The view from my office window is actually really nice

Who do you think you are kidding

I really like the "new" old episodes of Dad's Army! The whole thing's really nicely made, and the cast really do a great job of copying the originals, especially Robert Bathurst, David Hayman, Timothy West and the actor Kevin Eldon with the particularly difficult role of Jones. Can they make some more? There were some radio episodes that weren't based on the TV series, right?

(A quick internet check later - no, there weren't. Well... the stage show?)

Olympia

On the way home from the Mind Sports Olympiad Memory Championship - it's the 23rd MSO, but I'm not sure whichth MSO Memory Championship it is, because there have been some years without a memory event there, and some years when the memory event was the World Memory Championship... I think it's the third, or maybe fourth, MSO Championship in this particular format, anyway. I'll write it up in full detail as soon as I get a bit of free time, but here are a couple of lovely photos to whet your appetite:

Here we have, from left to right, my ever-awesome arbiting sidekick Nick, MSO Championship veteran and thoroughly awesome Lars, noble and awesome representative of Britain Gordon, awesome pi-memorising juggler Susanne, EXTREMELY awesome new superstar of competitive memory Andrea (who won everything), me grinning like a loon in the background, and awesome all-the-way-from-Thailand card-memorising star Preeda.

It was awesome! Did I mention how awesome it was?

And good news for fans of cryptograms

I don't buy X-Men comics as a rule - they've been really rubbish for many years now. But the latest 'epic' is weird and cool enough that I thought that even the ludicrously high price they sell for was justified here, and I've got the first two parts, House of X issue 1 of 6, and Powers of X issue 1 of 6.

It's "two series that are one", you see, and one issue of one or the other is coming out weekly over a 12-week period (in an interesting sequence, too, listed at the back of each comic to avoid confusion; House 1, Powers 1, House 2, Powers 2, Powers 3, House 3, House 4...). They cost $5.99 each, which means that British comic shops feel it's okay to round up the exchange rate and sell them for £4.99, so we're looking at sixty quid for the whole adventure. You could buy quite a lot of real books or movies for that money.

So what makes them worth the extravagance, you ask? Well, as comics go, they're chunky things - 56 pages, not counting the covers, and even excluding the ads (mostly for other Marvel comics, rather than the more intrusive kind of paid advert) you get well over 40 pages of actual content in each issue. And the way it's presented is intriguing and worth reading multiple times too, decidedly different from the average comic. A lot of text summarising different aspects of the universe it depicts, as well as the traditional visual storytelling.

The whole thing is written by Jonathan Hickman, and to describe the story is almost impossible, so I recommend that you check it out for yourselves - knowing anything about the X-Men beyond the basic concepts of the series (mutants with super-powers, hated and feared by humanity) isn't really necessary, and it's not really any kind of continuation of the storylines that have been appearing in the comics in recent years (which I haven't read, for the most part, so that's good). While House of X is set in the present day, it involves the X-Men behaving in a different and rather scary way, with revelations about exactly what's going on still to come, probably, by the end of the series if we're lucky. Powers of X covers four different time zones, brilliantly described as X⁰: year 1, X¹: year 10, X²: year 100, and X³: year 1000. "X means ten" has been done by X-Men comics before, naturally, but I love this kind of nerdishness in my comics.

X¹ is the present moment, with the events of House of X continuing on; X² is a really nicely done extrapolation of that into the status quo of 90 years of X-Men comics later. All the events of the present day have been resolved long since, but the whole general war is still going on. It actually works better than the previous famous X-Men future-based stories have in the past. I like it a lot, anyway.

There's extra nerdishness in the form of things written in the 'language' of Krakoa the living island, which is actually just symbols representing letters, for the readers to decipher - there's a separate symbol for 'th', which is another example of the kind of extra touch I like to see.

It's not perfect - the art is a bit ugly here and there, and I don't think it always conveys quite what the writer intended, and the whole thing feels a bit fan-fictionish (think up a cool idea and then try to write a story around it), and they do get those Krakoa characters wrong at least once, probably twice... but it's generally awesome enough that I'm getting it for the next ten weeks, just based on the promise of the first two issues. Sixty quid well spent!

