UKMC, episode two: London On £80 A Night

I stayed in the Strand Palace Hotel, which is posher than any hotel needs to be, and rather expensive, but is just over the road from Simpson's. My justification for this is that I've now got a job, and I've got a credit card, and if a fellow can't splash out on an expensive hotel once in a while (or even every single time he goes to London, despite asserting that he always stays in cheap places), what is the world coming to? And it was quiet and peaceful, and since I'd brought my abstract images crib sheets with me and spent the evenings practicing (as well as watching telly), that's a good thing. Besides, the eighty quid includes a full English breakfast, and a good breakfast is an absolutely essential part of good preparation for any memory competition.

And, as I mentioned yesterday, this was a very good memory competition! 22 people competing, old-timers including Mark Channon who competed in the world championship back in 1995 before even I had heard of these things, and new-timers including Leong Hoo Tan who turns out to be one of Graham Brightwell's students at the LSE (proving beyond scientific doubt that it really is a small world) plus a wide range of usual suspects, among them Boris, Gaby, Jürgen and Mia from Germany, a couple of Jameses, a Katie and a Dai from England and Wales, lots of other international visitors and lots of other British people too!

We started out with five-minute random words, in which I attempted 104 but blanked in the recall on most of the fourth column and on just one word of the fifth ('bluebell', and for some reason I was sure it was either 'lily' or 'lilac'). 74 is still a pretty good score, and I know I could do quite a bit better if it goes really well for me some time. It did go really well for Boris (as indeed it always seems to do), and he broke the world record with 106.

Eventually his score settled on 106, anyway - there were a lot of mistakes in the marking and misunderstandings of the scoring rules, and all the scores had to be re-checked and adjusted a couple of times before we'd settled on the final results.

But while the words were still being marked for the first time, we were doing five-minute binary. My record in this of 795 was just waiting to be broken - I set it last year knowing that I can do a lot better in practice on a good day, and Saturday turned out to be one of those good days. This despite the fact that it turned out to be four-and-a-quarter-minute binary - a mix-up in timings led to us being told to stop memorising fifteen seconds early (we had a lot of that kind of thing this weekend - Phil was running in and out of the room all weekend doing three or four things at once, and none of the arbiters in the room seemed to be keeping track of the time. In the 15-minute numbers we were told to stop a full minute early and then told to carry on again, and a couple of other times I told the competitors to stop myself when time was up, seeing as I was sitting right next to the microphone and nobody else wanted to say stop).

[At this point, can I refer you to yesterday's post when I make it clear that the arbiters do a really great job and don't deserve to be publicly criticised like this. I've got it out of my system now, more or less. Sorry.]

Anyway, my recall was unusually perfect. Literally. And I ended up with a really groovy 930 digits! New world record, and by a long way too!

So, with the competition running more or less to schedule still, we moved on to five-minute names and faces, which of course I'm rubbish at, but I produced a quite acceptable score of 41 (once I'd got my score double-checked and corrected from an even more acceptable but clearly impossible 51) to stay in a good position overall. This is Katie's specialist subject, and she duly got the highest score, but only with 65 this time. Which is a bit strange, really, seeing as I thought the names here were quite a bit easier than the ones I made up for Cambridge, when she scored a sensational 82.

Anyway, by this point it was clear that, as expected, Boris was my main rival - he dropped out of the world top ten after Hannes's performance in Tuttlingen, and was eager to get back in - with Katie, James and James fighting it out for second-best-Brit (trophies and cash for the top three British competitors) and Ameel Hoque as a dark horse newcomer doing extremely well.

After that, we just had to finish off the day with the two 'marathon' events, at least by the standards of these short-discipline championships - 15-minute numbers and 10-minute cards. I tried for four journeys' worth of digits in the first (936, plus an extra three for luck) and ended up with an excellent new-world-record 819 (ie three rows with mistakes). Which is great, because before this I didn't hold ANY of the decimal-numbers world records and it was really annoying me. As I've mentioned before, my system isn't particularly exceptional with numbers, and I wish I could think of a way to improve it.

And in the cards, I contemplated attempting a daring eight packs, but in the end they just didn't seem to be sinking into my brain as clearly as they could, so I played it safe with just seven. And I finished the recall with minutes to spare, so possibly I could have gone for eight and been just fine, but never mind. I got the seven all correct, for another world record, so I can't complain.

