, better than most resurrections of sitcoms that passed their best long ago, but nothing too special. What really surprised me is that while the cast haven't physically aged too much, Rimmer's voice in particular has put on a few years. And Chris Barrie's a voice actor, I would expect him to be pitch-perfect (Frank Welker still nails the voice of Freddy on Scooby-Doo, and he's ancient now...)

See, now I've got that out of my system I won't be able to devote tomorrow to talking about Doctor Who, and I'll be able to go back to my usual inane witterings...

Maundy Thursday is here at last!

Ahh, a four-day weekend. Exactly what I need to do all that Cambridge Memory Championship preparation I was meaning to do last weekend! It really was very clever of me to arrange the championship for a few weeks after Easter, wasn't it? I take full credit for that decision, even though it was nothing to do with me.

Meanwhile, if you want some fun, type my name into Google blog search and sort it by date. It seems there are fake blogs out there that take popular news stories or posts from genuine blogs, run the words through a thesaurus to make it look at first glance like a different post and use the resulting text to lure unsuspecting searchers into their site, for nefarious purposes of their own (probably involving selling stuff, but maybe spreading viruses or other mischief - either way, clicking on the link is likely to be a bad thing, so don't.)

This procedure has turned that BBC article into phrases like "It attacks less than 30 approves for the reigning World Remembrance Protector to recall the sequence of a pack of hovering cards." and "I ignore the unscathed shebang" and "I prowl into a abide and ignore what I am doing there, arguable the fridge and theorize why I am looking in there."

From now on, please call me the World Remembrance Protector! And remember that I'm splendidly putrescent at remembering people's names.

An important footnote to tonight's post

There's an advert on TV that sings the line "Don't be afraid to be young and free", which I misheard as "Don't be afraid to be onion-free", and wondered whether there were onion-fans out there who would ostracise those who chose not to have onions with their hamburgers. Because I prefer not to have onions, and it does make people look at me strangely, sometimes.

Doctor Whooooooooo!

Yay, it's been too long since the last time the Doctor was on our screens, so I'm looking forward to the Easter special on Saturday. Despite the interview with Russell T Davies in the Radio Times in which he promises "a bunch of ordinary commuters stranded on an alien world". Because the concept of an isolated bunch of ordinary humans facing an alien menace just hasn't been done enough in modern Doctor Who, has it? I think there was one episode in the first season that DIDN'T feature a bunch of ordinary people under siege by weird aliens! Gosh, maybe this latest episode will feature some kind of everyday item turning against humanity and the whole world's population being attacked by monsters that the Doctor is able to defeat by pressing the right button in Cardiff!

But still, I'm just being mean for no reason. I'm sure it's really going to be great!

I'm better now

Thanks to everyone for the messages of sympathy, and sorry for not even mustering a word of bloggery last night, but I decided to just go to bed early instead. Still, I'm well on the road to recovery now, and as if to celebrate the fact, that long-ago BBC website interview has finally made it online!

Sheesh, I'm typing this while watching Man Utd's should-be-easy game against Porto, and they've just gone a goal down after three and a half minutes! Probably because they've got a player called Hulk.

Anyway, back to the subject of memory, and I was at one point at number 8 on the most-read-right-now list, and number THREE on the most-watched/listened-right-now! Right after Kim Jong-Il and an extremely small puppy. To be fair, the puppy's quite a lot cuter than me, so I'd recommend that you watch it instead. For that matter, Kim Jong-Il's probably cuter than me, too. And with less of a silly voice. But still, why should he get all the attention? I've been ill too, and nobody's speculating whether or not I'm still alive. These blogs could be being ghostwritten by my minions, you know, and there's no way to independently verify the date of the footage of me on the BBC. Someone start a conspiracy theory, or I'll have to do it myself!

Well, must go and watch how the football turns out. I might turn down the commentary if they make one more Hulk-joke, though. I can't cope with another hour-and-a-half of "Don't make him angry". Still, it's impressively nerdy of a football commentator to admit that he knows "Lou Ferrigno played Dr David Banner in the TV series", even if he's not entirely right about that...

Cough, hack, snort, sniffle

I'll resume regular blog output when I'm feeling better. For now, I'm going to bed. Get-well-soons would be gratefully received.

Ohhh, my head...

Sorry about last night's unusually brief post. I wasn't planning to go out drinking - for one thing I'm suffering from a terrible cold at the moment - but my brother phoned me and invited me to come out and buy him drinks, and how could I refuse? But I blame the cold virus for the fact that I've had the worst hangover of my life today. I didn't even drink all that much, but I still feel pretty terrible even now, and I'm sure it can't be that I just can't cut the mustard like I used to.

Still, to look on the bright side, while we were loudly singing and carousing and breaking things, a passer-by glared at us and said "Bloody students..." Obviously I still look youthful for a 32-year-old, bald accountant!

Sorry, no blog tonight.

Drunk. Brother. Singing was involved. Need bed.

