Spoiler alert

Wow, I sound like one of those nerds who post to message boards about comics. Granted, I sound like that when I post nerdy things to message boards about comics myself, but I'm pretty sure I've never used jargon like 'spoiler alert' on my blog before. Hopefully I never will again.

But I think it's now acceptable for me to talk Torchwood. As I'm writing this I'm watching the repeat of the first episode on proper telly, so nobody in Britain has any excuse for not having seen it before reading this. As for the rest of you, well, that's what the alert was for. It's not just window-dressing.

Actually, all I wanted to say, apart from the fact that it was really, really great, is that the BBC's advance publicity was brilliant. This is the spoiler part - one of the Torchwood team dies at the end of the first episode as part of the final (really cool) plot twist. In all the hype, including a big feature in the Radio Times, they talked about this character as if they were going to be one of the regulars, so as not to spoil the surprise. I was impressed. Especially since the Radio Times spoiled the surprise death of Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for me. They're back on my Christmas list now.

As for Torchwood, I should just add that there were so many little funny lines and cool moments that I lost count. Very Russell T Davies. It's going to be a highlight of the week from now on.

It's a steady job, but he wants to be a paperback writer

Did you know November is National Novel Writing Month? No, neither did I until today (thanks, Kitty!). What it is, if you're too lazy to click on the link and work out what the slightly unfathomable website is talking about, is a kind of challenge - write a 50,000 word novel from scratch during the month of November. The idea being that you're going to write a load of drivel, but at least it will get your creative juices flowing. Really, it's exactly the kind of impetus I need! The I'll-do-it-if-you-do-it-too attitude always motivates me to do stuff.

I think everyone should do it. In fact, I COMMAND all my loyal readers to join in and write their own masterpieces! Go on, don't be shy, you don't have to show your novel (or navel) to anybody if you don't want to, but I think everyone in the world should try to tap into their muse as much as possible. It's good for you. And don't give me that "I haven't got time" nonsense - I've got a trip to Germany packed with mental calculations and memorising, a semi-full-time job, a non-novel book to write and a whole pile of cartoons that need watching (thanks Mike!), and I'm still going to write 50,000 words.

I haven't got a title yet. Or rather, I have, but I'm not sure if I'm going to use it or not. I'll see what kind of novel I feel like writing. Look me up on the website - I'm Zoomy.

I am the music man, I come from down your way

I'm endeavouring to learn how to play the piano. I have tried before, several times, but this time I'm taking a different approach from my usual tactic (find a piece of music I'd really like to be able to play, sit down with it and try to work out how to play it, fail to do so, give up) - I've got a book. I don't think it's a particularly good book (Piano For Dummies), but playing through the exercises in it might at least get my fingers nimble enough to cope with a concerto or two.

If I have the patience to learn how to memorise thirty packs of cards in an hour, surely I can find the time and inclination to sit down and play scales until I can do it right? Dominic O'Brien can play the piano, after all, so logically I should be able to play it even better than him. Learning the guitar is also high on my list of priorities, but that's a bit more difficult to get started on - I've got a clever electric keyboard with headphones so nobody can hear what I'm playing on it, whereas if I got a guitar, all my neighbours would be able to hear me mangling it while learning to pluck and strum. And I'm not sure I like the idea of other people hearing me play an instrument, at least not until I'm the best player of it in the entire universe. This attitude is of course why I picked a silent hobby like memorising things.

I also need to learn to play something obscure and classical, so that I can join an orchestra. It'll need to be an instrument that nobody else plays, of course, so that even if I'm not very good at it, the orchestra boss (I also need to learn the proper terminology for these things) will say "well, we need a Venezuelan nose-flute for this performance and you're the only person in the world who can play one (since very few people are prepared to have the necessary nostril enhancement surgery) so you get the job. Go and sit next to the bassoons."

You don't have to be crazy to work here...

I forget why I agreed to work next week when I could be staying at home and practicing for the two competitions I'm doing in a couple of weeks. I'd rather not have to go in tomorrow, anyway. I'll see if I can wriggle out of it. That said, I haven't been doing any practicing today (or is it 'practising'? That's one of the only words in the English language I'm never sure how to spell right), I've been watching telly and aimlessly wandering around cyberspace. Although I prefer to buy my old cartoon videos from charity shops, I found one on eBay that I couldn't resist - it's titled "Sniffles the Mouse"! I had no idea he'd ever got a tape named after him. It's got two Sniffles cartoons on it that I've already got, and a few other random non-Sniffles ones that I haven't. The opening bid of £2.99 (plus postage and packing) is so ridiculously high for this kind of thing that I almost didn't bother, but I thought what the heck. I might as well run out of money sooner as later.

Anyway, Torchwood is on in ten minutes, and I'm still entirely unclear on whether it'll be any good or not. I hope it will.

Bless me

I have got a terrible cold. But despite that, I'm feeling more or less pleased with myself, because I've done a full day's memory practice even though I really had to force myself at metaphorical gunpoint to sit down and do it. Got 960 in 5-minute binary, which is a personal best, but fairly unexceptional scores in everything else. I'm faced with a dilemma about ten-minute cards - I can do six packs comfortably in that time, it's exactly the length of time I need to run through each pack three times, with a few seconds left over at the end to check anything I'm not sure on, so I get them all correct nine times out of ten. So the last couple of times in practice, I've just done that - six packs is a very good score in that discipline. But I have a feeling that I should be stretching myself a bit more in training, if not in competitions - should I go for nine packs and just look at each one twice? That leads to much more difficulty recalling them, and it seems unnecessary to try so many when I can get a good score safely. But I think I'll try it next time, anyway. So there.

Over on James Kemp's blog, he's inventing new systems, which makes me all nostalgic. I've been using the same memory techniques for a good three years now without any more than the most infinitesimal modifications. It's not that I feel I've attained perfection, but I can't really think of anything I could do to improve the systems I'm using - I can certainly win the world championship again with them if I get my act together. But it would be nice to have a moment of inspiration and discover something new and exciting I could to to suddenly improve my results. That might get me more in the mood that I was in back in 2003 and 2004.

You can ignore this last little bit if you want. To the extent that this blog of mine is about anything, it's not about finding something funny on YouTube every single day and linking to it, and I seem to have been doing that kind of thing quite a lot lately. I'll give it a rest after today, I promise. But I stumbled across this one tonight somehow, and it's filled me with a whole new level of respect for the things you can find on the internet. I don't even like Backyardigans, it's uninspired, generic-children's-cartoon stuff that just screams out with unrealised potential. But that someone would go through all the episodes and compile a montage of Pablo's crises like that is awesome. This is the kind of thing that just wasn't done before the 21st century. It's great to be at the forefront of a revolution like this.

New job, same as the old job

And I had to work late today, on a Friday, and my first day back at work! And not for any sensible reason either - my boss had arranged an interview with someone for my job, forgotten about it and then taken a day off to move house, so I had to interview the poor guy myself.

But still, it's the weekend now, so I'll stop complaining and share something fun - Clemens has got a website!

You people have held me back long enough

I'm getting another hat. I've decided. The world expects a certain amount of hat-wearing from me, and I've been a sad disappointment this last couple of months. I did think about remaining hatless and looking vaguely like a normal person for once, but I've changed my mind. I'm no good at looking normal, but I'm great at looking eccentric, even when I'm not trying to. Besides, without a hat I haven't found anything that can prop my stopwatch up reliably while I'm memorising things.

I did go to Lincoln yesterday, by the way. It's hardly changed at all since the last time I was there. I found an excellent video in a charity shop too, which highlights exactly what I find so entertaining about these old public-domain-cartoon collections. This one clearly contained cartoons that had come to the packagers second-hand, with the title cards already removed, so the people making the packaging had to invent titles! They mainly stick to simple titles based on what's happening in the cartoon (although coming up with "Pussy Cat In Boots" to describe a cartoon originally called "Puss In Boots" made me giggle), but how do you get "Something For The Birds" from "Inki and the Minah Bird", which despite the name is mainly about Inki hunting a lion, with the Minah Bird carrying on in its usual inscrutable way in the background. There aren't any other birds in it.

Also, I need to move to a bigger flat. I've got the longest maze book in the world (thanks James!) to find my way through, and it opens up to 20 feet in length. Which is longer than my flat from one end to the other. I really want to see the whole extent of it stretched out in front of me, so I'm going to have to move to some kind of mansion.

Coronation Street

Richard Rutherford is in the living room icing a cake. His boyfriend, Peter, is frying chips in the kitchen, and his accountant, Donaldson, is putting on her makeup in front of the television.

Richard Rutherford: That's not a mirror, you know. It's Huw Edwards, reading the news.

Donaldson: I know, but I look startlingly like Huw Edwards, so it's the same as looking in a mirror.

Richard Rutherford: Oh, blast it all, we've run out of honey! Peter, quick, go down to the corner shop, buy all the packets of Lockets they've got, crack them open and pour the honey into this pot. And hurry, she'll be here in three minutes.

Peter: They sell honey at the corner shop, too. Couldn't I just buy a pot of honey?

Richard Rutherford: No, I think my way's better. Now chop-chop, it's not every day the Queen comes for dinner.

Peter: No, but it's at least every second day. Four times a week on average. And even when she was away on a diplomatic visit to Bulgaria last week she phoned us at three o'clock in the morning and woke us all up, just to say hello.

Richard Rutherford: Two minutes. Get those Lockets, quick.

Donaldson: You can't afford more than seven packets.

Peter departs.

Richard Rutherford: I hope he doesn't take too long.

Peter returns.

Peter: They only sell Tunes. I got seven packets.

Richard Rutherford stuffs the packets of Tunes into the honey pot, just as the Queen walks in, carrying a large pie.

The Queen: There was a cat outside, so I killed it and baked it into a pie for you.

Peter: Tiddles?

The Queen: I prefer to be called Elizabeth.

Donaldson: How did you bake a pie outside on our doorstep?

The Queen: I'm the Queen. I can do whatever I want.