So, lunchtime arrived - or at least it did for the other competitors who weren't dragged away to talk extensively to Canadian television - and the end of the first day's play. I really wanted to keep memorising, I was really in the mood. Too bad I had to wait until Sunday morning to keep going.

So, at the half-way point, I had a very comfortable lead, as well as three world records to my name. Second was Boris, then tightly packed together behind him were James Paterson, Katie, James Ponder, Jürgen, Gaby, Ameel, Mark and Mia. Stay tuned for what happened next!

UKMC, episode one: In Praise Of Arbiters

Okay, FINALLY I can get round to writing about the UK Memory Championship weekend! As I said yesterday, this is going to be split into multiple episodes over the next... four or five or three days. I'm not sure exactly how many. It might also be postponed if something exciting happens to me in the next few days. But it would have to be really exciting, because I spent today, uncharacteristically, doing DIY and things with tools and paint, and I'm not going to write about that, even though it would make for a fun blog. Because I really want to write about this.

So, before I start recounting the events of the weekend, it occurred to me that my account of the memory competition is going to involve observations about arbiting mistakes, and that this is really, really rude of me, because nobody ever mentions the things that go right with the organisation and running of memory competitions. I think I mentioned before that it's like being a football referee - you get no credit for getting it right, and no end of grief for getting it wrong. So, rather than just not saying bad things about the arbiters, who work unbelievably hard for little or no financial reward and never get recognised for it, I thought I would do a prologue-post in which I list all the many, many things that went right last weekend!

First off, the venue was excellent! The rooms above Simpson's-in-the-Strand had been booked for all the previous week's afternoons for a very, very major chess tournament (the kind that attracts Adams, Short, Speelman, Timman and many other recognisable names even to someone like me who's not really interested in chess all that much) and thanks to Ray Keene (OBE, chess grandmaster, buddy of Tony Buzan) we memory people were able to borrow the room, for free, in the mornings. And the room was classy, spacious, entirely silent and perfect for a memory competition! Also, there was a constant supply of water and glasses from the restaurant, which somebody behind the scenes presumably organised without any thanks from the competitors.

Or at least not from me. It's possible that all the other competitors are more polite.

Furthermore, all the memorisation and recall papers were prepared perfectly, which is a major headache to do - the abstract images, which take Phil a huge amount of time, were printed clearly and with very good quality (and, importantly, were exactly the same quality in each copy - it's a major problem if bad photocopying or empty print cartridges make some pages different from others). The historic dates, which also take a huge amount of time to write, were done just right. And the dates and the words were translated into LOTS of languages, and I didn't hear a single complaint about the quality of the translations. That's impressive.

The scores for each discipline were announced promptly - marking papers is a tiresome and tedious process that, just to make the point again, was done by mostly unpaid volunteers just helping to make the event possible. These markers were also always accommodating to competitors questioning their scores and demanding that they be double-checked.

In a related note, and something that isn't done enough at memory competitions, the memorisation papers were available for competitors to look at after the recall period had ended and the recall papers had been collected in. This is important because memorisers know what they've written down and, once they've looked at the memorisation papers afterwards, they know what score they've got, more or less. So if there is a mistake in the marking, they can challenge it with confidence and not waste everybody's time. It makes the whole thing go more smoothly.

The cards were all shuffled, and shuffled well and repeatedly, whether the competitors had brought their own or were using the cards provided. It's another thing that takes a lot of time, isn't any fun at all, and never gets any thanks.

The spoken numbers worked perfectly, without a technical hitch, and they'd tested the sound system beforehand to make sure. This is the number one discipline for things going wrong or competitors being dissatisfied, and it all went well this time!

And, as a major tribute to the organisation, there were TWENTY-TWO competitors! This is huge! Much more huge than any competition in this country for ages, bigger than the German championship, many more than I expected, not too far off the number I was expecting for the World Championship in Bahrain in October! Excellent work with the publicity and the press releases.

So, here's a special Zoomy thank-you to Phil, Chris, Ray, Tony, Warren (whose name I am really, really going to try to remember in future), Françoise, Neil, Jamie, Dionne, and whoever else was involved with the organising and arbiting but whom I've forgotten or never even noticed in the first place because they were doing such a good job. I really, really do appreciate all the unbelievable amount of hard work and effort! Thank you!

Hey, look! It's a superhuman genius!

Okay, I've finally seen it. Here's a bit of "the making of" dialogue, just for my loyal bloglings...