Always wanted to own one of these

In a charity shop in Nottingham today, I found a vintage othello set, late 1970s or very early 1980s, back in the days when it was produced by Peter Pan Playthings. Not only does it still have all the pieces, it even still has all the original paperwork, including the British Othello Federation insert telling you all about the British Othello Championships! Those were the days, or so I'm told - I wasn't there at the time.

Also, to read on the train I took with me "The Seeds of Time" by John Wyndham, a collection of short stories which I've owned for decades but haven't read for a while - strangely, I found I had no memory at all of ever reading one of the stories in it, even though I was very familiar with all the others. And since "Opposite Number" deals with alternate universes, I can only assume either I or the book have fallen into a very similar parallel universe where that story is/isn't in the anthology. Or else it's not as memorable as the other stories in the book, but I found it entertaining enough this time round...

Obrigado

I feel like I should be making an effort to learn Portuguese before I go to the Azores, even though it's a tourist resort where I doubt anyone will expect me to. But I tried and signally failed to learn the language back in the dim and distant history of thirteen years ago, when I went to Rio de Janeiro for that wonderful TV show that gave me the Brazilian Mystery Cloak, and (because I never throw anything away), I've still got the language course I bought back then. Granted, it's a course in "Colloquial Portuguese of Brazil", and I should more probably try to learn Portuguese Portuguese if I'm going to what is technically a part of Portugal, but I'm just impressed that I still own this big plastic box, containing a book, two CDs and two audio cassettes for people who hadn't upgraded to CDs yet.

I think I'll become fluent in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese, and make the locals tut about these Brazilian tourists causing trouble, instead of English tourists. It'll make a nice change.

This beats Joe-from-the-office's hairdryer into a cocked hat

Do you remember my blog post a month ago, when I recommended you all to buy a raffle ticket or two on Raffolux? And did you do it? You probably didn't, but you definitely should have done, because if you had, you might have won a luxury 5-day holiday in the Azores, complete with swimming-with-dolphins and looking-at-whales experiences. But as it turns out, it was me who won it!

I'll be going some time in September, most likely, as soon as I sort out tricky little details like who gets to go along with me. Not bad for a £5 raffle ticket, eh?

Vacation time

Just to follow up on that post about tennis players of the 1980s and 1990s generations, the main draw at Wimbledon this year featured 52 players born in the 80s and 74 born in the 90s, plus one from the 2000s (the aforementioned Félix Auger-Aliassime) and one from the 1970s (Ivo Karlović, forty years old, seven feet tall and possibly some kind of mythical long-lived tennis-playing giant species to which the laws of human aging don't apply). After the first round, the remaining 64 players are those two outliers, 30 of the 1980s team and 32 of the 1990s. The old men are still teaching the young ones a lesson or two.

But now there's no time for more unnecessary analysis of tennis players, because I'm going on holiday! Jetting off to America today to see the sights and the fireworks of Pittsburgh! Remember when I did that ten years ago exactly? I barely do, but you know what my memory's like. No more work for a week! Woo!

Roll of Honour

The British Othello Championships are basically the same age as me, so compared to memory competitions (which only date back to 1991), it's very cool to be part of such a long-established tradition. I really must get back into the habit of playing online, and go to more real-life competitions too, and come somewhere closer to winning the thing one of these days. I'd quite like to see my name on this list, and a little shield on the trophy...