Richard Rutherford: Cake?

The Queen: I prefer to be called Elizabeth.

Peter: Look, I was quite attached to that cat.

Donaldson: Well, Tunes cost more than Lockets at the corner shop, so you wouldn't have been able to afford cat food this week anyway.

Richard Rutherford: Well, don't just stand around chatting, everyone, sit down and I'll pour the tea.

Peter: It used to bite my foot affectionately in the morning.

The Queen: Shut up about your stupid cat, you filthy little commoner. Where's my tea?

Richard Rutherford: There, in the cup right in front of you.

The Queen: Well I don't like it. Put some honey in it.

Richard Rutherford: One Tune or two?

The Queen: I prefer to be called Elizabeth.

Peter: Look, I'm sorry, Elizabeth, I know you enjoy coming here to visit Richard Rutherford on a regular basis, but that was my pet cat you baked into a pie there, and I'm upset about it. I only bought Tiddles two days ago, after you baked my previous cat into a pie last week. You could at least apologise.

The Queen: How dare you call me Elizabeth, you horrid proletarian? Address me as Your Majesty, or I'll have you thrown in prison!

Peter: But you said...

Richard Rutherford: Stop being rude, Peter. Eat your pie.

They're taking over the house

My cuddly toy collection, that is. I acquired two more at the weekend - a green dinosaur who seems to have been living in Ace's parents' house since time immemorial, who I've decided to call Denver, and a beanie baby red dragon, a birthday present from Jack, who I'm calling Siadwel. That makes nine stuffed toys and a plastic clockwork lobster sitting in my armchair right now.

Anyway, so far today I've practised all six number or card events that'll be in the German championship and got reasonable scores in all of them, read the entire archive of Mynarski Forest and I'm now watching the second football game of the evening. I could get used to this not-going-to-work thing. If I wasn't going back to work on Friday, that is. Still, I have a strange urge to go to Lincoln tomorrow - it came up in conversation over the weekend, and I realised I haven't been there for yonks, although it used to be a favourite hangout. I've never gone there by train before, and it turns out it's just as inconvenient to get to from Derby as it was from Boston (everywhere's inconvenient to get to from Boston), but it'll probably be fun just as a one-off.

Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy

Okay, I didn't post anything last night. I was still recovering from the party. For that matter, I'm still recovering from the party now. It was great!

Could it possibly be described as a party of geeks when you do something like this - Jack got dropped off by a taxi at number 49 instead of number 429, and to get her to the right place involved co-ordinating maps and directions using two laptops and at least three mobile phones. It was like mission control at NASA. Although all the technology also came in handy when we urgently needed to track down an off licence that sold midori.

We also spent quite a long period of time tracking down an old friend of ours who we suspected might be dead. It turned out he probably isn't, or at least that if he is, nobody's changed his answering machine message.

This has been my first official day of not working, but it doesn't technically count as such, because this was a recovering-from-party day that it was quite legitimately okay to spend mostly in bed. Tomorrow is the real start of the big adventure.

Best present ever

Crispy has bought me a Zoom-Zoom T-shirt! From eBay! You know, like my favourite shirt that I've worn so much over the past seven years that it's all full of holes and a dingy grey colour and almost unwearable even by my standards. And somebody out there has acquired one of these things that you had to spend £30 on pocket dragon figurines to get and kept it in its original packaging for all this time, just so I could have it for a birthday present this year. Yay!

It's about quarter past midnight and I'm drunk. But it turns out this house has wireless internet access, presumably stolen from the neighbour. I'll go into more detail tomorrow, by which I mean today, when I'll probably be more sober and able to write correctly-spelt words first time without going back and correcting myself.

Can you change your age by deed poll?

It's not that I'm disturbed about turning thirty. It's just that it sounds so, well, grown-up. It's like overnight I'll turn from a young man-about-town in my twenties into a thirtysomething fit only for a sitcom about not being young any more. It's getting to the point where my favourite complaint that I'm ten times older than I want to be STILL makes me sound really quite old, comparatively speaking.

Is it still possible to become famous after thirty years as a nonentity? Well, almost a nonentity. I've got a wildly-inaccurate stub on Wikipedia nowadays, after all, that's fairly famous. And a full entry on the German version. And five shiny tropies sitting on top of my kitchen cupboard. And the genuine intention of writing a best-selling book at some point in the future. That surely counts as being famous. I still want to be a pop singer and a racing driver and a football player and the Pope, though.

Educating Marmalade

Just to keep you up to date on my academic endeavours, I'm still going to college on Thursdays. One of the lecturers or teachers or whatever you call them (probably 'learning facilitators' or something stupid like that) is what you'd have to call an old-fashioned type. Hand-written transparencies on the overhead projector, writing on the blackboard (well, whiteboard, it's not THAT old-fashioned), presenting each lesson by the time-honoured technique of mumbling continuously about whatever the subject is without acknowledging the existence of the students in any way.

Then he's followed by a guy who can only be described as insanely multimedia. Home-made and very professional-looking Powerpoint slideshows via a laptop and projector, then a video to watch before class discussions. He even uses Mind Maps! I don't think I've ever encountered anyone outside memory circles (which often comes with Tony-Buzan-worship as part of the package). It's like stepping from the 1970s into the 21st century!

Chicken Soup passed away

A variety of trains of thoughts collided tonight. I'm reading Rose Madder by Stephen King (I find that I can reread almost any Stephen King book any number of times without them getting old), which repeatedly refers to "Rosie Real", the musical cartoon apparently much loved by everyone except this cartoon fan who's never seen it. If it made it to Britain, I didn't pay any attention to it when it did. I had, however, a couple of years ago heard the song "Chicken Soup With Rice", when Scotty Arsenault put it on his much-missed Commander Kitty website (if I put a link in here anyway it'll force him to bring Kitty and the gang back!). And by 'heard the song' I mean 'listened to it over and over again because it's so brilliant and indeed still sing it to myself at odd moments even now'.

So having been reading Rose Madder I went on to read Jemfo's blog, complete with links to Muppet snippets on YouTube (three cheers for Captain Vegetable!), and that got me to wondering whether Chicken Soup With Rice might also be found on that wonderful YouTube thing that I don't pay nearly enough attention to. And it is!

Not only that, the whole darn Really Rosie is on there too (cut into three bite-size chunks), and I've just spend the last 25 minutes watching it. Sheer genius, the whole thing. Isn't the internet an amazing place?

Sideswipe's got nothing on me

Having bent my own rules yesterday, I'm bending them even more today. Seriously, the rules are almost doubled over now, at an angle of maybe 167 degrees to the vertical. But you see, even though the worst thing you can possibly do on a blog is just find a funny article on the BBC news website and link to it, I'm rather entertained to read here that my old home town of Boston, Lincolnshire has the highest obesity rate of any town in the country. I'd like to think that I used to be the one keeping the average weight down to a respectable level, and since I moved to Derby I've put them over the top.

I think Boston should take great pride in this, in the style of an unexceptional Simpsons episode, and celebrate its fatness. Any publicity is good publicity, and if they really hype the place up as Britain's Obesest Town maybe some day those copycats in Massachusetts will be saying "I'm from Boston - not the one in England, the other Boston..." like they should have been all along.

Ruby anniversary

Have I really written 409 blog posts, not including this one? What the heck did I write about? My mind's a blank tonight, I'll tell you.

Ah, that'll do, thanks, Jemfo! I've learned a new thing all of a sudden - it's Sukkot! Happy Sukkot! Do you wish people a happy Sukkot? It sounds like one of those festivals that's automatically happy, so maybe there's no need.

I do have a rule here about not mentioning religion in case it offends anyone, but this is a self-imposed rule, and I've broken it several times before without getting in trouble, so obviously the authorities just aren't going to do anything about it. I do sometimes get the feeling that it might be fun to be religious in some way. Atheism's all well and good, but it's rather lacking in traditional ceremonies and rituals and things you have to dress up in special outfits for. And I did have a strange dream a few months ago in which I converted to Judaism and it gave me a great sense of inner peace and fulfilment. Maybe it was a message from God. But on the other hand, I'm quite attached to my foreskin.

Naturally I do worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but then, who doesn't?

Five more days to go, five more days of sorrow

Although I'm not properly leaving work at the end of next week, it's still a symbolic kind of ending (I've persuaded everyone that I don't need a leaving do until I actually leave, at least). And I'm not hugely looking forward to next week because I've got more work to do tomorrow than is humanly possible, but never mind. I'll cross that bridge when I can't run away from it any more and it tracks me down and jumps on me like bridges do.

Also, I watched the first episode of the new Robin Hood last night and I didn't think it was very good. I don't see why they needed to devote the whole first episode to setting up the story - everyone knows the plot already, they could have just hit the ground running and done flashbacks throughout the series. Then we might have had something a bit more exciting to start off with. You really need to get the merry men on screen before the last two seconds. And the dialogue is pretty terrible - the writer in an interview said "most of the time they talk in believable medieval", which he seems to think means talking in normal English without contractions (will not instead of won't, and so on). Which of course sounds like stilted dialogue without conveying any sense of the medieval.

And there's no excuse for dropping Friar Tuck.

Whoops, Mrs Miggins, You're Sitting On My Artichokes

I'm wearing an old pair of jogging bottoms with big holes in the knees and somewhat loose elastic (what, you expect me to be a model of sartorial elegance when I'm on my own at home? Sorry to disappoint you) and just now as I was walking towards my kitchen sink, the arm of my sofa caught in the hole in one of the knees and pulled my trousers right down around my ankles. It was a perfect slapstick moment that just needed the vicar coming round unexpectedly for tea to make it complete.

Anyway, the World Othello Championships. It has ended up with three Japanese players in the semi-finals - Makoto Suekuni v Tetsuya Nakajima and Hideshi Tamenori v Ben Seeley. Tamenori, in fact, is the making-up-the-numbers extra player from the home nation this year (qualifying for the Japanese team is notoriously difficult, there are dozens of really, really, REALLY good players there), and is almost as impressive in that role as I was in London in 2004.