Director Matt: Can you say that again, but say "Marti Pellow out of Wet Wet Wet"? Because if you just say Marti Pellow, people won't know who you're talking about.

UK Memory Genius Ben: Okay. Should I explain who Elmer Fudd is, too?

Director Matt: No, everybody knows who Elmer Fudd is.

Poor Marti. Also, for the record, can I just stress that I HAVE now got a job, and money, and everything else anybody could want. I'm very grateful to my neighbour who put a friendly letter and £10 through the door this morning, but I'm not actually in imminent danger of starving to death for want of money. For that matter, can I make it clear that when I quit my job it was always with the intention of just having fun and then going back to the office in a year or so, not an attempt to make a career out of being a memory genius? I just worry that the wrong impression's going to come across there, and I seem like a slightly more hopeless case than I really am.

Apart from that, it was good fun. Ariel the pianist looks like he'll be fun to hang out with in a few years' time, he's almost certainly going to grow up into a long-haired, extremely cool, piano-playing hippy dropout celebrity who's actually a genuinely nice guy. Akiane the artist rather less so, but great paintings. Would've been good to see her sketching something, though - I know it's hard to capture the artistic process on a brief TV segment, but the scenes of her pretending to put the finishing touches to a painting didn't really put across how she goes about creating her pictures.

Anyway, that's the last you'll be seeing of me on telly for a while, to the best of my knowledge. A similarly-themed BBC documentary early next year, most likely - they filmed me in London over the weekend, and will be pestering me a bit more in the future.

And now I've got that out of the way, I can finally get round to writing the story of the UK Memory Championship and the MSO and the impressive way I found my way around the streets of London without getting excessively lost, and how I told Nigel Short I was a big fan of his when I was a nerdy teenager. I think I'll break it into chapters and blog it over the next few days.

And on an unrelated note, I just want to say hi to Jason. Hi, Jason!

Tell you later

Tonight's blog was going to be a huge mega-epic account of all the weekend's goings-on, but then I got a call telling me that Grandma had had a fall coming out of the pub this afternoon (she swears she only had a cup of tea) and ended up in hospital. She's fine, just an impressive-looking black eye and lots of bruises, but I even ended up missing Superhuman Genius. I'll catch the repeat tomorrow, and I'll let you know what happened at the UK Championship too. Or you could read the Sun tomorrow, or the Derby Evening Telegraph, or whatever other newspapers pestered me for an interview, I forget.

But right now, I'm completely exhausted, and I've got to work tomorrow. Going to be a long day...

Do you love anyone enough?

I had a sudden craving for a tube of rolos at work today. There are numerous little shops, cafes and snack machines in the head office building where I work (it's huge), but none of them had any rolos for sale. I bought a tube of fruit pastilles instead, because even though they're entirely unlike rolos in every way, at least they're round.

I still want rolos. I should have gone out to the shops tonight and got some. Oh well, I'll get some tomorrow and eat them on the way to London. I haven't had rolos for years! It'll make the whole weekend worthwhile - much more so than winning the UK Memory Championship will!

Also, pay attention, all ex-VPS people reading this (and the ex-VPS people are the only people who'll still be reading after two paragraphs about rolos). We're (that is Tish, Gilly, Crispy, me and others) planning a trip to Alton Towers in October! Come along and join us!

This Morning Without Richard And Judy

I might be on This Morning again, if they want me on one of the days I've already got booked off work, to tie in with Superhuman Genius. I feel like that might be insulting to Richard and Judy, actually, seeing as they used to be on This Morning until either it dumped them or they dumped it (I don't read the gossip magazines, but I'm sure there was some kind of scandalous story behind it) and I turned them down (or at least turned down the Tony Buzan publicity person who asked me if I wanted to be on their show) last week.

Still, it'll be interesting to see whether Phil and Fern (assuming they still present This Morning) remember me.

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a Superhuman Genius!

Woo! I got my picture in the Radio Times this time! And an implication that I'm among "the planet's most talented people"! Well, that might not necessarily include me, but hey, I got the picture box! Kim Peek? Hah, just not photogenic enough! Those various child prodigies? Nope, let's go with the memory man in the cool hat!