1977	Alan Woch
1978	Geoff Davidson
1979	Alan Woch
1980	Neil Cogle
1981	John Parker
1982	David Stephenson
1983	Imre Leader
1984	David Sharman
1985	Neil Stephenson
1986	Imre Leader
1987	Peter Bhagat
1988	Graham Brightwell
1989	Joel Feinstein
1990	Imre Leader
1991	Joel Feinstein
1992	Joel Feinstein
1993	Joel Feinstein
1994	Imre Leader
1995	Graham Brightwell
1996	Joel Feinstein
1997	Joel Feinstein
1998	Graham Brightwell
1999	Imre Leader
2000	Graham Brightwell
2001	Imre Leader
2002	Garry Edmead
2003	Garry Edmead
2004	Imre Leader
2005	Imre Leader
2006	Graham Brightwell
2007	Imre Leader
2008	David Hand
2009	Michael Handel
2010	Imre Leader
2011	Guy Plowman
2012	Borja Moreno
2013	David Hand
2014	Guy Plowman
2015	Imre Leader
2016	Imre Leader
2017	Imre Leader
2018	Imre Leader
2019	Imre Leader

Being for the benefit of Mr Kyte

The 43rd British Othello Championship happened this weekend in the familiar surroundings of the Junior Parlour in Cambridge. The weather was nice and sunny when I left Redditch on Saturday morning, but after nearly four hours in pleasantly air-conditioned trains, I stepped onto the platform in Cambridge to find myself well and truly roasted alive by the hottest day in the history of the universe (or whatever it was; it's just possible that some of my readers wouldn't consider 30 degrees to be particularly warm). The Junior Parlour was also baking hot, with the windows being positioned just right to get the full blast of the afternoon sun, but we all survived the day, more or less.

Incidentally, did you know the big ancient wooden doors to Whewell's Court that let you into the bit of the college with the Junior Parlour in it have got an electronic contactless card-scanning thing disguised as an ancient bit of metal, and open automatically? This was news to me, but I asked one of the bowler-hatted porters who lurk around the university doing portery things, and he said it's been like that since he started in the job eight years ago, so obviously I just hadn't noticed. I assumed there was a huge, ancient iron key.

Anyway, our competitors included me, Imre Leader, Bruce Kyte, Iain Barrass, David Hand, Helen Dexter, Roy Arnold, recently-returned old-time player Graham Chappell, and Guy Plowman with even more children than usual - all five who belong to him (four of them playing, the other revising for her exams), plus brand-newcomer-with-a-cool-name Ben Smith, boyfriend of the non-playing Plowman who was nonetheless playing himself. So 14 players in total; the perfect number for a 13-round EGP tournament, if slightly imperfect for the 9-round nationals.

As well as the excessive heat, there was the usual sounds of the street outside the windows - as well as a huge amount of tour groups seeing the city and being told about what goes on at the university (some kind of story about ghosts, I think, though I didn't pay too much attention), there was a graduation or something like that which required students to walk around in black cloaks with fur hoods in the staggeringly hot weather, and our musical accompaniment for the first couple of hours of the tournament was an unceasing performance on a sitar by a busker. The tune kept nearly but not quite turning into Within You Without You while I was playing Bruce, which made me think of the blog title above, if you were wondering. The sitar player was replaced by a folk singer with a banjo later in the afternoon - altogether, I'm not sure how much revision Jessie got done with that going on, the stifling heat, and her siblings and boyfriend running around to distract her, but maybe that's how she likes to study.

After the traditional Indian meal that no othello tournament would be complete without on the Saturday night, we returned on Sunday to much more moderate temperatures to finish the remaining four games. My own performance in the tournament was what you might expect after about a year of not playing at all - I won four out of nine, which doesn't sound so terrible, but was always down at the bottom of the draw and didn't put up any kind of a fight against the top players who I came up against. David beat everybody, winning nine out of nine despite being confused (youthful internet-generation player that he is) by the analogue clocks being used on two of the boards - how do you know how many seconds you've got left? You don't. You just have to guess how long that little flag is going to take to fall. Behind him was a close race for second, coming down to Imre (who was as wildly enthusiastic about the concept of analogue clocks as he is about everything else connected with Othello) and Guy, equal in points going into the final round, and very close on Brightwell Quotient tiebreaker.

Those two therefore needed to maximise the amount of discs they got in their final games, and Imre ended up playing me. I put up a valiant performance to the best of my extremely limited ability, and the game finished on a score of 62-2 in Imre's favour. I don't think I need to feel particularly guilty about cutting Guy out of the final by means of my ineptitude, though - he'd ruthlessly wiped out his own small son Mark 64-0 in their game at the table next to us, which clearly isn't the kind of parenting that we should condone.