But slightly more controversially, the organisers have unilaterally decided that the Japanese should be allowed to have a team of three women as well, rather than the one that other countries are allowed (you can have a woman as part of your normal team of three as well, of course - I went into all this in detail last year some time, I think). There is a bit of a history in the world of international othello of Japan, since they always win everything, doing things their own way and not caring what the rest of the world thinks. Personally I think the whole thing's funny, but there are those who take it seriously. Which, of course, only makes it all the more entertaining. Controversy is a fun game for all the family.

Saddlesore

The saddle on my bike came loose on the way to work, and kept tilting back while I was riding along. So I had to sort of park my whole (considerable) weight on the front bit to keep it level, and then it tilted downwards the other way. You could pay to see circus clowns riding bikes like that, probably.

Anyway, it's the weekend, and I've got things that need doing. I'm going to go for that master plan of memorising all those six-digit square numbers, to aid my square-root calculations at the MCWC. I'm still no good at square roots, but at least this way I can get a few quick points for the first three digits of each question (you have to give the answer to eight significant figures). I'm also still going to do the one minute binary record attempt with a full 270 digits, even if, just for example, someone who previously held the record tries his best to claim that the new record set earlier this year shouldn't count, and argue that I should only try for 170 or so so that other memorisers can then beat that and get the great publicity that our sport deserves. The way I see it, there's no point trying to beat a much less impressive record when someone has done 240, and I won't be at all offended if I do manage 270 (or even 300!) and Gunther argues that that doesn't count as a real record either.

Ben Seeley's on top at the world othello championship after the first day - he's won seven out of seven, beating Makoto Suekuni (who beat Tamenori earlier in the day) in the last game. Seeley v Tamenori first thing tomorrow, quite literally, I think it's half past midnight British time. Nicky van den Biggelaar is doing well too - he looks like having the best chance of stopping there being three Japanese (plus Ben Seeley) in the semi-finals. I really wish I could play that well. Ah well, that's another thing to work on over the next year...

Curses, Moriarty

My arch-nemesis, Akira Haraguchi, has been up to his old tricks again. It seems that he's recited pi to 100,000 places, over a sixteen-hour period last night. That's just much too many numbers. I'd still like to beat the record some day, but I can see I'd have to go up to something like 150,000, just to make sure he doesn't pre-empt me again.

Of course, he doesn't really count as an arch-nemesis - or at least I don't count as even a lesser nemesis of his, seeing as I've never publicly recited any digits of pi, barring a couple of dozen in a pub every once in a while if I want to show off. Still, it's nice to imagine that I'm an adversary of his in the pi-memorising stakes, however inaccurate the idea might be. Besides, I should refrain from talking about people as if they were my enemy - certain misunderstandings arose from a comment I made after the WMC, although how anyone could think that when I described Clemens as 'evil' it might mean that I don't like him, I can't imagine.

What is a shame is that I didn't qualify for the world othello championships - if I had, I would be in Mito, Japan, right now, and would be able to hunt Akira down and... well, say hello, I suppose. But it would also be cool to be playing in the championship. It kicks off tomorrow, they've already done the draw for the first round in the traditional way the evening before - you can see it here, if you really want to. Team Britain are missing a few of our brightest stars this time round, but I'm sure they'll put up a good fight. You wouldn't want to bet against Hideshi Tamenori on his home turf, though.

I've just been watching a repeat of Pie in the Sky on ITV3, but now it's finished and they've moved on to "Another Audience with Freddie Starr". This is exactly the kind of situation for which the phrase "from the sublime to the ridiculous" was invented.

@ BCC 34 750

I've got a pair of corduroy trousers that I don't wear very often, but I've had them for years - I bought them for a seventies night quite some time ago, a very memorable evening to which the only people who turned up were me, my brother and his friend Takanori. Anyway, I've just noticed today that written in black marker on the inside of the seat is "@ BCC 34 750". You'd think I would have noticed that before, but then I'm not terribly observant. I could speculate as to what it means, but I can't think of any interesting things that BCC might stand for except Big Cool Cords.

Rather than doing anything useful tonight, I'm watching a charity football match between old fogies who played for Liverpool and Celtic twenty years ago. I was a Liverpool fan back in 1986, for the simple reason that they always won. This made it possible to pour scorn on fans of other teams for being so stupid as to support one of the teams who didn't win all the time. Which really makes you feel superior. Of course, my social group of nine-year-olds were also all Liverpool fans for exactly the same reason - this was Lincolnshire, and there weren't any good local teams to support - so we generally had to restrict our scorn to people we assumed looked like they might be Man Utd supporters.

Nowadays, of course, I feel superior to all those fans who are so stupid as to support a team that wins games occasionally. Poor Boston are still languishing second from bottom of league 2, despite a great win against Lincoln and a draw away at Swindon. If we can beat Bristol Rovers on Saturday it will catapult us up the table a bit, and then it'll just leave the speculation about our manager decamping to Darlington to worry about.

One minute binary

I've discovered that I have no trouble at all with reading through and memorising 270 binary digits in exactly one minute and six seconds. Getting it down to under a minute seems to be more of a challenge. The current record is 240, so technically I could do 250, or for that matter 241, but I prefer to do binaries in multiples of 30, because it's somehow less confusing that way. And doing eight thirties and a ten would take as long as doing nine thirties. Still, with a bit of practice I can probably do it. Or make a sufficiently impressive attempt that I don't get laughed out of the Mathematikum.

I've been attempting to do my homework from college, but it involves reading sixteen pages of horrifically tedious nonsense about financial strategy and the theories advanced by Modigliani and Miller in 1961 regarding dividend policy and the hypothesis of dividend irrelevance. Why couldn't it have been Victor Vroom and his theories? I can always remember those, because he had such a silly name and I automatically imagine him as having had a motorised unicycle instead of legs (and, for less obvious reasons, a hairy chest, big beard and tendency to wear fewer clothes than is generally considered decent). He fights crime with his assistants Porter and Lawler in a way that illustrates a lesson every week about motivation and cognitive theory.

He grew fat and then grew thin again

I think I'm putting on weight. Not that I care about such things, of course, but perhaps it would be a good idea to join that gym I've been talking about joining and getting a bit more exercise on a regular basis. I suppose you might say that I should stop eating so many sweets and things, but then I might reply that you should mind your own beeswax, and I like sweets and things, so leave me alone.

I'm watching Grease on Sky at the moment. I've seen it about seventy buhundred times before, and I've got it on DVD so I could watch it any time I like without adverts or anything, but I don't think it's possible to see that Grease is on TV and not watch it. Besides, I want to see what the Sky people edit out of it. The BBC chop out the naughty words from 'Greased Lightning', whereas ITV leave that intact but cut the slumber party scene out entirely.

I should really be memorising things, or calculating things, but never mind. A wella wella wella!

I'll talk when I want to.

It's probably a good thing I haven't written anything here for the last couple of days, because I had an email that I was tempted to write about. And when I say write about, I mainly mean poke fun at the person who sent it to me and publicly mock the contents of the private letter they sent me. Which probably wouldn't have been very nice, but it was very tempting because I could have said all kinds of funny things about it. It's difficult sometimes, being so ethical.

Still, it's October. Birthday month! The party's going to be a meal and drinking session in Nottingham on the 14th, and anybody reading this who would like to come, drop me a line. You'll be very welcome!

Go to the top of the class and give out the penguins

That was one of my dad's favourite sayings - he would have been sixty today. 59 is a really stupid kind of age to die at. Anyway, interestingly enough, one of my teachers at the uni is also the financial controller of the Crich tramway museum, which was one of my dad's favourite places for a day out. In fact, I have a feeling I met this guy the last time we went there - he gave us a lecture on the effects of recent tax laws relating to charities that was very similar to one I've heard before from a tramway person.

Another of the three lecturers didn't turn up at all - he had some good excuse, I forget what, but it meant we got to go home early. I was pleased to note that my reaction to that was "yay, I get out of school early" rather than "tch, I've paid good money for this course and the teacher doesn't even show up". The third was a rather dull guy who pronounces 'finance' differently from anyone else I've ever met. You'd think a career as an accountant would persuade someone to say the word the same way as everyone else, but obviously not.

Pot Noodles are two for a pound at Sainsbury's at the moment, so I bought a couple for the first time in years. That takes me back to my student days a lot more than going to university did (my university career wasn't really characterised by me showing up to classes very much, but it did involve a surprising number of pot noodles). I had one for my tea tonight, and while I'll admit it wasn't what you'd call nice, they do still have a certain something.

Anyway, my brother's coming round this weekend, so I might not write anything for the next couple of days. Not that I think anyone would really care, but I'd hate to have people logging excitedly onto the internet over the weekend specifically to see my unique perspective on world events.

But if I wore a cap, they'd never let me back in the university

It's back to school tomorrow, the first day in my weekly course of learning lots of useful accountancy-related things that nobody in the history of the universe has ever found a use for in the real world. It starts at 3:30 and goes on till 8:45. I'm also going to work in the morning, so I'll be well and truly worn out by the end. Still, having this qualification will come in pretty handy when I run out of money and need to sweet-talk my way back into the world of the wage-slave. And even if I don't, I'll get to impress a classful of impressionable youngish accountants with how clever I am. Besides, it'll be fun to be learning and preparing for exams again, probably. I need to remember all my old excuses for not having done my homework.

Ntl have changed the numbers on all their channels, for no earthly reason. The letter explaining it even says "we've also decided that channels on a revolutionary digital TV service such as ours are bound to grow a bit so we're changing to three digit numbers to allow for ongoing additions."

They already used three-digit numbers on quite a lot of their channels! The only difference now is that they're all three digits, so basically in order to allow for expansion they've changed from having the choice of any number from 0 to 999, to any number from 100 to 999. Weirdos.