Actually, I think next Monday is beardy-weirdy day in the Radio Times. Channel 4's picture-slot goes to Rowan Williams, who apparently has fascinating things to say about Charles Darwin, whereas BBC2 has a picture of the Hairy Bikers, who in a move worthy of the title Superhuman Genius have renamed themselves the Hairy Bakers in order to do a programme about bread.

I'm told that last night's "Superhuman: The World's Smallest People" got an audience of 4.4 million, so we need to beat that in order to prove that the world is less interested in freakshow TV than it is in freakshow TV about clever people. I'm sure we can do it - there have been about seventeen different freakshow TV shows about small people lately, and there hasn't been a good genius-themed freakshow since "The Mentalists". So tell all your friends and relatives and nodding-acquaintances to watch next Monday, ITV, 9pm!

And don't listen if they say they want to watch "New Tricks" because they fancy Dennis Waterman, or "Dragons' Den" because they want to see clever people who've actually achieved something in life, or "Before They Were Stars", the Channel 5 programme that is apparently no relation to the BBC's "Before They Were Famous" because they're too stupid to comprehend any more highbrow entertainment. Order them to watch ITV instead. Steal their remote controls.

Nudity is wonderful

But nonetheless, I think I need to buy some clothes. Next Wednesday our department is doing a "Business in the Community" project and renovating a community centre rather than going to work, and, well, I haven't got a thing to wear.

I actually only own two pairs of trousers that are suitable for leaving the house in without being arrested for indecent exposure, and they're my smart black work trousers. All the other trousers I own have got broken zips or big holes in the crotch or upper thighs, and I don't really want to dress like that while I'm helping to build a sandpit in the creche area. Likewise, my only footwear is my work shoes and my trainers with essentially no soles left to them, and neither of those is really suitable if it's rainy and muddy.

In fact, all in all, I'm terribly ill-equipped for the Great Outdoors. I need to take up rambling, in the walking sense rather than the drivelly blogging sense, or mountain climbing, or fox hunting, or anything that'll get me out of the house and incurring a grass stain or two. I used to be a cub, I bet if you dumped me in the middle of a forest I could still find my way out by reference to the side of trees that the moss is growing on, rubbing two sticks together, that kind of thing. I can just see me, swinging from tree to tree, clad in loincloth made from leaves and exchanging pleasantries with the squirrels...

Memory, all alone in the moonlight...

Why is that song playing in my brain tonight? Yes, I've been thinking about memory and related subjects, but that's not really something new for me, now is it? I would have thought my brain's resident DJ would have learnt to tune out any memory-related thoughts by now.

Anyway, I'm trying not to think too much about memory for the next week. Give my journeys and images a few days' rest so that they're fresh for next Saturday and Sunday - not that next weekend's competition is a major strain on the brain, being spread out over two days and only being one normal-memory-competition day's worth of memorising. Still, it might turn out to be more stressful and hard work, with a 20-hour gap between one discipline and the next. We'll have to wait and see what happens.

I don't remember whether I've mentioned this here before (and I'm resting my memory, so I don't care that I can't remember), but after the championship finishes on the Sunday morning I'm going to dash over to the Royal Horticultural Halls to play othello at the MSO in the afternoon. That's if the memory doesn't overrun by more than an hour or so, but I think it should be safe. It would be nice to play in the evening poker tournaments at the MSO too, but they cost quite a lot of money to enter if you're doing them individually - they're really just there for the people who pay the maximum fee, whatever it is these days, to play other events all week and want to relax in the evenings. I suppose I could sneak down to the poker rooms and hope that everyone there will recognise me and naturally assume I've paid to enter, but on the other hand I've written about it on my blog now so everyone will know that I haven't. Blast this internet thing, publishing my personal details for the world to see. It's a shocking invasion of privacy and I'm going to sue someone.

Pocket Dragons, Pocket Dragons, POCKet Dragons!

Woohoo! I just discovered today that the channel Tiny Pop (737 on Virgin, 625 on Sky, if like me you've got Virgin, don't trust the onscreen TV guide, use the one on the website) is showing Pocket Dragon Adventures! I wholeheartedly approve of this development! Tiny Pop is a sister channel to the one that showed old Transformers cartoons, and indeed between them they have a huge range of 80s and 90s cartoons - most of them along the lines of My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake, but I'm sure there are some good ones lined up too.

So please tune in to it if at all possible, because we need to spread Pocket Dragon love around the world again! Today's episodes were "Yonder Lies The Castle Of My Wizard" and "Pillow Squawk", but if they're showing the later episodes with poor artwork and uninspired stories, I'm confident that they're also going to show all the classics too.

