Groovy shoes

By far the coolest part of the whole experiment is that I got a pair of custom-painted shoes, bespoke designs just for me, by Greg Itahara! They're extremely cool, and have a cartoon squirrel and a brain on them. What more could anyone want?

I got these shoes just last week, as part of the advance promotion for the film, which also involved me teaching a masterclass in memory to a bunch of media people and other miscellaneous people associated with the documentary (Geoff, my personal trainer, was there).

I have to admit, that green lighting makes me look awesome. And everyone seemed appreciative of my "masterclass" in how to memorise words, names and images in the Memory League style. (Yes, I taught people how to memorise names. They were all better at it than I am.)

And everyone had a go on Memory League and loved it! I'm hopeful that we've won a few converts to competitive memorising, either directly or indirectly.

Annotations

 If you've watched Mind Games: The Experiment and are wondering about the little details you see, here's a FAQ*

*At the time of writing, I have had very few questions asked me even once, let alone frequently. Most of these are totally made up.

00:00:30 Nice outfit, shame about the shoes

That's my first training session - brand new sports gear, hadn't got my Asics trainers yet. I exclusively wore those velcro-fastening slip-on shoes until I got used to the trainers. Now I can't wear anything but the professional Asics footwear! Also, bending your leg like Geoff's doing is beyond my capabilities.

What's with all the branding? 

ASICS is the brand. It stands for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano. Which is almost but not quite what Juvenal said, but MSICS would just sound silly. They gave me lots of shoes and other clothing.

00:00:54 What's that at the left of the screen?

That's a shelf of video tapes belonging to my brother. Can't quite make out which ones,unfortunately.

What's on your shirt? I can't make it out!

The black one with the red circle says "I'M HUGE IN JAPAN"; the blue one with black writing says "I AM FROM SPACE"

00:01:20 Are you playing chess underwater?

Yes. It's part of the Mind Sports Olympiad, I was persuaded to go along and give it a go, but I think I need more practice (without a camera crew present) before I become a serious player. Also, I need some kind of prescription goggles to allow me to see the board underwater. I played one game and dropped out, it was all a bit of a disaster, which is probably why there's only one brief clip in the whole documentary.

00:01:41 Bandana?

Yes, red bandana. It was very sunny, I have a bald head, my trademark hat is very hot in the sun and also not prone to staying on my head when I'm exercising.

00:01:55 What are all your books?

I can't really list them all here. There's a lot of classics, a lot of comics. See how many you can recognise from the spines! The one they really show a lot, sticking out from the bookcase, is Wonder Woman newspaper comics.

Are those Mega Drive and Master System games? And an old-fashioned television? And VCR?

Yes. I live in the past. I've got a more up-to-date telly, and a Nintendo Switch, off-screen.

Wish you could afford a table for the floor lamp.

Two lamps normally live on the floor in that corner of my living room. This isn't a case of TV people moving things around and putting them in strange places - in fact, they picked one of them up and put it somewhere more sensible, to make the lighting work!

Do you have to wear shorts all the time?

Yes. My hairy legs and knobbly knees need the fresh air.

00:02:03 When was this?

It's old footage, isn't it? It's the world memory championship 2007, as recorded for The Mentalists. That would be the moment Ed described as me, "ludicrously stupidly", attempting to memorise 36 packs of cards in an hour and not succeeding. 

00:02:59 Where's that athletics track?

Halesowen. There's one a short walk away from my house, but apparently it was cheaper for us to go to the one at Halesowen. One time when they wanted to film, someone started playing music on the speakers, and when the TV people asked them to stop, the people in the gym laughed and turned it up louder. Then when they realised it was TV people and not some random nerds complaining about the noise, a hugely muscular man came out and apologised, turned the music off and chatted about the whole project. We really did go there at the crack of dawn. I was working during normal daytime hours.

00:03:04 Everyone else on this documentary is so good-looking and you're the only one who takes his shirt off?

The public wants to see this kind of thing, I promise you. If you don't, you're just weird.

00:03:53 You can only do three push-ups?

I did five, thank you very much. But yes, that was awful. There was a time in my younger days when I could do twenty at a time, and I was confident ten would be simple enough to start with. Now, though, I can do thirty!

00:07:02 Twenty-two moves?

Now, if I'd done the three-disc version and then the four-disc version, and added the scores together, that would have made 22. But I'm certain I (and by extension probably everyone else) only did three discs. These numbers may have come from some other test, but I'm not sure which one it might have been.

00:10:37 Is that where you live?

No. It's a beautiful establishing shot of beautiful England. Then we cut to inside my real house, which is much shabbier. We're watching The Mentalists on my old-fashioned video tape.