Nerdy rant

It's kind of old news now, I know, but I've just been watching the Doctor Who episode "The Satan Pit", and I feel I have to say to the uninterested world that you can't do a story in which a space station's crew are composed of six major characters who work and interact extensively onscreen together, and two extras who say and do nothing and then die at dramatic moments. It just looks really weird. They could have at least given them names - that doesn't mean you have to pay them extra, does it? Or heck, just mentioned them in the dialogue so the whole production doesn't scream at you "hey, we need to establish that the Ood can kill people, but we need all the characters for later on, better throw in a couple more cannon fodder at the last moment..."

They didn't need to kill two people, anyway, the second one was completely pointless. Couldn't they have splashed out on one more speaking part instead of two walk-ons?

Sorry about that, I just fancy myself a drama critic from time to time. Anyway, it's not like I've got anything monumentally interesting I could be talking about instead, it was basically that or the football because since there's too much stuff on telly tonight that I want to watch, I've taken an executive decision to give the memory and calculation training a break. Describing it like that means it qualifies as effective time management instead of laziness.

Could have been embarrassing...

The zip's broken on my work trousers. Luckily, it didn't come open until I was taking them off tonight, or I really would have had a chance to see if anybody would notice a striking trouser-related change in my appearance like I threatened the other day.

The boss wants me to come in part-time now until the middle of December. On the one hand, this is good, because I'm not sure I want to leave anyway. Although I'll soon change my mind when I get to the annoying part of my monthly routine again, of course. But on the other hand, that'll be four months from the time I told them I was leaving, and it seems to me that any competent company would have had me replaced and things running perfectly smoothly by that point. And this whole voyage-of-self-discovery sabbatical thing isn't quite the same if I'm going in to work every now and then through it. Still, I just do what the universe throws at me and enjoy the ride.

Jings!

When I have nothing better to do, or at least don't have the inclination to do anything better, I can occasionally be seen browsing the children's section of a bookshop. As an aspiring children's author myself, it reassures me to see some of the rubbish that gets published these days - makes me more confident that some of my own rubbish could still find its way into print eventually.

The only drawback to this confidence-building exercise is that occasionally I stumble across a piece of work so brilliant that I could never in a month of Sundays hope to produce anything like it. And then I get all depressed again. One such book, which I came across today, is "The Giggler Treatment", by Roddy Doyle. It's sheer genius from start to finish. It features, among other things, a seagull which hates fish and if it had its way would round them all up and dump them in the sea, a character called Billie Jean Fleetwood-Mack, a man who's in a bad mood because his sandwiches and flask of chicken soup at lunchtime were robbed by a vulture, a short cut from his house to the train station via the Sahara Desert, the river Nile and the Eiffel Tower, and a chapter written by the dog in which, without advancing the plot at all, he describes the difficulty of using the computer without his owner noticing, and mentions that his girlfriend Lassie recently moved to Galway and he thinks he misses her more than she misses him.

"Measure a mouse's eyelash. Not down. Across. That was how far Mister Mack's shoe was from the poo. And his rescuers were in Egypt! In North Africa! They'd never make it on time."

The whole book, in fact, takes place in the time it takes for Mister Mack's foot to descend towards the dog poo. He's wearing new and very stiff trousers, so it takes longer than you'd expect. Seriously, this book reaches heights of excellence that I could never hope to aspire to, even in all the months of Sundays I've got in store for the next year.

In other news, I also bought the new Oor Wullie book yesterday. I'm more of a Broons fan, but I still get the bi-annual Wullie collection too, and this bi-year I did laugh out loud at least a couple of times, so I think I've got my money's worth as well as keeping up with tradition.

And speaking of traditions, I seem to be making one of critically analysing each new Coco Pops advert I see, but I can't help it - this latest one raises deep issues that need to be explored.

It's an advert for Coco Rocks, actually, the horrid-looking crunchy-and-soft-choc cereal that Coco Monkey and his gang also advertise. In it, the villainous Croc steals the Coco Rocks and expresses the intention of scientifically analysing them to discover the secret of what makes them so delicious. Coco observes that "all will be lost" if he does crack the secret, but doesn't elaborate on exactly why. What, exactly, would be the consequences of Croc learning the secret? All I can think would come of it would be that Croc would be able to make his own Coco Rocks without needing to steal them (he can afford the lab equipment and gorilla henchmen, so you'd think he'd be able to buy his own, but perhaps he's barred from the local jungle supermarket), and surely that would be better for everyone except the Kellogg's cereal corporation.

At worst, his plan could be to market his own Coco Rocks clones and make a fortune. And although this would maybe be unethical, I think that frankly Kellogg's could use some competition to their monopoly in this market. Coco Monkey's urging of consumers to help him thwart Croc's plan smacks of brainwashing innocent children into tools of corporate propaganda. I think it's disgraceful, and should be stopped. I've lost all respect for Coco. And Ozmelda Ostrich can forget about me asking her out on another date.

Just plain mental

I've been practicing mental calculations. There are six events at the MCWC - adding ten ten-digit numbers, multiplying two eight-digit numbers, finding the square root (to eight significant figures) of a six-digit number, and naming the day of the week for a given date, plus two "surprise" tasks. In each case you get a certain amount of time to do as many of the tasks as possible - ten minutes for the addition, fifteen minutes for the multiplication and roots, and just a minute for the calendar calculations. Which is a bit of a rush if like me you're not particularly brilliant.

You're given ten of each task, and I can just about do eight additions in the time, and six multiplications. The trick is to keep practicing so that I get most or all of them correct, because I have too many little errors at the moment. Dates is more a case of getting my mind in gear as quickly as possible - once you get going, it really is easy to rattle them off in a few seconds, but I seem to struggle to get warmed up properly.

Square roots are my weak point at the moment. I'm still not entirely sure what approach to take for them. I'd quite like to memorise all the six-digit squares and their roots, which would give me a head start, but it's quite a big task and I worry that that amount of long-term memory stuff would get in the way of the short-term memory stuff I'll want to do for the memory competition on the Sunday.

I've been doing a bit of practice for that, too - did 780 in five-minute binary today, which would equal my world record, but I know I can do more than that on a good day. Also a fifteen-minute number, where I was going for four journeys' worth of digits, 936, but had lots of gaps. I'm pretty sure that's a realistically possible figure, though, so I'm going to stick with it. I'm just pleased that I've been more or less in the training mood today!

The Unblogged

I feel like I should offer a heartfelt apology for yesterday's post. It may not be immediately obvious, but I do have certain standards here, and I do feel bad when I churn out a few unentertaining lines when it's late at night and I'm in a bad mood because of technical problems. I know I have literally more than one reader who tunes into this blog every day, so I'd hate to let you down. The whole MSN Messenger thing is fixed, anyway - turns out it was upset by me changing the date on my laptop in order to fool a dimwitted free trial of Microsoft Office into thinking it hadn't expired. Who would have thought that breaking the law could have consequences?

I did have a blog entry all planned in my head yesterday, before I spent the evening getting frustrated with these new-fangled machines. It was going to be about the fact that I forgot my tie when I went to work yesterday. I'm definitely cracking up, it's official. Nobody noticed, which just goes to prove something. Perhaps I'll try going to the office without trousers next, see what happens.

This isn't the first time I've had the intention of writing about something here and then ended up not, for one reason or another. I know it might sometimes seem like I chronicle every little thought in my head in excruciating detail, but you'd be surprised how much happens to me that I don't get a chance to mention. It seems terribly unfair on these things, although on the other hand if you start feeling sorry for abstract concepts, that's probably another sign of insanity.

Technical hitches

As I mentioned a few days ago, my laptop has decided not to let me use MSN Messenger. This is inconvenient, as it forces me to use my desktop when I want to chat with people, and my desktop is elderly and getting to a state where it's not a lot of use. It definitely can't cope with three or four messenger conversations at once, and takes five minutes of whirring every time I switch from one window to another. Tomorrow night I must sit down and mess with the laptop to persuade it to work properly.

Also, I have to invite people to the big birthday bash. I've decided to go for a meal and a lot of drinking in Nottingham, and so it's just a matter of seeing how many people want to turn up...

We struggled hard all our lives to get by

There are times when I really don't like my job. Today was most definitely one of those times. There should be a law against making people work for a living, especially when the work involves finding that you've made stupid mistakes in the course of putting figures together over the last month and having to apologise and correct them in a very short space of time. What I should have done is only given one month's notice, then I could have spent today sitting around doing nothing.

I still need to find some more wholesome activities to fill my time when I am jobless - this sabbatical needs to be a learning experience, rather than giving myself an excuse to be lazy. If I'm not enriched, fulfilled and a better person all round by, say, Christmas time, I'll be annoyed with myself. So, which languages should I learn? What useful charitable acts can I perform other than volunteering in a shop, which seems just too obvious? What should I create a website about? Which chapters of How To Be Clever should I write first? Answers on a postcard.

They fell apart some time ago

I went into a shoe shop today, for the first time in living memory. Mainly to see whether the "buy one get one free" sign in the window meant one shoe or one pair of shoes, but since my boots have reached the point where it is in fact painful to walk around in them, I did think it might be a good idea to get some new ones. But I didn't like any of the ones in the shop, so I'll leave it till the weekend.

I had the leisure time to hang around shoe shops, of course, because I did all my work for the day before 9am - twelve very quick interviews with local radio stations (it should have been 14, but Sheffield had technical problems and York cancelled. Typical Yorkshire people.)* It was fun noticing the very slight different in format and questions from each one - some focused on serious talking about Alzheimer's, others were more interested in getting me to recount my amazing memory achievements. Radio Lancashire decided to take the approach of making me out to be a complete sad case. I'd complain, except I am in fact a complete sad case.

I did do a bit of mental calculation practice, and I was pleased to see I'm not far off the level I was at in 2004 when I last did it. I'm not going to break any records there, but I should put in a respectable kind of performance.