Cambridge! Roll up, roll up!

Okay, this coming weekend is my official emailing-everyone-about-the-Cambridge-Memory-Championship weekend, so here's a little advance warning, just in case anybody wants to email me first and tell me they're definitely coming. Because the 'definites' list consist of a Norwegian, two Swedes, two Germans and an Italian from Tunbridge Wells, so it would be nice to also have a confirmation from some of the British people who've said they're probably coming along.

Maybe I should lose weight

Or perhaps it's just the ancient dining chairs this flat came with. Either way, while memorising cards this evening, I tilted my chair back on two legs as I always do, only for it to fall to pieces and drop me comically on the floor. Oliver Hardy couldn't have done it better, I just wish I'd had a camera filming me at the time.

I should get some more chairs this weekend. I've been meaning to get some new furnishings to fill out this semi-furnished flat of mine, perhaps I'll go to SAS Furniture (the strangely military-sounding shop down the road that I've been driven past on the way to Grandma's house for my entire life, but have never gone inside) and splurge on some tacky and tasteless items!

Just how much of a celeb am I?

Let's just look a bit more closely at last night's "clever celebrities" lineup on Watchdog, and bear in mind that they invited me to be on it only for me to turn them down because of the Welsh Memory Championship. The team consisted of Keith Chegwin, Konnie Huq and Iain Lee. Those are all Real Celebrities! Okay, I'm sure even they would agree that they're not exactly A-list superstars, but they're all unquestionably people who the man on the street would describe as celebrities, rather than people who've been on the telly once or twice. Except possibly Iain Lee, who I had to look up on the internet, but he's got his own radio show, so he must be cool.

And they wanted me on the team too! I'm really chuffed by this. That means I must be a genuine famous person! I'm quite serious, by the way - I realise that there are people in the world who wouldn't consider it a high point in their career to be listed alongside Cheggers and her off Blue Peter, but I really do! This really is fantastic stuff, and I'm all delighted! I wish I'd blown off the memory competition and done Watchdog now...

Other things I've learned recently

Bristol Parkway train station hasn't got a platform 1. Just 2, 3 and 4. Which is groovy, because it reminds me of good old Skegness station, which has six surviving platforms numbered 2 to 7, although only one of them ever gets used. Cardiff Central makes up for this by having a platform 0.

Slightly more interestingly, I had something of a revelation while on my way down to Wales on Friday night. I just thought to myself "You know, actually, the reason I have an aptitude for memory stuff is probably that I've had a lifelong obsession with cartoons, comics and any and all forms of visual storytelling. And the basic principle of memory techniques is to use mental visual storytelling to remember things. Hey, I've never thought of it like that before!" Dai's response when I told him was, I suspect, pretty much what everybody else will be thinking too - "Well, yeah, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?" - but this is a whole new outlook for me. The fundamental interconnectedness of all things amazes me!

STOP PRESS: About five seconds after typing Dai's name there, blow me down if I didn't get an email from him, reminding me that Watchdog was on tonight, and guess who they got for the pub-quiz segment after I turned them down? Keith Chegwin! Wow, I'm cooler than Cheggers! When do I get my own series of Zoomy Plays Pop?

Cymraeg Chof Chydymgais / Welsh Memory Championship

'm hovercraft ydy llonaid chan llyswennod. I have returned from the land of bilingual traffic signs and train station announcements after a very fun weekend! Ai Ddeudais caech a 'n arddun chorff , afaelech 'i rhago? Wales is certainly an interesting place to visit, and it's funny that I've never found a reason to do it before now. Dwi na 'n bellach heintiedig. The first-ever Welsh memory championship was a big success, even attracting three Welsh competitors (as many UK competitors who turned up for the first UK championship) as well as six outsiders. 'm ddidennau chwala ag ddifyrra! And I did rather better than I'd expected to do, which is reassuring!

It's great to be officially back in the memory-competition season! Ringland Community Centre, near Newport, welcomed a posse of new and old memorisers - a Welsh Team made up of old hand James Paterson, newbie Carl Griffin and new-to-competitions-but-not-to-memorising-cards John Burrows; an English Team of me, Katie Kermode and Ameel Hoque; and a Foreigners Team of Dagfinn Hammar (Norway), Idriz Zogaj (Albanio-Sweden) and Conor Muldoon (Ireland). Plus an all-important organising and arbiting team of Dai, Dai's dad and neighbour Sian, Phil, Warren and (Ameel's girlfriend who mentioned during one conversation that nobody ever spells her name right but who for some reason I didn't ask to tell me the correct spelling, so if this is right I'll be very surprised) Dionne.