00:10:52 The Broons?

And Oor Wullie. Much-loved, long-running newspaper comic strips. Those are my collection of collected editions.

00:10:53 The Guinness Book of Records?

Yes, the 2014 edition, because that's the one that had a picture of me in it. I'm not in the book any more. I don't normally sit there looking at it, while a video of my past glories plays in the background. That makes me look rather sad and nostalgic...

00:11:13 Booyeah!

That's me breaking the 30-second barrier for memorising a pack of cards, in 2007! A great moment! And James Ponder in the background, just like he was in that clip of the world championship! He should get royalties. For that matter, so should I!

00:11:20 Nice photo.

That's the original hat, too. November 2003. This again is footage from The Mentalists. As is the cards scene afterwards, and the "legendary" bit - which I normally only say with some kind of prefatory comment that makes it clear I'm not serious.

00:11:42 An eighteen year absence.

So, yes, I was absent from memory competitions when I won the world championship in 2008 and 2009. That's how good I used to be! But see the previous blog entry - it's a mistake, but not as inaccurate as I was thinking at first.

00:11:45 Books

The Wonder Woman book mentioned earlier is blurry in the foreground. You can see Mickey Mouse newspaper comics and a Magic Eye book more clearly.

00:12:04 Are you the man being questioned?

It's an unrelated article. That's me with the cool moustache, though.

00:12:15 Very sceptical.

Amusingly, this bit was filmed right at the end, because they didn't have useable footage of me saying that (though I said it all the time, apparently off-camera, when we were starting up), so it's a tiny bit fake. But never mind!

00:21:25 Ahhh, England.

Pretty, isn't it? The camera crew travelled around the local area to find nice bits to film.

00:21:57 What's on that shirt?

"I am the man who arranges the blocks"

00:22:17 Lost a memory competition to a monkey?

A chimpanzee, actually. And I demand a rematch. Search for Ayumu.

00:22:41 Where are we now?

Oxford Street, London - the big Asics shop! Definitely unfamiliar territory for me.

00:23:58 An IQ of 159!

See, that sounds very boastful. This sentence was prefaced by saying that I took a Mensa IQ test at the age of 17 or 18, and for a short while went around telling everyone my score, and having to explain that it was a good score to get.

00:25:00 The Ben System

Yes, the first two cards there are indeed a shark, but the next two are a bar, and I guess me saying that must have been edited out.

00:25:45 The hat!

Yes, this documentary is sadly lacking in hat footage! It just doesn't seem to go with the athletic gear, somehow...

00:26:13 That's a lot of comics.

And that's only a small corner of my comic collection. It's very poorly organised - I drag piles of comics out to the front when I'm in the mood to read them. What we can see here are complete runs of Alpha Flight, Tom Strong, Metamorpho, Avengers Forever, House of X/Powers of X, New Warriors and Maison Ikkoku, and not-quite-complete runs of Micronauts and Defenders. I recommend reading all of them! Ooh, and then it pans down a bit to Runaways. Read that one, too!

00:26:17 What are those?

If you don't recognise He-Man figures then there's really no hope for you, I'm afraid.

00:26:36 Fish, chips and mushy peas

Yes, see the previous post. I didn't actually eat this; it's stage-dressing. I'd just had lunch, and then we ordered another meal so I could say the things I'd been discussing off-camera again. And so I immediately veered into an entirely different subject. I'm terrible to work with.

00:34:15 Forever Redditch!

A sneaky bit of advertising for the town I did most of my walking in!

00:35:24 What's the app?

It's called Runkeeper, and I really do recommend it!

00:47:00 The mid-study assessment

Yes, I really did get a lot better at it! I surprised myself - towards the end of the twelve minutes I said I wasn't likely to reach those flags, and I actually got well past them. My walking speed has outpaced my wildest expectations! As I recall, I did 18 push-ups in that session, and the dialogue saying 20 was from another filming session. I did 22 at the final assessment, in the pouring rain, which didn't make it into the final film.

00:51:00 The Mind Sports Olympiad!

It isn't really the biggest day in the memory sports calendar, but it is still very cool! That's the shirt designed by Phill Ash for the world championship 2014. And yes, Donatello is the coolest turtle. That's Daniel Evans, Susanne Hippauf, Nick Papadopulos, Klaus Jerrold, Ewelina Preś, and I think we get at least a glimpse of Daniele Vergine. I don't know who told me his name and I couldn't understand it. It might have been Dan Evans. I'm very bad with names, even of people I've known for decades.

00:54:30 What was your time?

I don't remember. It was very slow. That's me making sure Nick knows what to say and do - he does, of course, know perfectly, but I get very possessive about this competition even when I'm not arbiting.