*I have no previous experience of the habits of Yorkshire people when it comes to arranging radio interviews, so I'm just assuming based on today that they're always having technical problems or cancelling them at short notice. This prejudice doesn't apply to local radio stations in Leeds.

Video killed the radio star

Early start tomorrow - interviews on the early morning shows of lots of BBC local radio stations about the launch of the Alzheimer's campaign. Still don't know which stations, or exactly when, so if you want to listen to me it's more a matter of tune in and hope. I won't be saying anything interesting, anyway - I've got a very detailed briefing that should more than cover a couple of minute's chat in each case.

Disappointingly, I won't be flying from one radio station to another in a private helicopter, but doing the whole thing from Radio Derby down the road. I'll be finished by nine o'clock, and after that I've got the whole day off work to do something useful.

Also in the news, and I don't normally mention celebrity birthdays here, but I've just heard that June Foray is 89 today. And still doing cartoon voices, as she has been doing for well over sixty years now. Happy birthday, Granny!

Ah'm fed up! I never get ony fun here.

I'm bored! And by that I mean that there are many, many things I could be doing, like memory training, or mental calculations training, or writing books, cleaning my flat, arranging my birthday party, watching videos, playing games, emailing people, phoning people, heck, even leaving the flat and going for a drink, but for some reason none of these wholesome activities hold any appeal for me at the moment. The only thing I can reconcile myself to doing is lying around the place at 8pm on a Sunday night and moaning because I'm bored.

Have I mentioned that the day after the mental calculation world cup in Gießen, there's a memory competition in Stuttgart that I'm also competing in? I'm trying to work out how best to balance training for the two - the mental calculation bit involves some long-term memory of numbers, which kind of gets in the way of practising the short-term things for the memory competition. Although since, as previously mentioned, I'm not doing either right at the moment, perhaps it's just an academic question.

Cartoons R Fun

I know I've wittered on a lot about finding old cartoon videos in charity shops lately, but that's only because I've found such a lot of them. I'm most fascinated by a range called "Cartoons R Fun". I had never heard of this particular packager of public domain toons a month ago, although they're dated 1990, and in the last couple of weeks I've found five of their releases - one in London, two in Boston and now two in Derby. Is there someone out there with a complete collection who's following me around and planting them in charity shops for me to find? If so, I'm very grateful. You obviously appreciate that I prefer finding them like that to having them given to me. You should be a psychiatrist. Perhaps you are.

They come in cheap cardboard packages with a badly-drawn representation of a scene from the cartoon on the front - these people obviously couldn't afford plastic or screen captures. They also seemingly couldn't afford the effort of taking the copy-protection tabs off the tapes (so one of today's finds is enhanced by a couple of seconds of early-nineties Grange Hill presumably taped on it by mistake by the previous owner), although they did splash out on some sticky plastic labels that look surprisingly professional.

On the back of the each box is a picture of a gorilla and an organ-grinder's monkey (probably inspired by that Bugs Bunny cartoon, what was it called?) holding a sign detailing the cartoons to be found on the tape (usually just one cartoon with "and many more" written afterwards, to give the impression you're getting more than three seven-minute toons for your money. To be fair, these tapes would have been a complete ripoff when they were new, but for 50p from Oxfam they're a bargain!). The ones I found today even have the listed cartoons on them, which is more than can be said for the previous three. Good cartoons too - five late-thirties/early-forties gems from Warner Bros: "Porky's Hired Hand", "Farm Frolics", "Hamateur Night", "The Fifth-Column Mouse" (war propaganda at its very best) and the really brilliant "Robin Hood Makes Good", plus a Noveltoon from 1946 called "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" with an extensive follow-the-bouncing-ball singalong of the title song. Must have gone down well in the cinemas.

While I'm on the subject of cartoons (am I ever off it?), I've been indulging in some deep self-analysis today. You may recall me mentioning that Furrball is probably my favourite character on Tiny Toon Adventures? Well, having been watching an episode a day for the past two weeks, I've realised that the character I most look forward to seeing is Calamity Coyote. And I have not the faintest idea why! I always have a favourite character on a cartoon, but I can normally provide a rational explanation as to why. My preference for Calamity, though, seems to have bypassed my brain completely - he's almost exclusively a minor background character (he takes centre stage in a couple of shows, but not any of the ones I've seen this past fortnight), he doesn't really have any of the personality traits that normally appeal to me, he's not especially cute, I just really like him. Does there have to be a reason?

See, how many other blogs give you ruminations as to the writer's preference of characters on a decade-and-a-half old children's cartoon? You get something unusual here.

Spick and span

I remember about a month ago mentioning that I'd got a new oven that looked very out of place because it was so clean and shiny. Well, you'll be pleased to hear that it fits right in now after a slight setting-kitchen-on-fire incident while cooking my tea last night. If I can be bothered at the weekend, I'll have to try to clean up the smoke damage.

I should also do something about the smoke detector in my flat. We noticed at my birthday party last year during an episode involving indoor fireworks that the smoke detector either doesn't detect smoke at all, or chooses not to tell anyone about it if it does. That was eleven months ago and I realise now that I never did do anything about the thing. It's a wonder that I've lived to such an advanced age, really.

Dulce Domum

It was a quiet day at home for Ethelbert and Ethel. They both had jobs to go to, but had decided not to bother, as it looked like rain outside. Ethelbert was sitting in his armchair in the lounge reading a newspaper published several years previously and Ethel was practising swimming in a paddling pool on the dining room table. In the kitchen, a man was attempting to convert the oven from gas to electric. Ethelbert and Ethel each assumed that the other had arranged for this man to come round, but in fact he should have been at their next door neighbour's house and had been confused by the fact that both houses had the same number.

"Margaret Thatcher says she won't step down," observed Ethelbert.

"Doesn't surprise me," said Ethel, trying to remember how you're supposed to move your legs when doing the butterfly stroke.

"I'll turn on the telly and see if she's still saying it," pronounced Ethelbert.

The television, which was either psychic or just paying attention to the conversation, turned itself on without human intervention and tuned itself to BBC News 24, where a dancing gorilla was eating Portuguese food for the entertainment of an audience of Senegalese septuagenarians.

"Telly's not showing the right thing," observed Ethelbert.

"Ask it whether you're supposed to move your legs up and down both together or one at a time," Ethel requested.

"It doesn't know," Ethelbert replied without asking.

"You're not supposed to move them at all," called the man from the kitchen. "Sort of stretch them out behind you. Streamlining. Hydrodynamics. Like dolphins, only with legs stretched out behind you."

"Do you know anything about tellies?" Ethelbert shouted back.

"Yeah, you see that button on the remote control?" asked the man, "Press it a couple of times."

"It didn't work," said Ethelbert, without trying it.

"What's the problem, exactly?" asked Doris next door, opening the hatch in the connecting wall and looking into the lounge.

"Telly's showing a gorilla instead of the newsreader," said the vicar, passing by the window.

"It'll be the vertical hold," opined the portrait of Gladstone on the wall, which wasn't up to date with the workings of modern television apparati.

"I only wanted to know about Margaret Thatcher," sighed Ethelbert.

"Oh, that's not on the news any more," scoffed the vicar. "It's all about this plane today. Seems the pilot didn't turn up for work this morning because it looks a bit like rain, and now it's going to crash."

"Not my fault," protested Ethel, inaccurately, "I haven't got an umbrella and I've just had my hair done."

"You've got three umbrellas and no hair," said the man.

"Have you converted my oven yet?" asked Doris.

"So is Margaret Thatcher still the Prime Minister?" asked Ethelbert.

"No, I'm wearing a swimming cap, so it looks like I've got no hair," explained Ethel.

"Any chance of a cup of tea, while I'm here?" asked the vicar.

"I've nearly finished," said the man, still under a misapprehension as to his job.

"You might need to go up on the roof and adjust the aerial," said Gladstone.

"One lump or two?" asked Ethelbert.

"I think she's dead," said Doris.

"And those are ornamental parasols, made of paper and cocktail sticks, designed to decorate exotic drinks, not to protect against the elements," elaborated Ethel.

"Two please," said the vicar. "And I'll have the sunday roast with cabbages and radishes."

"It's cable, there isn't an aerial, she can't be dead because I saw her on telly last year before the gorilla came on, this isn't a pub, it's a private house and we don't serve meals, and you don't have radishes with a sunday roast, you have them as part of a salad and they don't taste very nice anyway, if I don't move my legs I don't move forwards at all, I just sort of bob up and down, and who are you anyway?" asked Ethel.

"Me?" asked Ethelbert.

"No, that man in the kitchen," explained Ethel.

"He's working on my oven," said Doris.

"Oh yes, that's right, I was getting confused," said the vicar. "I came round to tell you about that plane that's going to crash on your house, on my way to the pub. Then when you offered me a cup of tea, the drinks theme made me believe I already was in the pub, so I ordered lunch."

"In my day, we didn't have radishes," mused the portrait of Gladstone.

"Here's your tea, anyway," said Ethelbert, without having got out of his chair or made any drinks.

"Oven's done. Runs on gas now," said the man, wiping his hands on the teatowel in satisfaction.

"It ran on gas in the first place," muttered Ethel to herself, being too polite to say it to the man.

Then the plane crashed on the house, and although it killed everyone in it, the tip of the wing banged the television and fixed it.

"Told you that would sort it," lied the portrait of Gladstone, lying on top of the rubble.

"Hope the builder hurries up and fixes their house," said Doris. "It lowers the property values having a crash site next door."

"I wouldn't hold your breath," laughed the vicar. "Ethelbert was the local builder, and he didn't go to work today because it looks like rain!"

The special stuff

I'm watching the League of Gentlemen movie on Film 4. I didn't go to see it at the cinema because I thought it would just be a tired, money-grabbing rehash of the TV series. Turns out that it's brilliant, and now I feel guilty about not paying to see it, and thereby depriving the creators of some money. It must be at least 50p each. I'll have to send them a cheque.