Those results meant that Imre got to contest the grand final against David, who had been saying all weekend that he always ends up in the final against Imre and losing. And although I had to leave at that point to get the train home, if liveothello.com is to be believed Imre has just won the final 42-22! Which is hard on David, who was really awesome all weekend, but congratulations once again to Imre! I think this might be his 15th Nationals win, and it's certainly his fifth in a row, unless I was lying in my blog last year that said it was his fourth. A great weekend's othelloing for everybody!

I need to do something about my memory

I was just looking through my bookcases, and found that I own a book called "The Memory Book", by Tony Buzan. Which came as a bit of a surprise to me. I mean, obviously he was giving them away at a memory competition, and it was published in 2010 so I assume it was in that year, but... I really don't recall ever seeing that book before in my life. Perhaps I should read it.

Oh, right, othello!

I don't seem to have played a single game of othello, or even given the game more than a passing thought, for a year or so. I really need to fix that, and as luck would have it, it's the nationals this weekend, in Cambridge. Losing lots of games horribly will surely inspire me to start playing more regularly!

Also, I had a meeting with a man called Jody today, and then the Simpsons episode with Vincent Price's grandson Jody was on TV this evening.

I still don't like modern technology, though

Did you ever hear of such a thing as a TV that tells you your remote control's batteries are running out and you should change them? Look here, television, I'll change the batteries AFTER the remote control stops working, and no sooner! Yes, even if that means leaving the telly on the same channel for weeks until I get round to going out to the shops for some new batteries. I don't take orders from my television set.

I'll just switch it off and go out and do something less boring instead, since that classic lyric is back in fashion.

Down under

I've mentioned before that all video games created since roughly 1995 are rubbish, and I stand by that belief resolutely. There are exceptions to this rule, like Sonic Mania Plus, which I mentioned the last time I made that sweeping condemnation of a quarter of a century's hard work by game designers, and another one I think it's only fair to mention is Undertale.

In the old days, you see, video games had lastability. You could go back and play them again and again, because it's always fun to do. Shoot all the space invaders a bit more quickly every time, or whatever. You can always defeat Dr Robotnik over and over again, because you can have fun along the way, take a different route around the levels, challenge yourself in different ways. A lot of modern games, though, tend to be basically like watching a movie, and not a very good one either. You press a button now and then, but it's mainly just about sitting and watching the story. And once you've finished the game, there's no point in playing it again, because you already know what happens.

There's one game, though, that I finished three months ago, and would quite like to play again. But it's difficult, because one of the characters told me that restarting the game and playing it again would be tantamount to killing all my friends, after I'd given them all a happy ending. That's the kind of game Undertale is.

When the game first came out, back in something like 2015, I tried to avoid hearing anything about it, because it sounded like something I might want to play some day, without spoilers. So when I eventually noticed that you can get it on the Nintendo Switch now, and that I own one of those things, I had to finally give it a try. And I'll avoid any kind of spoilers here, as much as possible, in case you want to try it too, but wow, Undertale is the most amazing game. It remembers you.

You can go through the game and kill the monsters and win, but on the other hand you can also try talking to them and sorting things out more peacefully, and win in a different way. And when you start again, some of the monsters have a sense of deja vu, and act a bit differently this time round. And some of them remember everything, and tell you all about it. It's the kind of game where actions have consequences, as well as the kind of game that's often screamingly funny and entertaining to play! If you haven't played before, you really should go out and give it a try.

Meanwhile, until I find a way to wipe my own memory so I can play through the game again, I've been spending a lot of time catching up on all the fan comics, music, animations and other wonderful things Undertale has inspired in the last four years! But save them until you've played through the game. Spoilers!

I also like cricket

In a sort of occasionally-watch-test-matches way, at least. But this last couple of days I've tuned in to the world cup and quite enjoyed it, so maybe I'm turning into more of a modern cricket fan.