00:56:25 What's on that shirt?

That's the lucky shirt - Pocket Dragons! This one has been drawn on and signed on the sleeve by Real Musgrave, creator of Pocket Dragons.

00:56:33 Who won the gold and silver?

I think it's shocking not to show it. Or for that matter the other medal-winners! One of these days, I'll manage to get another proper documentary made about memory competitions, not just about me doing exercises! Suffice to say Ewelina, Susanne, Daniele and everyone else were much better than me all round.

01:10:09 The results are staggering

I don't really know how any of those things are measured. You'd have to ask Brendon and his gang. But I'm sure there was a lot of science behind it.

01:12:30 A 5k race??

Yes indeed. Well, a parkrun. I walked, but I did 5K in around 45 minutes. Which is a fast walk, and probably wasn't quite completely the slowest time on the day! I'll probably do it again, when the weather's nice!

Did you meet the other mental athletes?

Not until after filming. Kassa and Ryoei at a publicity shoot a while before the competition, Sherry not until last week.

Are you all going to be world champions?

Probably, some day soon. Except me, maybe.

Errata

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mind Games - The Experiment

Watch it, if at all possible, on Prime Video! Then come back here and read all about it from my perspective!

The whole crazy adventure started in March last year, with an email from Etan, the big boss of the Mind Sports Olympiad. He told me, and a lot of other regular MSO competitors, that someone was "producing a documentary about exceptional people which includes the mind sports olympiad and I've recommended you. Might each of you be willing to have a chat with her?"

I said yes, of course, as I always do in this kind of situation. I'd just been thinking it had been ages since anyone asked me to be on TV! But when I'd learned a bit more about the documentary, it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to be my kind of thing.

We are making a feature documentary film where we dive into the ever- expanding world of esports and mind games, witnessing these increasingly popular global events . 

 

Serious players and specialists in their own fields will allow our cameras to follow them in preparation for the biggest tournament of their lives.   But the question is whether they can improve their already amazing game by margins and become even better at what they do. 

 

Funded by a sports company who want to test the ancient proverb (and their own motto), healthy body equals healthy mind, there will be an added layer of preparation for these big competitions. 

By dedicating more time in their diaries to physical exercise & personal training, could this set these competitors apart? 

 

Over our film period we will see how their brain function is affected by more regular physicality.   

 

Behind the film a team of scientists are testing the principal on 100 people around the world and, working this data into our narrative, we’ll finally be able to answer, prove or disprove the ancient principal at the heart of this film.  

Healthy body equals healthy mind, indeed. Exactly the kind of thing I've scoffed at all these years when people like Tony Buzan espoused it. Also, Juvenal didn't even SAY that - he said people should aim to have both, but not that one leads to the other. And also also, it's "principle", not "principal". I laughed.

But I couldn't help thinking it might be fun, and I replied to that effect - perfectly candidly, saying "I'm really not the physical training/exercise type myself - quite apart from being 45 years old with dodgy knees, in fact I'm famous for telling everyone that a junk-food diet is the key to success in mind sports! But on the other hand, I'm quite keen to get back into serious training for memory competitions, and it would be interesting and different to see if a disciplined combined physical and mental training routine could help me catch up with the likes of Andrea (who's already pretty fit and healthy, I think)." And I went on to say that there was no chance at all of me beating him, nor much chance of there being an MSO memory competition that I didn't organise myself. Full disclosure of how unsuitable I was as a subject for the documentary!

So, naturally, they signed me up for the study straight away. And yes, I like making documentaries. Especially when the crew turn out to be as obliging as this one was. I was impressed with them right from the start - they sent me a whole lot of Asics sports gear, and asked me to go into a shop somewhere before filming started to have a 'gait analysis' to determine what kind of running shoes would work best for me. I can't run. Dodgy knees; it's an actual medical condition and not an excuse. But I replied "I'm going to look and feel a complete twit going into a sports shop and asking for a gait analysis, whatever that may be. Do you want to get it on film?" And they did, and it turned out to be one of the best sequences in the finished documentary!

Knowing that the producers had got a handle on my eccentricity right from the start, I was happy to throw myself into whatever they wanted me to do. Some of it worked, some of it didn't, but it was all a bit of a laugh. They did take me to a physio at one point, suspecting the whole dodgy knee thing was all in my head, and he told them it wasn't, so nyah. That bit didn't get into the finished product.