I've done a tiny bit of memory training tonight, in amongst installing internet explorer 6 on this old desktop so that I can install MSN Messenger whatever-version-it-is. I don't know, you start installing something and then it forces you to install something else. I'd complain to Bill Gates, but he probably hears that enough as it is.

At the weekend, I'll sort out a proper kind of training schedule for that and the mental calculations. And by that I mean "I'm making an excuse not to do it for the next couple of days, and then come the weekend I'll find something better to do..."

Quote unquote

I've just had the Alzheimer's press release sent to me for my approval:

Ben Pridmore, a memory master and former world memory champ has signed up in support of the Million Memories campaign to offer top tips on memory. He says,

‘Your memory is a marvellous tool – I have trained my memory to do incredible things. If you want to improve your memory then a top tip is to think in pictures, your brain process pictures more easily than words. It is hard to imagine how devastating it must be to be affected by a disease like Alzheimer’s, which robs people of their memories. That’s why I am supporting the Million Memories campaign – and telling people memories do matter.’

I never said anything even remotely like that. The phrasing is horrible, for one thing. I don't ever say I can do incredible things, for another. The top tip (which, unlike the rest of it, is at least a paraphrase of something I did say) comes across like a complete non sequitur. On the other hand, I'm not so picky as to insist that people who claim to quote me actually quote something I said, so I'll just ask them to get rid of the "I have trained my memory to do incredible things" bit rather than insisting on wholesale changes. They have captured my tendency to overuse dashes in my writing, though - that's quite impressive, even if it was just by accident.

I still need to ask my boss if I can have next Tuesday off to do a couple of radio interviews and things for the Alzheimer's people. I've technically already taken more holidays than my entitlement, so they'd be within their rights to not let me. But on the other hand, since they've done nothing about recruiting a replacement and asked me to come back on a consultancy basis for a week or so in early November, I've got a strongish bargaining position.

As previously mentioned, several times, I'm not keen on doing radio interviews anyway. But I suppose it would help my renewed fame-and-fortune campaign.

Urgh

I'm definitely struggling just at the moment to force myself to do anything, anything at all other than sitting around not paying attention to what's on telly. I really should snap out of it. Last night, after posting about my birthday, I looked back at last year's posts, and noticed that I haven't actually achieved any of the things I resolved to do the day before my birthday last year. Which came as quite a surprise, since I was thinking this had been a pretty good year, all in all. Should I make more resolutions on October 13th this year, or just give it up as a bad job? I vote for the latter. That way, anything I do accomplish will be all the more impressive!

There was a really cool thunderstorm here earlier this evening, but it seems to have stopped now. It's been hot for the last week or so after a cold and miserable August, so maybe that's it for summer this year. Not cycling to work in the winter will be a pleasant change (I imagine I'll be cycling to other places rather than sitting at home all day, but if it's not work, it doesn't count as unpleasant).

Happy Birthday To Me

In just over a month, anyway. I need to arrange some kind of party. I feel like hiring a room somewhere and having a big bash. With karaoke. And a magician. It'll double as a leaving-work party, because I can invite my colleagues to this kind of thing now I don't have to worry about them meeting my friends and the resulting collision of accountant-Zoomy and fun-Zoomy causing the universe to explode, which means it'll have to be quite a big deal, and I think last year demonstrated that fitting more than ten people in this place would be a bit on the tricky side. I've been meaning for weeks to look into getting the bar and lounge at the Dragons health club, where I went to a party last year - the place has a very appropriate name, plus it's right by the train station and so perfectly located for a party to which most of the guests will be travelling from afar. Obviously, anybody reading this blog can consider themselves invited. More details if and when I sort them out.

I also need to get back into the habit of memory training. With the MSO and work overload, I haven't done any since the world championships last month, but I've given my brain enough of a rest now. If I can find the time and inclination, I should do a bit of mental calculation and a bit of memory every evening. We'll see how it goes.

Good game, good game

See, I knew if I went along to support the Pilgrims, they'd win! A well-deserved 2-1 victory over some unimpressive opposition. We might just avoid relegation yet. Although a terminal shortage of fans might still kill the club off - York Street was half empty, and the total attendance was just 1700. That's a really sharp drop from the kind of crowds they were getting just a few years ago - never Man Utd kind of levels, or even any-other-team-in-the-league kind of levels, but always comfortably over 2000. Apparently, this has been going on for a while, and it's a great shame. There were about a hundred travelling Stockport fans, and they made much more noise between them than any Bostonians. Hardly a home game at all for the poor players.

They did well, though. With Paul Ellender suspended, goalie Andy Marriott was acting captain, and he had an excellent game, making a couple of really first-class saves. The one goal he let in nobody could have done anything about, it was a surprising deflection. We went 1-0 up from a Tim Ryan penalty for handball (slightly unlucky, to be fair, it was ball to hand), they equalised almost immediately and then a bit before half time Anthony Elding celebrated his first home game back with Boston with the winner. The highlight of the second half was a fantastic run from out of nowhere by Dany N'Guessan, skipping past the defence as if they weren't there and cracking a shot which the Stockport keeper tipped over the bar. Lee Canoville had a brilliant game too, not putting a foot wrong in central defence. It wasn't what you'd call a promotion-worthy display, but it was definitely the performance of a team that can avoid relegation again this season.

I need to go to more games. With the other old-timers Mark Greaves and Simon Rusk both out injured, this team were practically strangers to me. And they obviously need all the support they can get.

While in Boston, I also did my usual check of the charity shops for cartoon videos and found three brilliant public domain collections, all of them containing entirely different cartoons to the ones listed on the packaging but with some fascinating selections - apart from some of the old Warner Bros ones I'm looking for, there's Westward Whoa (not, as you might expect on a Porky Pig tape, the 1936 cartoon featuring Porky and the rest of the Beans Gang that I've never seen and really want to find, but the Mutt and Jeff from ten years earlier that I'd also never seen and didn't particularly want to, but it's fun nonetheless), Molly Moo-Cow and the Indians and "Jasper and the Watermelons", a weird George Pal Modeltoon from 1942 which I'd never even heard of before today, but now I want to find some more of them.

Also encountered a big, friendly, but cowardly liver-spotted dalmatian in the park. He was happily bouncing around all the people sitting on the benches trying to persuade them to give him some of their food, until a man came past with a little jack russell on a lead, which barked at him. Whereupon the dalmatian, roughly ten times the little thing's size, hid behind his owners.

Furrball's unlucky

Fans of cartoons, or just people who care whether I'm entertained or not, will be pleased to hear that Boomerang have got over their summer Scooby Doo obsession and started showing a wider variety of cartoons again. Even better, they've started repeating Tiny Toon Adventures, most episodes of which I haven't seen for years! Today's was the all-Furrball show, starring possibly my favourite character, so I'm happy. Including the cartoon where his owner takes him on holiday to stop him eating her pet bird, but whenever her back's turned for two minutes he dashes from Florida to California to try to catch it. Very funny stuff. Not to mention Frank Welker's unique vocal stylings, always a treat. Also, it's Friday!

And while we're talking about cats I like, I appreciate that I've mentioned this before and possibly freaked out a reader or two, but I'm still in love with Nigel from Newshounds. Just look at his facial expression in the last panel of today's strip - I wish I could draw that well. Or at all. Isn't he adorable?

Another thing I've just remembered today is that I promised to sponsor Ed a penny per digit memorised at the world memory championship in aid of Romanian orphans and then forgot to send the money. That's the kind of excuse that nobody ever believes from me, although it happens surprisingly often.

Anyway, I feel inclined to go down to Boston tomorrow and watch the football match. I feel bad about calling myself a fan if I don't see one live game a season, and we've had a dreadful start this year (not least because those eejits in charge of the club sold Julian Joachim after all - I remember praising them last year for not doing so), and we're at home to Stockport tomorrow, who are always rubbish, so we should get a good morale-boosting win which I can take the credit for by claiming it was all my cheering that did it. I need to pick up my books for college tomorrow morning too - I hope I can remember some of the stuff I did for the earlier stages of CIMA all those years ago before I start again. I need to keep my reputation as the swotty teacher's pet.

And I've been working like a dog doesn't

And actually, doing quite well considering I'm facing deadlines that Superman would have trouble meeting. And not just because of his lack of basic accountancy experience, either. So it's one more day to finish off a lot of little bits and pieces, then the next week of other, more annoying and pointless, stuff to finish, then the week after that being pestered by auditors, and THEN it'll all be smooth sailing towards October 13th. Except that I'll probably have to teach the job to my replacement in that time, which is something I really hate doing too. Sigh. Still, just a month and a bit to go...

Also, my MSN messenger isn't working, and I suspect it's something to do with the unfathomable security programs this laptop comes equipped with. Honestly, I'd uninstall the lot of them if I had the faintest idea how to go about it. Nobody's ever going to hack into my computer - I'm much too nice for anyone to want to be mean to me.

I'm competing in the Mental Calculation World Cup in November, in Gießen, Germany, and that means I really need to start practicing. Or at least remembering how to do square roots, because I honestly can't right now. I used to be able to do them, I'm sure. Still, it'll be a lot of fun, I'm sure. The previous one in 2004 was great - the competitors were treated like royalty, with tours of the town (Annaberg-Buchholz) by the mayor, free accommodation and meals (at a restaurant that specialises in potato dishes - had I known that there were such places, I would have informed someone beforehand that I'm not all that keen on potatoes, and avoided the potato soup followed by baked potato and for all I know a potato-based pudding too but I'd given up on the food by that point). I also attempted and spectacularly failed a world record attempt at memorising cards, as well as competing unspectacularly in the calculations competition. So this time round, having failed to learn from my mistakes, I'm going to go for another record - 1 minute binary, which I notice has recently been broken by an Israeli guy I've never heard of with a very impressive 240. I'm pretty sure I can manage 270 or maybe a round 300 with a bit of practice.

By the way, the Mental Calculations World Cup isn't to be confused with the Mental Calculations World Championship, which is the MSO event. That's where I stole the idea of asking Andi to rename his world memory championship from, back in 2004.