In more domestic news, I feel that I need to sing the praises of Flash Multi-Surface Wipes. As anyone who's been to my flat and survived the experience knows, I seldom clean the place, but these wipes are amazing at cleaning up five years' accumulated filth! My kitchen sink is positively sparkling! My cooker looks brand new! No longer are all my appliances coated in a thick layer of unidentified brown gunk! It's great!

London beckons

Last weekend before the UK championships, so with any luck a full day of practicing tomorrow, then resting my brain for the week beforehand (with maybe a speed cards here or there in an evening). I still need to book a hotel, of course, but I'll leave that to the last second, same as always. It's more fun that way.

The BBC want to put me in a documentary, and also Central Tonight want me on the show again, impressing people on the streets of Nottingham with memory tricks. I'm thinking about it, but I still haven't really got over the novelty of being able to say "sorry, I've got a real job, I just do memory things in my spare time" again...

Legends? II'M more legendary than these guys!

For want of anything more productive to do, seeing as it's hot and I feel lazy, I'm watching the England v Germany "Legends" game. I take issue with the "legend" label being attached to some of these players - most of them were second-rate when they were young, and some of them aren't old enough to qualify as legends in my book, barely older than me in some cases. Still, Chris Woods's Weetabix save to let in the first goal brought back some childhood memories, so I can't complain.

I have a feeling my stomach's going to be complaining, though. I went out to buy a pint of milk and ended up getting a big bag of liquorice allsorts. Again. Someone needs to stop Woolworth's selling unhealthy foodstuffs at low prices.

Living space

It's a good thing I'm not urgently looking for a flat in Beeston, because there aren't any! Or at least there are, but they're all too big or too expensive or too unpleasant. It's annoying - Beeston is roughly the size of Boston (and it's nearly the same word too, just with an ee instead of an o) and I never had any trouble finding a place to live in Boston. Possibly it's the Credit Crunch I keep hearing about. Perhaps everybody's so poor that they can't afford to rent out one-bedroom flats. I bet it's Gordon Brown's fault. Everything is, nowadays.

Hooray for job stability!

It's really fantastic to be able to turn down an offer to appear on Richard and Judy because I've got my day job to do. Well, technically I'm not in a position to turn them down just yet, I've just heard that they might be interested in having me on the show, among others, to talk about the upcoming UK championship. But if they do go ahead with it, you can look forward to seeing something memory-related on Friday's show. Probably not me, though.

Cats (not the musical)

There's a couple of cats who've taken to hanging around the front of my house - a black and white one and a ginger. Neither of them are very friendly, but the ginger one in particular seems to think that the entire street belongs to her, and can often be seen lying spread out on the pavement on hot days, getting up and walking away with an aggrieved expression whenever a human has the nerve to come too close.

It's made me want a cat or two of my own. Well, I've always sort of wanted to have cats around the place, but it's more at the forefront of my mind now. Maybe I'll find a place in Beeston with a garden and acquire a cat to live in it. Or just make friends with a neighbour's cats - all the fun of a furry friend without the need to spend money on cat food and vets' bills. Either way, there should definitely be more cats in my life than there are at the moment.

Vote for this guy!

I've always been vaguely contemptuous of the way Americans can't appoint anybody to any position of the slightest authority without holding at least 73 different elections, but it seems that Washington state have adopted a new system that I think is really quite groovy. They're having a "Top 2 Primary" election from which the two candidates with the most votes go forward to the real election later in the year.

The practical effect of this system is to actively encourage loonies to stand for Governor, Congress, and all the millions of other things Washington's voters will be voting for, and enables normal people to vote for the loony of their choice with a clear conscience, knowing that enough other normal people with less of a sense of humour will vote for the two real candidates (there are only two parties in the USA, remember) to get them through to the real election. I wish I lived in Washington. All the fun of voting, safe in the knowledge that the result is a foregone conclusion!

If I did live there, this guy would definitely get my vote for Governor. His qualifications for the position? "As an artist and inventor I have come up with an invention that will solve all of the world’s problems. I have invented an air engine that has the power to operate an automobile while relying on air as its fuel source. Adoption of this technology would mean an end to reliance on fossil fuels, stopping carbon-monoxide emissions, pollution and global warming."