But by then I'd been introduced to my personal trainer, Geoff, and been given my exercise regime! I looked at it and laughed scornfully again [at the regime, not at Geoff; he looks really cool and sporty and impressive], thinking there was no way any of this was going to happen. It was expecting me to walk, several times a week, for gradually increasing lengths of time. In new trainers that felt like I was walking on stilts and liable to fall down at any moment. I was still recovering from a knee injury when we started, and the thought of building up to a 50-minute walk and climactic 5km to finish with seemed very silly.

But the trainers soon started to feel very comfortable, the walking was surprisingly enjoyable, and the 'strength training' exercises too. And like I said in the documentary, I had an app that told me I was getting better at it every time, as well as some good old-fashioned paper printouts on which I could circle every completed session. Before long, what had seemed like something I would simply never do became something I was really enjoying!

So yes, it's true. Ben Pridmore, that denouncer of people who say physical exercise helps you win memory competitions, has changed his mind. I mean, not that it helped me win a memory competition, as such, or improved my mental performance in measurable ways - quite the reverse, actually, since I was so excited by the training regime I couldn't summon up any real enthusiasm for memory stuff - but it unquestionably DID put me in a more positive frame of mind, and in that sense has certainly helped my memory-sports performance going forwards! From now on, it's a nicely balanced physical and mental regime in preparation for tournaments in 2023 and beyond!

Following this post, we'll have a list of "errata" (which I wrote first, because picking holes in things is always the most fun), and "annotations" of interesting points in the documentary, followed by pictures of the very coolest thing I got out of the whole experience, so please stay tuned to this blog in the coming days!

Amazon Prime, Thursday. Don't miss it!

 What happens when four mind-sports people, three of whom are cool, good-looking and in great physical shape, try an experiment to see if physical training can improve their mental performance?

You can find out by watching "Mind Games - The Experiment" on Prime Video. Available on Thursday. Watch it, and read my blog for further details!

Contributing to the development of memory sports

 The Memory League World Championship is happening right now, and I haven't even been paying any attention to it for the last three days, because I've been in London, working on promoting a sensational, spectacular, tangentially-memory-related thing that will burst onto the world on Thursday 19th January! I even dragged Simon Orton (who, as always, has been working twenty-four hours a day behind the scenes to make the world championship run so seemingly effortlessly smoothly) away from his endeavours to help me out - but I think the end result is worth it, as when I demonstrated Memory League to a couple of dozen international media-related people, they all loved it and couldn't stop playing! The excitement of advancing to a new level really gripped the whole room!

It says something about my status in the modern memory-sports community that I spend my time doing this and not playing in the world championship itself, doesn't it? Hey, remember when they expanded the football World Cup to 24 teams instead of 16, and everyone thought that was a great improvement? Do you think Memory League might also benefit from doing that and, for example, having someone ranked 23 in the world joining the fun?

In fact, maybe Memory League could follow football's future plans, and expand to 32, because let's face it, my world ranking is likely to go down a few more notches...

Oh, the things you can find in a charity shop

 Check it out! "Oswald Bastable, and others" by E. Nesbit! First edition, 1905, poor condition but still intact!

I read The Story of the Treasure Seekers when I was very small (and felt jolly clever for working out that the narrator was Oswald before he told us), followed by the sequels and E. Nesbit's other major works, but I've never read these ones before, and I'm rediscovering the delights of an author who not only influenced so many other later works but was just about the only writer in history to put a character called Pridmore in a story. She was also a fine poet, which makes it all the more impressive that she was able to pen Noël's masterpieces...

 

I've read the first story, and will save the rest for my train journey tomorrow - I'm going down to London, for reasons I'll be allowed to tell you about in a week or so's time. The secret will be revealed at last, but it really won't be entirely worth waiting for, so I'm sorry for building it up like this.

Why didn't Anthony Temple from Hasbro tell us about them?

Basic knowledge of some important historical events has been lost to history. Which is generally fine - I mean, if it was really important, someone would have remembered it, right? But it bothers me a bit when we're talking about something that happened within my lifetime, and which I was personally deeply interested in. Such as... which Transformers Autobot cars were available in the UK in 1984?

Actually, this has eventually been reconstructed by internet fans in recent years - once they'd overcome the tendency for fan websites to be exclusively written by Americans who'd heard vague rumours about things that happened in other countries, and started getting feedback from British fans who were alive at the time, anyway. And the answer seems to be that there were only six of them released in the first range of toys.

This came as something as a surprise to me. I was seven years old when Transformers first came out, and thought they were really cool. If you'd asked me at the time which Autobot cars were available in the shops, I would have said "Well, all of them, stupid," or some such cutting put-down. If I'd counted the characters who appeared in the comic when it first appeared in September (which I'm fairly certain I never did), I might have said "Eleven full-size Autobots, six mini-Autobots and Optimus Prime, stupid." (At this time, I would most likely have been talking to my younger brother, who needed to be put in his place at every opportunity, whether I knew what I was talking about or not)

But, you see, I lived in the middle of nowhere - the nearest toy shop was ten miles away and a place to be visited only on rare special occasions. We didn't have the internet, or any other reliable source of information, except what we could glean from the TV adverts.