But could we persuade a couple of West Indies players to change their names? Whenever I see "C. Brathwaite", I assume it's Kraigg, even though I know he spells his name with a K. I'm not sure what I'm mentally spelling Carlos with...

The lost decade

I like tennis at the moment. I recall blogging here, at some point in the distant past, that tennis was rubbish, but it's got better since then. One main reason for that is the continued dominance of three comparatively elderly men, which is always nice to see in any competitive sport (mind or otherwise).

As a general rule, I like useful pieces of trivial knowledge, like the fact that nobody born in the 1990s has ever won a non-senior/junior/wheelchair/female men's singles grand slam tournament (tennis is a sport where you have to specify exactly what kind of people are allowed to compete in the competitions you're talking about), and dislike it when that kind of thing stops being true. So I'm pleased to see that the latest new star of the tennis world, Felix Auger-Aliassime, was born in 2000. Now he can go on and win Wimbledon if the 1980s generation finally get too old for it, and that line at the bottom of the chart can remain at zero and provide a trivial piece of interesting small talk forever!

(Although of course the real reason is that there aren't as many best-of-five-sets matches nowadays, so the younger generations take longer to build up the necessary stamina to play in them, and Young Felix hasn't really shown any signs of being an exception yet, but possibly that's another thing you're not supposed to mention in tennis. Tennis people are sensitive.)

Actually, the one I feel sorry for in all this arbitrary grouping into decades is Kei Nishikori, who was born on December 29, 1989. If he'd come along three days later, he would have had the added motivation of trying to be the first 1990s man to win a grand slam, and he'd probably have won dozens of them by now.

Family fun

I haven't talked family trees on this blog for a long time - when the 1921 census comes out in January 2022, I'll have to get into the whole extensive research again. The Pridmore branch of the family had been seriously reduced by the war and disease since 1911, but I still have plenty of relatives to dig up.

Meanwhile, here's my favourite historical document - my great-grandparents' marriage certificate!

Great-granddad is being a bit creative when asked his father's name and occupation; he was actually the illegitimate son of Eliza Pridmore, unmarried domestic servant, and an unknown father. He's only a tiny bit creative, though - it's not that much of a stretch of the imagination to invent a father called William Pridmore, labourer. If you're going to invent a father, couldn't you give him a cool name and say he's some kind of secret international spy who couldn't come to the wedding because he's busy doing important government work in South Africa?

I think we can forgive the white lie, though - not only was he a man "of full age" marrying "a minor" (they were 21 and 17, so it's really not quite as bad as that makes it sound), but their first child was born a bit under four months later, so the reason for the hasty wedding was probably well known. Under the circumstances, when the curate asks "Father's name?", not many people would be up to replying "No idea, sorry."


His mother Eliza, who was also illegitimate, didn't have any qualms about leaving those two boxes blank when she got married fifteen years earlier - but then, she was also illiterate, so probably didn't much care what got written down on the paper. This is the kind of thing I love about researching the ancestors, and there are still a lot of them I haven't fully explored!

And while I'm recommending things

If you've got Netflix, check out Memory Games! The documentary following Nelson, Yanjaa, Simon and Hannes around the world of memory competitions!

I don't actually know how the whole Netflix thing works, and I've always thought that I should probably find out some day, so maybe this is a good reason to finally get up to date...

An oxymoron worth checking out

There's a website called Raffolux, which offers "exclusive raffles for everyone", that apparently very few people know about but which is (I'm reliably informed) a real and actual thing that gives you a good chance of winning cool prizes. Joe from the office, who is young and tends to have his finger on the pulse of cool things, won a hairdryer from it. And assures me that it's the kind of hairdryer that people with hair who like it dry think is really cool and desirable. I'd recommend buying a ticket or two. It says it gives money to charity, as well.

That film with the aliens

I'm going to America for the 4th of July, and not for memory-related reasons either. It's absolutely ages since I went anywhere exotic and it wasn't for a memory competition or something to do with being a memory master. I'll probably forget I'm not there to remember things, and go around memorising everything and expecting people to tell me I'm clever when I recite it back to them.