What makes Javier O Lopez really cool is that he just slips this into the middle of an otherwise more or less sensible platform for election. He's in favour of reducing the tax burden on lower-income Washingtonians, improving the education system (well, his website doesn't actually say that he intends to improve the education system, it just points out that it's really bad at the moment, but I assume he means to do something about it if he's elected) and listening to the people of the state. Which is pretty liberal for a man who proudly tells us that he was actively involved in campaigning for Richard Nixon.

If you're in Washington state, go out and vote for Javier! And see if you can get him to make you one of those air engines!

Tis the season!

Memory season! I'm really in the mood now. UK Championship two weeks away, and I've done a practice run of the whole thing today (except names & faces, dates and words, but I never practice those and I do well enough in them. Except names & faces) and I might just do the same tomorrow. It's all about getting the brain used to memorising for long periods, so as I don't get bored or tired in the middle of the competition.

Actually, you know, life is good. I've got a fantastic job, lots of weird and wonderful friends to chat to, lots of memory competitions coming up, there's Dad's Army on telly all night, and I might even have two pennies to rub together some time soon. What more could anyone want?

Friday!

Hooray for weekends! But also, hooray for weekdays, because I'm really enjoying my new job. It's the perfect job for me, and I think I'm also just about perfect for the job. So everyone's happy! Hmm, I really need to find more things to blog about. Maybe instead of training all weekend, I'll go out and do something fun...

I make it seventeen days come Friday since anybody spoke to me

I get the feeling that my blog hasn't been all that interesting just lately. It's working nine to five that does it - when I'm doing the same thing every day, it doesn't inspire me to write about interesting stuff. And I blame this for why I haven't had much in the way of comments on my blog just lately. Even so, I would like to know somebody's still out there. Say something!

Possibly on the subject of whether I should get some new "business cards" for the UK Championship. I was thinking of retiring the "Ben Pridmore, idiot" ones and going with "Wile E Coyote, genius (have brain, will travel)"

Superhuman Genius (later than advertised)

Seems that it's been put back to Monday August 18th, rather than the 11th. But while this means it probably won't persuade new competitors to come to the UK Championship (on the 16th and 17th), it does mean that anyone who's travelled to Britain to compete might be able to stay until Monday night and see me on TV!

Although I'm only on for ten minutes at most, in a documentary about lots of superhuman geniuses, and these people will have seen me for rather more than ten minutes over the past three days, so I won't be offended if visiting memorisers don't want to watch it. Really.

I haven't done enough training!

Cripes, it's the UK Memory Championship in two-and-a-bit weeks! I need to seriously practice this weekend and next! I've got a title to defend! Actually, I don't know who's coming (early estimates suggested that every memory person I know was planning to turn up, but I haven't spoken to anyone for a while), whether there are prizes (I'd be happy with a cool trophy like last year's, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at another free trip to Bahrain if there's one going), where I'm going to stay (nasty hotel down the road from the venue, or nice but stupidly expensive one across the road? Probably neither and a bed-and-breakfast in Crawley because it's the nearest place with a room free when I finally get round to booking) or whether I'll be able to go to the Monday-morning prizegiving ceremony (might have to work that day) and whether the WMSC will officially strip me of my title if I'm not (probably not - I think I'm in their good books at the moment, or at least their indifferent books. I haven't accidentally offended anyone for weeks. As far as I know.)

This is what I get for missing the German championship. Everybody else probably had a whale of a time there, talking about all these things, and talking about me behind my back. Although they could have talked about me even while I was there, if they did it in German, and I still would have been none the wiser. I don't think I've spoken a word of German for more than a year now. I'm probably even worse at it now than I was before.

Right! Practice! And if you're reading this and you're going to the UK championship, post a comment and let me know! Keep me informed!

Ooooh, shiny!

I got one of the new-design 2p coins in my change yesterday, for the first time. I have to say, although I don't think there was any reason to change the classic designs on the back of coins, the new ones are actually rather groovy. They're stylish and modern, in a good way. It makes a pleasant change from the kind of awful design that the powers that be often end up commissioning for vast sums of money from popular but talentless designers. The 2012 Olympics logo, for instance. But I like the new coins. I think I'm going to start a collection.

I'm doing surprisingly well

I haven't yet slipped into my usual working routine of quickly ironing a shirt each morning before I go to work. I've got everything washed and ironed, plus the shopping done, at the weekend with plenty of time to spare. This kind of efficiency and advance preparation is alien to me, and I'm sure it won't last. Possibly tomorrow morning I'll oversleep, just to make up for it, and arrive at work an hour late.