I showed one of the adverts here before - here are the first one again, and the extra-special one showing the two "leaders", Optimus Prime and Soundwave.

 

Now, if you pay particular attention to the Autobots the fair-haired, white-shirted boys are playing with, you can see that they've got multiple copies of each, but there are only six distinct models - Sideswipe, Ratchet, Hound, Mirage, Bluestreak and Jazz.

If you were lucky enough to OWN one of these exciting new toys, bought new from the shops, you'd also have got a folded-up catalogue showing all the available toys - and again, just those six in the "Robot Cars" range.

As well as telling us that the Transformers are currently living among us in vehicle mode and will one day transform back into robots and begin their adventures, it gives us a full line-up of the toys you can actually buy in the shops. And unlike the TV advert, it shows Bumblebee in the correct yellow colour, but still has Cliffjumper yellow instead of red.

The Transformers comic made its debut in September 1984, and got its own advert on TV too. It was a must-buy, every fortnight! (We got the Return of the Jedi comic on the weeks Transformers didn't come out, but it was comparatively rubbish.)

The comic never gave a hint that some Autobots weren't available. The other five (Ironhide, Prowl, Sunstreaker, Wheeljack and Trailbreaker) were all featured in the comic stories and implied to be hanging around with the others on the toy shelves, waiting for the day they'd get the call to transform into robots. Prowl is prominent on the animation used in the adverts, but then so is Megatron, and it quickly became well-known that you couldn't get Megatron in this country.

The toy adverts that appeared in the comic started out with this one, just showing one of each type (and a drawing of Bluestreak in the blue colour scheme used in his box art but not on the actual toy, which was silver)

But it was with issue no. 3, which came out on 18 October, just after my eighth birthday, that we got some more concrete information about what could and couldn't be bought in the shops. First a letter on the Openers page on the inside front cover...

(in the early 1980s everyone started sentences with Wot no, and I really had no idea what it was all about)

So yes, it's officially confirmed that Megatron can't be found over here. He turns into a very realistic gun, so although nobody ever confirmed exactly why, we all managed to deduce what was behind his omission. But the comic never said anything about five Autobots not being available either! We did get a new advert, starting from this issue, that showed the six usual suspects...

This one again seems to suggest that the Autobots haven't yet transformed out of their vehicle modes, but are ready to do so any minute now!

But even so, there was still a certain amount of confusion about what we could actually ask our parents to buy for us! With Christmas 1984 fast approaching, the Transformers comic turned to the one person who could help the poor British toy-buying public - Anthony Temple, in charge of Boys' Toys at Hasbro! He got his own regular column, starting in no. 7, released on December 15th!

He let us know that Megaton would be available at Easter! And that by then we'd also be able to use Robot Points for something! But he kept very quiet about those five missing Autobots...

Easter in 1985 was April 7th. A month before that, Transformers issue no. 13 came out on March 9th, and contained a picture of the new and exciting Insecticons (in their Japanese Diaclone colour schemes, not the ones that were used on the toys we got)

[the gap there was a fact file, which has been cut out. Sorry, I haven't got a complete copy...]

And Anthony Temple returned! But all he had to tell us about was the cheap and plastic Jumpstarters, which you could get if you couldn't afford a real Transformer!

He must surely have known by that point that there was a whole new range of desirable Transformers making their debut in British shops! Why couldn't he have mentioned some of them? Didn't he know we all look up to the great oracle that was Anthony Temple for all our Transformer toy information? How could he give us a column about nothing but Jumpstarters and a money-saving Autobot Watch Offer?

Dissatisfaction was obviously rife across the country. In no. 18, published on May 18th, the Transformers comic printed a letter complaining that the toy stores were full of new toys, and Anthony Temple hadn't said a word about it! The editor begged him to write another column, and he grudgingly obliged...

But this time all he wanted to talk about was the Dinobots. And rather than using any of the official storyline behind the characters, he apparently made up off the top of his head a story about how "they were created by the heroic Autobots to help them in their struggle against Evil and to protect the Earth's primeval fringes from attack. The Autobots modelled them on the now extinct Dinosaurs that were in existence many thousands of years ago."

It was around this time that we British Transformer-fans lost our faith in Anthony Temple as the all-knowing voice of wisdom for Transformers toys. We started to rely more on people like Fraser Irving, who obviously lived near a toy shop - he at least gave us the British comic's closest thing to confirmation that Ironhide and Prowl weren't available from the start in 1984.