Only smarties have the answer

I bought a tube of smarties today on my way home. I had vowed never to buy them again after they changed to the hexagonal packaging, but I was peckish and they looked appetising and I figured they'd been punished enough. It's not the same, though. There's no excitement, wondering what letter will be on the underside of the lid. And the new all-cardboard packs just look so cheap and nasty.

Still, there's good news too. In London I found a video of Bobobobs, the extremely weird cartoon series (originally Spanish, I think), that in its English translation appeared on channel 4 in around 1990. It's a very unusual space-odyssey saga about a large cast of little people who sail their wooden spaceship around the universe. They're theoretically on a quest to find a distant planet (Earth, according to the endless theme song) and save the inhabitants from dinosaurs, but in practice they just have a different adventure every week and never really get anywhere. It's one of those things you have to see to understand the appeal, so just take it from me.

My ear's burning. Someone's talking about me. Must be one of the people I just emailed - only three 'fan mails' to catch up with after a week and a half at the MSO, obviously nobody likes me any more. Or perhaps it's because I never get round to writing to people unless they write to me first. I'm terrible like that, it's nothing personal, I assure you.

What a headache

I went through the arduous process of enrolling at the university tonight, for my final year's CIMA course (which is nowadays called Strategic Level, because Final Level sounded too simple. And it was only called that for a couple of years - when I started CIMA back in days of old, it was Level 4), so I'm now officially a student again! I've got a card with an unflattering photo and NUS written on it! I haven't had one of those for ages!

I've also had a headache of a more literal kind on and off all afternoon. Too much work, in too little time.

So many topics, so little time

Well, I'm back home after all that London extravagance, and I find that there are dozens of things I want to write about tonight. A sort of blog backlog, or backblog, if you will.

Also, I still need to iron some shirts and trousers for next week before I go to bed tonight, so I'll keep this brief.

So, I didn't win any medals at the MSO, which is a bit disappointing. I always used to aim to win at least one. But then, I wasn't there at all for the last couple of days, and they didn't have the events I'm really great at, and I wasn't all that interested in it anyway, but it still annoys me. I was hoping for a last hoorah, like a typically zoomy flukey win in a poker tournament, but even though I was sticking closely to my usual strategy of bad play and outrageous good luck, it didn't get me very far this year. Indeed, on the last night I went out to a guy who combined both those skills much more adeptly than I ever did, and won two consecutive big hands with a better full house than another player had, cleaning me out on the second. Darn it.

But I'm pretty sure I won't bother going to the MSO again. If there's a memory championship there, I'll probably go along to that but not the rest of the event. The main problem with the MSO nowadays is that the only people who bother to come are the ones who take it very, very seriously - it's just too expensive and out of the way to attract the kind of person who just wants to play games for fun. So there are a lot of people there who spend half an hour before, during and after every event arguing about petty details of the rules. Which always gets on my nerves. And no, I don't do that to anything like the same degree in memory.

That wasn't very nice of me. I was intending to be all cheerful this evening, too. Must be the impending horror of going back to work tomorrow. Ah well, it'll soon be over...

Still here

Well, after all that I-can't-stop-blogging whining earlier this week, I haven't had the time to write anything. But since I said I would if I got knocked out of a poker game early, I feel morally obliged to say something now.

Boing!

There, wasn't that fun? I'll be back, really, on Monday. Or maybe on Saturday morning if I'm out of bed early enough, before going down to Crawley.

It's no good, I can't do it

No TV for a week? No problem. No sitting down and typing the first thing that comes into my head every evening? Not possible. So it's official, blogging really is an unhealthy addiction.

I did try to stand firm in the face of extreme temptation. I didn't write a thing last night about the fact that Joe McGann sat directly opposite me on the tube, not even when I walked past the Zoom Internet Cafe on the way back to my room at night. But enough is enough. I can't deprive my many readers of my nightly wittering for a whole week. I probably won't write something every night, just when I'm out of the nightly poker tournament early like tonight.

The MSO is still great fun, but somehow I get the feeling that I've outgrown it. Or it's outgrown me. Or outshrunk me, anyway. One or other of us isn't the right size, however you want to look at it. By which I mean that I'm not as enthusiastic about the selection of competitions there these days, I'm not particularly close friends with any of the regulars who still turn up every year, and I think I might give it a miss from now on unless there's a memory competition. Sad, but there are other things I could be doing with my time and money.

City-trained priest faces sex probe

I've just been looking through the nooks and crannies of my flat for the little clock radio that I always take to the MSO with me but don't otherwise use. So it's had two years to gradually become submerged by all the junk I hoard. I didn't find it, so I'll have to take my big portable radio with me, but I did come across a pile of local newspapers chronicling my appearance at the first MSO in 1997. Nowadays, of course, I'm so used to being an international celebrity that I don't bother to keep all the newspaper articles about me, but in those days it was something new and exciting.

If you're wondering about the subject header, that's the banner headline in the Boston Target directly above a picture of me which was attached to the smaller article saying I was going to the MSO, rather than the story about the priest. Yes, the Target did a story just about the fact that I was going to compete - the MSO went mad with publicity in the first year, and pestered all the local news hacks with press releases about each of the thousands of people who'd registered. And since every day is a slow news day in Boston (the vicar in question lives in Southend and was arrested in Romania, but went to Lincoln Theological College many years ago) I got some pretty hefty coverage.

Here's a couple of scans of the breaking news stories after I'd won the silver medal in the one-day intelligence championship. God, I looked ugly in those days. The hair's arguably an improvement over my current style, but I genuinely thought the moustache gave me a sort of suave, Clark Gable kind of look.


The Lincolnshire Free Press covers the entire county! 


This was a front page story, albeit in the bottom corner under the thrilling tale of a Boston couple who were no more than a couple of miles away when Princess Di died 

Anyway, today I'm off to the tenth MSO, and then straight down to the British Othello Championships next weekend. As I've mentioned before, the MSO is traditionally a week where I don't watch TV, or check my emails, or let anybody know whether I'm alive or dead, so this will be my last update till September, I'm afraid. But it's good to get away from technology and go back to nature once in a while. Even if most people's idea of getting back to nature doesn't involve going to the University of Westminster to play board games with nerds.

Gee willickers!

I mentioned nearly a month ago that I was feeling inclined to write about why I love Sniffles, the relatively unknown Looney Tunes mouse from the late 30s/early 40s, and then have always had better things to write about of an evening. Well, no more!

Here's our hero, listening to the opening bars of "Mutiny in the Nursery" in his third cartoon, "Sniffles and the Bookworm"

Sniffles first appeared in "Naughty But Mice", in 1939. It's been said that Sniffles was the first character created by the great Chuck Jones, although I'm not so sure about how accurate that assertion is. Anyway, Sniffles is perhaps the last gasp of the original policy behind Warner Bros cartoons - to copy what Disney were doing as closely as possible. Sniffles is pure Disney, at least in his first appearances. He's a small, cute mouse, who explores a series of beautifully drawn big stages, in gentle but extremely entertaining ways. Cute was already becoming rather unfashionable in cartoons at that point, with Chuck Jones and his fellows leading the way in the wacky revolution, but Sniffles appeared in nine cartoons in the next three years - quite an impressive strike rate for someone who wasn't Porky, Daffy or Bugs.

You can see a classic adventure here at Dennis's blog, along with no end of other great cartoons. Look out too for Sniffles making friends with an electric razor in "Naughty But Mice" - it's genuinely beautiful.

Sniffles's voice varies quite a bit from cartoon to cartoon, and nobody's entirely sure who provided it. It was probably any one of four or five perennially-uncredited female voice actors working for Warners at the time, whichever one was available on the day. But they all do a wonderful job with his wide-eyed innocence and gee-whiz exclamations.

Then, in the last of his original run of cartoons, "The Brave Little Bat", Sniffles goes out for a drive in his adorable little clockwork car, which breaks down in spectacular fashion. He takes shelter in an old mill, where he meets a cheerful little bat with what turned out to be a highly contagious case of verbal dysentry. Batty's dialogue is hilarious:

Sniffles: Hello!

Batty: I heard you come in, why'd you come in for? I'm glad you came in, 'cause I get kinda lonesome in here by myself sometimes 'cause there's nobody here but me and now you, where'd you come from? I live up there and I'm a bat, are you a bat? Hello!

All delivered rapid-fire without a pause for breath. Sniffles and Batty have an adventure escaping a cat (Sniffles's reaction to finding himself on a high roof beam is another must-see moment), and then that was the last we saw of him for a couple of years. He returned in 1943, having acquired Batty's speech mannerisms, in the altogether different "The Unbearable Bear"

Still directed by Chuck Jones, but this wasn't a Disney-style cartoon. The backgrounds are stylised and simpler, and the plot is fast, zany slapstick in the quintessentially Warner style - a fox burglar breaks into a policeman bear's house to rob it, but is discovered by Sniffles. ("What are you doing there? What are you doing with that safe? I know what you're doing, you're a burglar and you're burgling that safe 'cause burglars always burgle safes, why do they? Why are you a burglar? It's against the law to be a burglar 'cause burglars are crooks and I'm going straight upstairs and wake up the lady bear and tell her you're a burglar and she'll come right down and beat your old burglar head in...")

Thinking outside the box, the fox tells Sniffles that he's Robin Hood, you know, as robs rich blokes for the benefit of the poor. Sniffles is convinced - "Gee! Are you really Robin Hood? You don't look like Robin Hood but I guess you must be Robin Hood if you say you are Robin Hood 'cause Robin Hood wouldn't tell a lie. Hello Robin Hood, I'll help you rob the rich and give it to the poor and I'll stand guard and if anybody comes I'll warn you, like this!" (grabs a spoon and pan and starts banging it deafeningly loudly)

Then father bear comes home, drunk at three o'clock in the morning and not wanting to wake up his wife, who starts sleepwalking, and there's four-way chaos with Sniffles running around trying to help Robin Hood and chattering cheerfully away nineteen to the dozen. It's one of my favourite cartoons of all time, and as soon as I acquire the capacity to share my videotaped cartoon collection with the internet, I'll share it with you.