Avast, ye scurvy lubbers

When it's really hot and sunny like this, my hat is uncomfortably sweaty. But since I need to wear something on my head to protect my bald shiny skull, and since I found an old bandana in one of my boxes of junk recently, I've taken to wearing a bandana when I go out. I think it looks seriously groovy. Especially when I'm also wearing my shades. However, I wasn't entirely convinced that I look good until today, when I was walking through town dressed like that (and a T-shirt saying "Aesculap Memo Masters 2007", in honour of the German championship happening in Tuttlingen today) and a small girl in a pushchair pointed to me and said (conversationally, as if it wasn't anything unusual or unexpected) "He's a pirate."

This is absolutely fantastic, and a huge improvement on "He's that one off the telly who lost to a monkey." Which, incidentally, is likely to happen if I go to Chicago any time soon - Jemfy saw me on telly there last night, being beaten by good old Ayumu. But now, everyone who sees me is clearly going to think "Hey, a pirate. Cool." I'm sure it's not just two-year-old girls who think that way.

I think I would still rather have been in Tuttlingen, but congratulations to Hannes for winning the German Memory Championship! I'm sure that more than makes up for him not being mistaken for a pirate today (as far as I know).

Spiders!

I don't get addicted to things very often. I even stopped drinking coke a couple of weeks ago to see if it would help me lose weight (the jury's still out on that one) without so much as a withdrawal symptom. But I do have a real weakness for spider solitaire. I actually deleted it from my laptop a year or so ago, because I was spending all my time playing it, but recently it occurred to me that I couldn't remember how to play, so I looked for it on the internet, downloaded it, and now I'm all addicted again. It's annoyingly compulsive. Are there rehab centres for this kind of thing?

Movie night!

I must find the time to go to the cinema. I really want to see Wall-E, and Batman looks like it's worth watching too. I wanted to look up when they're on at the big new cinema in the Westfield centre, but I can't remember what it's called, and internet searches haven't been much use. I could, of course, get on my bike and cycle down there in roughly sixty seconds, but I've got the internet, I disapprove of leaving the house to find information that I should be able to find by just sitting here and letting my legs fall off from lack of use.

I suppose I could just download the films instead of going out, come to think of it. Those TV adverts make it look like such a cool thing to do, with people coming and serenading you...

Doomed to stay in Derby

There's a real shortage of decent, affordable flats in Beeston. Maybe I'll just live on the street and carry all my posessions around with me in my trusty rucksack. It'll save me a lot of money in the long run. I'm surprised more people don't do that, instead of moaning about the difficulty of getting on the property ladder.

Hey, it's my blog, I can write what I want

Although the only thing that comes to mind to write tonight is an extensive list of observations about the Thundercats episode "Mandora - The Evil Chaser", by William Overgard. A really great episode, but watching it (as I did tonight) inspires a huge amount of criticism of plot flaws, voice acting problems and artistic issues (although actually, this was one of the better-drawn stories). And as far as I know, there's only one of my readers who'd know what I'm talking about, and he already knows everything I'm going to say.

But maybe I'm wrong. Would you, my readers, like to read a big long blog full of comments like "Why doesn't the Sword of Omens react when Quickpick steals it? When we see it later on, the Eye is wrapped up in rope (the normal way of deactivating it), but even if it was Quickpick who did that, and not the Mudhogs, how does he know to do that before touching it?"

Or "At the end of the episode, when the Thundercats 'all' chorus the final line, everybody's lips move, but only Tygra and Wilykit are audible. Were they just too lazy to overdub the other characters (who are voiced by the same actors)? And why can't we hear Panthro? He didn't share an actor with either of the characters we can hear."

And why does Mandora bellow "They're tying us to the ladders!" when the Mudhogs do so to her and Quickpick? Quickpick, presumably, has noticed this himself without being told, and there's nobody else around.

I've got about a million more of these, from this episode alone. It's a good job I'm going to refrain from posting them tonight.

Attention, viewers!

If you happened to be watching Granada Reports at 6:15 today, you would have seen my friend Gilly and her shop. Sorry I didn't get the message in time to advertise it in the blog, but if you saw it but don't know Gilly, well, now you can appreciate it all the more!