In fact, we'd grown and matured, and no longer needed Anthony Temple's guidance. Transformers were a big deal, and everybody had at least one or two, or at least had seen the new packed-in catalogue as it passed around the playground. We could compare that with the stories in the comic and see which Transformers were available to us, and which ones (Swoop, Shockwave, Blaster...) would always be the stuff of legend as the "only available in America" ones.

Anthony Temple was able to disappear into obscurity, remembered only by the people who were around in that brief period of 1984-5. We will never see the likes of those days again...

Family history

Some family history researchers get to share photos and news stories of their ancestors' great achievements in the distant past, but my family weren't generally that type. Here's what my great-grandparents were up to 110 years ago...

From the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Wednesday 1st January 1913

NEGLECTFUL MOTHER PUNISHED.

    Long continued neglect of children on the part of a Sheffield mother was visited by exemplary punishment in the Sheffield Police Court, before Mr. E. H. Banner and Mr. C. J. Whitehead, when Thomas Millership and Mary Ann Millership of 2, Cross Chantrey Road, were summoned for neglecting five of their children, varying in age from 18 months to 12 years.

    The prosecution was brought by the N.S.P.C.C., for which Mr. Arthur Neal appeared. He said that defendant was an engineer's turner, the standard wage being 39s. At the beginning of the year the case was brought to the notice of the society's inspector by one of the lady inspectors of the Corporation. Inspector Carter found the house in a most deplorable state. The children were ragged and dirty, and their bed-clothing was insufficient. One of the bedrooms was more like a cesspool than a living room. On one occasion the woman said she was the daughter of a doctor and had never been brought up to work. The inspector hand made frequent visits to the house, and at times there was some improvement, but in November things went again from bad to worse.

    Dr. Black said he found the children in a wretched state. A boy whose age was given as five looked more like a child of three. Doris, aged three, looked more like a child of two, and was in the worst state of all. She was exceedingly filthy, and was rickety through neglect. The youngest, two years of age, was smaller than many children at 12 months.

    The male defendant said that he gave his wife 30s. every week, and she was to blame for what had happened.

    Mrs. Millership, who appeared with a bandaged eye, said that but for eye trouble and general ill-health this neglect would not have occurred.

    The magistrates adjourned the case against Millership to give him an opportunity to reform the home, and sent the woman to prison for three months.

The 12-year-old will be my grandmother - Sheffield Grandma, who died long before I was born, that is. I mean, it's not a cheerful story, but I think it's important to remember these things, as well as the grand accomplishments of other people's progenitors...

Good old Royal Mail!

 I got a Christmas card today, all the way from America, with my house name [my house has a name and not a number; this confuses a lot of delivery companies] missed off the address entirely and my name spelt wrong too, but those clever postal operatives still managed to reason "Well, there's someone with a name close to 'Ben Pridemore' living in this postcode area, it must be him" and deliver it here! Such people should be admired!

(Such people as the postal workers, I mean, not such people as have my name or something like it. Although those should be cherished too.)

It's accrual world

 My current job has me working some of the time in an big office full of accountants, which is the first time I've done that in a while. The last time I was office-based, we had a small office with a handful of finance people, a handful of marketing people and the IT guy. You get a more varied conversation that way, but on the other hand you don't get quite so many people who find it hilariously clever when someone says "it's accrual (a cruel) world." Also, I got Argentina in the office sweepstake, and I never get the good teams in these things, so I take this as a good sign for the job in general!

Speedy Scriggles should take the first penalty

 All this fuss about Harry Kane's role in today's big game against France tends to overlook the fact that he's really obviously the early-1940s Marvel superhero Hurricane in disguise, and thus able to use his super-speed and other godly powers to win the game for us easily if he wants to. If he doesn't, I can only assume it's part of some further ruse to protect his secret identity while fighting fifth-columnists sent by dictator nations. Or alternatively some comedy blundering on the part of his fat, comical sidekick Speedy Scriggles.

Hurricane, like most of the disposable heroes Marvel filled the back pages of their comics with in the golden age, was rubbish. But let's hope that his namesake (while keeping his clothes on better than the superhero did) can inspire England to victory today!

The Cavemen are Coming

 Fifty years ago, if you were a keen model-kit assembler in 1972 America, you would definitely have wanted Aurora's range of Prehistoric Scenes™!

There's clearly been some cutting-edge paleontological research gone into these scenes. I do love "The fierce Flying Reptile", but best of all has to be the fact that Cro-Magnon Woman was particularly famed for her needlework skills. I suppose that makes sense, considering the beautifully-tailored modesty-concealing animal-skin costumes that of course all cavepeople wore...