Sniffles only appeared in two more cartoons, and by the last one, "Hush My Mouse", in 1946, innocence was definitely fading. In the post-war era, Warner Bros were embarking on their golden age, but 'outwit the hunter' cartoons were hugely en vogue, and even Sniffles got in on the act. His chatter and naivete seem to be an act here, as he tricks a stupid cat trying to collect mouse knuckles for his exclusive restaurant. Then he disappeared, apparently unable to compete with the influx of new Looney Tune stars. He's continued to pop up now and then in these nostalgic times - he had a Tiny Toon Adventures counterpart (Little Sneezer), which is more than can be said for some more famous toons, and he made a wonderful guest appearance on an episode of Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries as recently as 1999, playing a Manx mouse. He never did lose the constant babbling. It's a problem that I can identify with...

Back to normality

Just for today and tomorrow. Which means that I basically have to fit two weeks of work into two days, with the year end accounts coming up as soon as I get back from the MSO. In among that I also need to tot up the BOF's accounts for the AGM in a couple of weeks - I'm going down to Crawley straight from London, without a trip back home in between, so I need to not only get the treasurer's report done before I go down there, but remember to take it with me.

All of which means that I had to work late tonight, and haven't got the time to write a great deal here. Sorry, fans!

I, quite genuinely, Haven't Got A Hat

As an example of how mentally and physically exhausting I find the world memory championships, I left my hat on the train last night. And I didn't even realise until this morning! Nobody seems to have handed it in, either, but I'll check again in a couple of days (I've got the day off on Friday). It would be terribly anticlimactic to lose the poor thing like that, after all these years.

Anyway, what other things happened on the last day of the world championships? We ran about five or six hours behind schedule, as usual. They really should stop using that timetable, because it really is impossible to stick to it. Ed helped keep things running smoothly by getting stuck in a lift at one point. When the prizegiving ceremony finally got underway, they announced the correct scores this time (in the individual category, at least - the team scores were wrong), but gave the wrong medals to everyone (there's bronze, silver and gold for each of the ten disciplines, with the discipline names written on the back. Impressively, I ended up with the gold for abstract images, and the gold AND bronze for names and faces! I certainly didn't expect that!). We swapped them among ourselves afterwards. I hurt my hands clapping so much. Clemens got so used to going up and getting medals that he forgot he only came fourth in the hour cards, and was halfway up to the stage for that one too before he realised.

Afterwards there was a celebratory dinner at Simpson's on the Strand, which I couldn't go to because I had to get home - by the original schedule I would at least have had time for a drink, but as it turned out I had to dash off straight after the prizegiving (Andi left before it, as usual). Tony Buzan, who seems to believe that all the competitors are millionaires too, had arranged a special cheap price by the standards of this poshest restaurant in London of only £25 each for the meal. I'm sure we were all very grateful - there was talk of people organising a rival dinner at a more reasonable price, but I don't know if that happened.

So that's it for another year. After today's trip to sunny Rotherham, it's back to work tomorrow for a whole two days before heading back darn sarf for the MSO. It's a tough life, isn't it?

It was nearly complete, it was nearly so sweet

Well, evil has triumphed over good, as Josh perhaps a little over-melodramatically put it, and Clemens remains the World Memory Champion. Lots to write about, but it's late and if I don't go to bed right this second, I'll never be able to get up in the morning and I've got to go up into the wilds of Yorkshire for a meeting at one of our companies. Had I known I was going to hand in my notice, I would have booked today off rather than arranging something like that for the day after the world championships.

Anyway, in brief I got 27 packs in the hour cards, which is huge and very cool - that put me fractionally in the lead with three events to go. I got a respectable 156 in words, Clemens and Gunther got roughly the same, Joachim got a massive 203 but Boris kept the world record with 214. But then I messed up all three trials on the spoken number, which is always a real possibility with me, and Clemens got his usual massive score, putting him safely in the lead and Gunther safely in second place.

That left me having to try for a very quick time in speed cards, and hope that Clemens didn't get a half-decent score. He did get a half-decent score (50 seconds) in the first attempt, whereas I didn't manage to get anything (tried 33 seconds but didn't come close to getting it right). What I should have done then is record a slower time and snatch second place, but I went for a very fast one again because a) having no chance of winning the title I might as well go out with a bang, or b) Andi was sitting next to me and quite obviously aiming to beat my record, although c) none of this occurred to me at the time until Gunther pointed it out and I was just set on a pattern of trying to go as fast as possible. So anyway, I messed it up again. And Andi did beat my record. And Joachim recorded a perfectly acceptable time to beat me for third place.

So in the end, it was exactly the same as last year, Clemens-Gunther-Joachim-me-Boris, only with much higher scores all round. Frustrating, because I was pretty darn close to my best form this year, and it just wasn't good enough. Still, it's given me a target to aim for next time round.

Anecdotes and rambling to follow tomorrow, assuming I'm awake. Memory competitions tire me out, and I don't think eight hours' sleep tonight is going to be enough...

Once More, With Feeling

Last night's entry was a bit dry and full of scores and statistics, I thought. There's a lot more to the WMC than that. I've just been to KFC with Boris, Joachim, Corinna, Daniela, Daren and James K (after Burger King with a similar group last night - junk food is brain food), and the conversations we have on that kind of occasion, as well as throughout the day, are fantastic. You'd be surprised how much there is to talk about on the subject of memory when a bunch of enthusiasts get together.

Anyway, today went pretty well, all in all. You may recall from last night's cliffhanger that Gunther was miles ahead, but with his best events behind us, and a whole pile of us fighting it out for second position. It turned out I only got 1440 on the hour numbers, which is disappointing - on the lower end of my estimate. Gunther, Clemens and Joachim all scored in the 1700s. Andi got exactly 1800, but Dr Yip topped the lot with 1820. Phil described it as a surprise, but it isn't really - he was always red hot on the numbers, and even now when he's only here to bring this year's batch of little disciples to experience the competition and hasn't been doing much training himself, he's still very good.

It's fun to watch people before and between events. The Germans tend to juggle - it's a national tradition (meaning Gunther does it and everyone over there thinks it must be great if Gunther does it), and it's meant to aid concentration. Others sit around chatting or staring into space, concentrating fiercely, depending on temperament. I'm a chatter, mainly. Ed always arrives at the very last minute, if not later. Some get there an hour early, just in case. There's the usual what-are-you-going-to-attempt-here kind of speculation, announcements like "Can anyone lend Daren a stopwatch because he's forgotten his?" (you'd be surprised how often this happens at memory championships. Clemens glanced at the four timepieces on his desk but decided he couldn't risk three of them breaking down. Someone found a spare one in the end.)

Names and faces, the first event of the day, went extremely well by my low standards. I scored 96, a personal best, and I think the 12th-best score on the day. Gunther did badly, as expected. Clemens broke the world record, Andi did well too, and Josh did a very impressive 156. Cornelia continues to be consistently very good at everything.

Speed numbers next, and I went for a safe-ish 324, and got 284, the best score in the first trial. Andi was the last to return to the room for this one, and Phil said (over the microphone and sounding probably a lot more venomous than he intended) "Congratulations on making us all wait, Andi." We were already running late by that point - memory championships always run late, by at least a couple of hours. There are no exceptions to this rule, and certainly not today. There was a bigger holdup between trials of the speed numbers when Joachim and Gunther asked for their scores to be double-checked (Gunther's was correct, but they'd genuinely made a mistake on Joachim). I tried a mad 468 second time round, but made a mess of it and didn't improve on my first score. It was still good enough to be the third best, but Gunther and Clemens both beat me. Operation catch-Gunther not going as smoothly as I'd hoped.

But never mind, event six is Historic Dates, my trump card. By this point Clemens had almost but not quite caught Gunther up, and I was lagging about 700 points behind them. Worryingly far, in other words - the standard is much higher than last year, and there's a lot more competition. But, after another lengthy delay when it turned out they hadn't made enough copies of the English-language version (expecting the Hong Kong contingent to want it in Chinese, but they didn't), I did produce a whopping 96 - a new world record and lots of lovely championship points. After announcing the results, Tony came to me and said "So, do you want to change the scoring system because you're just too brilliant?" (the scoring system was genuinely wrong back in 2004, thank you very much, and I think the new one's fair enough - and anyway, I need all the points I can get this year!)

So, after six of ten disciplines, here's the leaderboard:

1) Gunther Karsten 4459
2) Clemens Mayer 4423
3) Ben Pridmore 4103
4) Joachim Thaler 4090
5) Cornelia Beddies 3608
6) Andi Bell 3581
7) Boris Konrad 3222
8) Ed Cooke 2654
9) Corinna Draschl 2416
10) Yip Swe Chooi 2128

My original plan was to be in the lead by this point. As an illustration of how much tougher it is this year, in 2005 at this point I was winning, with a score of 3471.

Final event of the day was hour cards, and it was obvious that I'd have to do something good to have a chance going into the final day. Luckily, I think I did. Attempting thirty packs, more than anyone else, I did write down thirty plausible full sequences in the recall period. A couple involved educated guesses, but I would hope that I got at least 25 right. If I didn't, I'll be annoyed with myself, because it will be silly errors. But the buzz is that Gunther did disappointingly, and Clemens isn't all that great with cards, so if I've beaten both of them, it'll be a great finish.

Andi didn't recall any - he realised he wasn't going to get a good score and so left. But he is more here than he has been for the last couple of years, and talking in terms of definitely coming back on top form next time round. Which can only be good for the WMC.

Tomorrow it's random words, spoken numbers and speed cards. The first two of these I can do good scores on, but often don't. Clemens is very good at spoken numbers, and I'm going to need a top-notch performance to beat him. And I need to get a pack of cards in somewhere close to thirty seconds to make sure of it. I love the WMC!