I haven't got the final results to hand, so can only rely on my memory, but we started off with a new world record in the 5-minute words, from Katie of course, with 109 (or something close to it). I think that was the only world record of the day, I certainly wasn't up to speed enough to set one, unless there was one in the names and faces right at the end (we did that discipline last, unusually, for technical reasons - the papers needed to be printed out during the competition). I got an 82 in the words, which I was entirely happy with. I moved into the lead after discipline two, 5-minute binary, with a pretty impressive 840, and I think held on to it all the way through from then on. Throughout the competition, I was some distance away from my best, but not as far off as I'd thought I would be - my brain was running slower than it does when I've been training, and I was completely burnt out by the end of the day, but I posted quite acceptable scores in nearly everything.

Katie was a fairly comfortable second place - she's the top contender for next-new-British-World-Champion at the moment, unless she forgets everything during the general excitement of having a baby in August - and Ameel and James were fighting it out all the way through for third, with Ameel ending up on top. Hooray for Team England!

Dai provided floor-space (and even bed-space for me! I'm privileged, on account of I'm the world champion, you see), food, drink and fun for everyone, and organised a cracking weekend. Book your tickets for the next one, this time next year!

Ponty-Prid

Well, tomorrow I'm attempting to find my way to Risca & Pontymister train station, deep in the wilds of Wales, somewhere. I've never actually been to Wales before, even though some people dubiously claim that the name Pridmore originates there, so it'll be weird and different and unusual. But probably also fun!

Of course, if not for the Welsh Memory Championship, I could be furthering my TV career - I had a last-minute invitation this evening to be on Watchdog! They're filming a thing on Saturday for a piece about phone directory services, funnily enough (see my post of a couple of days ago), which made me think it's fate and almost made me consider ditching the memory championship in order to do it. But then I remembered that I'm unlikely to keep getting this kind of TV invitation anyway if I don't win the World Memory Championship this year, and I'm unlikely to win the WMC if I don't go to any memory championships. So it's a good celebrity-career move not to be on telly next Monday. Be sure to tune in and see who they managed to recruit at even shorter notice!

Healthy, wealthy and wise

I had a photo shoot this afternoon with Men's Health magazine. And a surprisingly painless one, too - the guy is a proper professional photographer who was under instructions to produce 'a strong portrait of Ben Pridmore' (quite a challenge), and my experience of such things is that getting one photo tends to involve at least three or four hours of rearranging/accidentally breaking all my furnishings, setting up huge camera/lighting apparatus, taking pictures from all angles and finally using the one that makes me look fat. However, this shoot took less than an hour from start to finish, nothing got broken, set on fire or eaten, and although I don't know which shot they're eventually going to choose, I seemed to come out looking positively slender!

In fact, here's the link to the photographer's website, which I mentioned but didn't link to in a previous post. Give him a call if you're looking for a photographer for your wedding! He probably doesn't do weddings, but he might know someone who does. He made me look just as glamorous as Kate Winslet in that picture.

Planning

How many packs of cards to go for in the 10-min cards on Saturday? I could probably do six and not make a mess of it, even out of practice as I am, but I don't like to attempt something that's worse than the world record. It bugs me. This is why I'm not a serious, dedicated professional, of course - I always end up going for something I know perfectly well is beyond my capabilities when I'm out of practice, for no good reason.

I'll also probably go for a 20-something seconds pack of speed cards and get it all wrong. I can just see that happening.

Blood, blood and more blood

When giving blood today, the nurse made a mess of getting the needle into my left arm, and they ended up draining a bag of B-positive from my right arm instead. Which doesn't bother me unduly, except that I've thereby ended up with sticking plasters on each of my inner elbows. And I've got surprisingly hairy arms for a nerd, so getting plasters off my arms is always painful and unpleasant.

Still, I was cheered up completely when I came home to find that 118 247 have launched an ad campaign based on Magical Trevor (and Trev himself even makes a cameo appearance in the brilliant advert)! Could this be the end of 118 118's advert-campaign-fuelled domination of the directory enquiries market? I'm certainly going to call 247 next time I want to know a number, anyway. Everyone loves Magical Trevor...

Britains Space!

Talking with my brother today reminded me how cool these things were! A series of spaceship/spacemen/alien toys, that could be taken apart, to a certain extent, and combined in exciting ways! We had just about all of the toys shown on that page - they were cheap, really cool and on sale in Perkins newsagent in Horncastle in the early eighties. We've still, indeed, got some of them, under my bed in what remains of our toy collection. That website is quite right about the robots' soft plastic bits going sticky and unpleasant after twenty-something years, but they're still awesomely cool. Long live Britains!

Pseudo-preparation

Well, I did a tiny bit of memory training today. By which I mean a words practice, a binary practice and a names and faces practice, five minutes for each. Which isn't exactly a busy day full of training, but never mind. I'm sort of relying on the competition next week (and the accompanying chats with fellow competitors) to kick-start my interest in memory sports again. There's no denying it, it really is hard to stay motivated when you're the world champion.

I'm not going to do any practice tomorrow, either, because I'm going to spend the day watching cartoons with my brother. This kind of activity was described as 'preparation' in The Mentalists, so who am I to argue?