Football's going away from home

 As a follow-up to my last entry, I do accept that my brief moustache phase in the late 1990s was misjudged, but stand by my insistence on the full beard being the way to go, even in my current circumstances of having a cold. There's no denying you ideally don't want to have a moustache if you've got a runny nose, but even that isn't enough to make me want to go for the clean-shaven look (or even, heaven forbid, one of those stupid beard-with-clean-shaven-top-lip affairs). Besides, I rarely get colds, so I think I can be forgiven both for keeping the beard and for whining about it extensively on the rare occasion I do have the sniffles.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I should probably post more on this blog of mine than a sentence every couple of weeks about the fact that I've got a beard. Let's talk football. It's the World Cup, you know! I do love the World Cup format, and I think I'm reluctantly agreeing with the commentators who say it's a bad thing they're changing the format to 48 teams (16 groups of 3?) next time round. I tend to automatically disagree with things football commentators are instructed to say and pretend it's their own words, even if I actually think they're right when I think about it some more (the FA Cup is still magic, whatever the naysayers might say. ("Nay," probably. Or is that the horses?)) and I'm sure I'll even prefer the new improved format soon enough.

But this one has worked out just great - lots of 'shocks', lots of 'upsets', but we've still got a Round Of Sixteen in which eight of the world's top twelve* international teams each play a plucky lower-ranked opponent. And the top teams, as I write this, have made it three out of three, so it all bodes very well for England tonight. I look wholeheartedly forward to us losing in the semi-finals again!

*It would be eight of the top nine if Belgium's failings hadn't let Croatia in. And it could have been eight out of eight if not for Italy's hilarious failure to even qualify for the tournament, just like they did at the previous world cup. Italy are totally rubbish at football. However, there's one thing at which Italy aren't rubbish, and that of course is the world of memory sports!

Specifically, the world of Memory League - yesterday, it was the grand final of Season 16, and as has become a long-established tradition by now, it was Alex Mullen (USA) against Andrea Muzii (Italy). Would Alex follow the long-established tradition of winning and leaving Andrea to be content with yet another runner-up trophy? No! After an epic battle, Andrea finally overturned the inevitable and won a well-deserved victory! It really was terribly thrilling!

I really need to get into the habit of playing more Memory League. I always find myself badly out of practice when a new season begins. And there won't be another league season until some time early next year, giving me no 'official' reason to play games for months and months (unless there's an unprecedented lack of interest in playing in January's World Championship; the top 16 in the world rankings get invited, and I'm number 23). Time for an early New Year's Resolution! Play more friendly Memory League matches! Get into the habit, and I'll be in world-beating form in no time!

Beardiversary

 I decided to grow a beard in November 2002, you know. It's been twenty years without a razor coming near my face, and as I often say, from a time when nobody had a beard, now they're everywhere! I'm a trendsetter. I'd shave it off and see if everyone follows suit, but I can't really be bothered.

Let's make a journey to the cave of monsters

 Bubble Bobble is the classic arcade game adventure of the bubble dragons Bubblen and Bobblen (Baburun and Boburun in the original Japanese), trying to rescue their girlfriends from the monsters who have kidnapped them. And the very best incarnation of Bubble Bobble is the Sega Master System version - two hundred levels of bubble-blowing excitement with added story screens you won't find on any other adaptation!

The only minor problem with these story sequences is that the game was originally written in Japanese, and then translated into English (by Japanese programmers). And that meant the English translation had to use no more characters than the Japanese original, but still convey the same sense - which is tricky, since Japanese tends to use fewer characters, and considers leaving a space between words to be strictly optional. So a certain amount of simplification is going to be necessary. Here's the cutscene that plays if you complete level 100, having already collected "three magical balls".

じゃあくなる、かみのなにおいて

これよりけっこんしきをはじめ…

"In the name of our kami [Shinto deity], the wedding will commence." The rather more plain "WE WILL BEGIN THE WEDDING" isn't quite as cool, somehow.

おっだれだ、そこにいるのは！

"WHO IS THERE?" is easy enough to translate, but the Japanese is a bit more elaborate about it.

あっばぶるんぼぶるん

たすけにきてくれたのね！ 

うれしい♥

In the original, Betty (or maybe it's Patty) doesn't just exclaim that the boys have come to save them, she adds "Happy!" and a heart! In the English, she doesn't even use an exclamation mark, sounding like a newsreader with a flat, emotionless "BUB & BOB CAME TO SAVE US."

おのれここまでおいかけてきたのか！

In Japanese, he's surprised that the dragons have chased them all this way, but in English it's a simple exclamation of "YOU RASCAL!" - should really be rascals, plural, but then Japanese doesn't use different forms for singular and plural, much to the confusion of translators everywhere.

べていたちは、わたさない

よ～だ！

And this really isn't a translation at all. He's saying "We won't give you Betty and Patty! Nyah!", not "GET OUT OF HERE". Well, he says Betty-tachi, which I guess means the multiple people who fall under the subset of 'Betty', but I guess it makes sense to Japanese speakers...

たすけてばぶるん！

ぼぶる～ん！

"Help, Bubblen! Bobblen!" becomes "HELP US BUB!" It seems like there would have been room for the translator to fit Bob's name in there too.

くやしかったら

ここまでおいで～！

The first line is exclaiming that it's irritating, and the second is saying "Come here!", presumably meaning Betty and Patty. "GET ME YOU BOYS!" doesn't entirely convey what's going on, and sounds more than a little camp...

ぼぶるん、おいかけよう！

"Bobblen, let's go!" becomes "GET HIM, BOB!", as if Bub has had enough of the whole adventure now and is going home. His speech bubble is strangely misplaced in the English version - someone must have accidentally messed up the code while translating it.

おっけ～！いくぜ

Bob says "Okay! Let's go," in Japanese, but just "LET'S GO" in English.

And go they do, for another hundred levels. Only when the bubble dragons have defeated the Super Drunkard, father of the two villains whose wedding they interrupted, do we get some more story. It's the happy ending of the game!

ぱぱまで

やられちゃったの？

うっそ～！

"YOU BEATEN UP DAD?" is a little ungrammatical, but does sum up what he's saying. We don't get a translation of the "Ugh!" noise in the third line, though.

おぼえてろよ

ぜったいに 

しかえししてやるからな！

The Japanese is a more elaborate promise to get revenge, but "I WILL MAKE YOU REGRET." does somehow sound cool.

きゃ～っ！

"EEK!" sounds better than "Kyaa!" to English-speaking ears, I think.

たすけてくれて

ありがとう♥ 

でも、そのすがた…

It's newsreader Betty again, with an emotionless "THANKS FOR YOUR HELP". In Japanese she adds another heart symbol, and then goes on to say "But your appearance..."

だいじょうぶ。

のろいはもうとけているわ。 

ほら！

And "I FEEL FINE NOW" isn't translating Patty's observation at all well. She says "It's okay" in the first line, then adds "The curse is undone. Look!" Patty seems to have the ability to see the near future in this ending sequence, because immediately after she says that, the dragons turn back into their human forms.

うれしい！またへいわに

くらせるのね♥

And now the English translation is completely losing it. Patty's supposed to be exclaiming "Happy!" once more, and saying that now they can live happily again. "FOREST ALSO CHANGED" is the second half of the translation of the next speech bubble...

みて！

もりののろいも 

とけていくわ！

"Look! The curse on the forest is coming undone!" says Betty in Japanese. In English she goes for the more succinct "THE COLOR OF THE"

べてい～だいすき♥

"I love you Betty!" won't fit in the speech bubble, so Bub just shouts "BETTY!"

よかったね。ぱてい～♥

And likewise, Bob's "This is great!" before his "PATTY!" has to be cut.

はっぴい～えんど♥

"Happy end" and a heart symbol just becomes "THE END." But our heroes seem to be happy, anyway, merged into two amorphous blobs as the background disappears. But then everything disappears, and the epilogue is told to us by disembodied speech bubbles.

そののち、ばび～たちは

むらにもどり、なかまたちから

だいかんげいされました。

Our heroes ("Babi-tachi" in the original - 'Bub and the rest'?) do return to the previously unmentioned village in the Japanese version, but there's space to start the sentence with "After that," and end it with saying their friends were happy about it. All the English version has room for is "BOB & BUB RETURNED TO THE VILLAGE."

よろこびにわくひとびと…

それをみて、ばび～は

ほんとうによかったと

あらためておもうのでした。

The specific "BUB WAS GLAD TO SEE THE HAPPY VILLAGERS." does accurately reflect the Japanese version, which also only mentions Bub, and generally talks about everyone being happy again.

いつのひか、ばび～たちは

またあらたなるぼうけんに

たびだつのかもしれません。

The content of this speech bubble gets spread over the next two in the English translation. In the Japanese, we're told that some day, Babi-tachi will start a new adventure. In English, it's "SOME DAY, BOB & BUB WILL START"

だってふたりは、おとこのこなんですから！

"A NEW ADVENTURE.", carried over from the previous speech bubble, obliterates the final cheery thought "Because the two of them are boys!" Roll the credits!