Here's an advance thing to set your video for (assuming you're still using an analogue TV/video setup) - "Superhuman: Genius", a documentary about various clever people and also me, will be on ITV1 at 9:00pm on Monday 11th August. Watch it and be in awe of my superhuman genius!

Mutter, moan, complain

Dagnabbit, I really, really wish I was going to the German championship next weekend. If nothing else, it's always such good preparation for the world championship, but also I want to catch up with all the latest memory gossip, see what everybody's up to, talk about the rest of the competitions to come this year, and so on. There are some things you don't find out just by emailing and posting on internet forums. Besides, I'd rather be just hanging out with fun memory people than working. But hey, it's my own fault for spending so long jobless. And I always under-perform at the German championship and feel annoyed with myself anyway (except last year, when I was brilliant).

Potatoes

Potatoes, which also have a Latin name, are made in factories in the West Country, by a secret recipe which involves beetles. They have been a popular accompaniment to many meals since being reclassified as a vegetable (as opposed to a vehicle) in 1932. Unsubstantiated rumours have it that many celebrities eat potatoes, among them Dennis Waterman, John Travolta and Dutch international hockey player Wouter Jolie.

There are three different ways to cook potatoes - baked, grilled or eaten raw. True connoisseurs of potato-eating believe that washing them beforehand spoils the taste, and indeed often pour handfuls of dirt, mud and worms over the vegetables before cooking and eating them. Baked beans can be eaten with potatoes, but broad beans can not, due to a law passed by Margaret Thatcher's government in 1987 aimed at preventing "unwholesome eating practices".

When not being eaten, potatoes can be used as paperweights, doorstops, tennis balls, DVDs (when sliced to the correct width) and antelopes. Some cheeky bus drivers have been known to take a crafty day off work by dressing a large potato in hat and tie and having it drive their buses for them. A poll of Austrian socialist early-20th-century aeroplane enthusiasts in 2003 listed potatoes as their third favourite thing, after vacuum cleaners and Pakistan. Early-20th-century aeroplanes were ranked a disappointing 27th.

The legends associating Sir Walter Ralegh with potatoes are entirely false - he in fact invented the tomato and the geranium, and sometimes wore a hat that looked somewhat potato-like, but the potato was in fact invented by Rotisserie Vasquez, by accident, in 1657 while he was preparing for the World Memory Championship. Vasquez remained unaware all his life that he had invented the potato, noting in his diary that "my basement is full of strange brown things these days" shortly before his death in 1660.

A new kind of "space potato", launched in 1983, is expected to land on Jupiter in August 2010.

Luxury apartment or stonking great house?

Luckily, all the people who failed to advertise Beeston flats in the paper a couple of days ago have all decided to start putting properties up for rent now. There's a staggeringly expensive "luxury apartment", a slightly cheaper three-bedroomed terraced house, and a reasonably-priced nice-sounding one-bedroom flat in a very handy location. I'm going to see the latter tomorrow, although I'm a little tempted by the luxury apartment. I mean, I quite like the idea of living a life of luxury, and hey, I've got a new job and haven't been fired after my first week, I can pay more than twice my current rent for a really nice place, right?

Nah, I'd become fat and decadent. I'll just go for the non-expensive and doubtless very pleasant one. I hope it's not secretly luxurious too.

Ah, the fun of talking memory with people who are more or less interested in the subject

Today was quite fun. I forgot to ask whether the gathering at the Tamworth Travelodge was officially called a seminar or a convention or a get-together or what, but whatever it was that I was speaking at, it seemed to go down well. People were left with the impression that I know something about memory [or, if you want to look at it a less self-centred way, people were given some useful tips for how to teach schoolchildren to use their brains] and I had the fun of making up a way to remember the workings of the body's circulatory system, which included a digression about how Fat Andy went to the school where Philip Pullman was a teacher.

I had also prepared a snazzy way of remembering that speed equals distance divided by time, which involved Speedy Gonzales and Daffy Duck, but didn't have the time to show it off. Which is a shame, really, because it was cool. Ah well, I'll save it for the next time I'm talking to teachers. I'm sure it'll happen again.

Subtle advertising

In your latest British Othello Newsletter, when you're reading my article on how to win tournaments, cross out the words "during lunch" in the London section and add "before each round", please. That was what I'd intended to write, but I seem to have forgotten it when I sat down to type it up, ending up with outlining a strategy that works perfectly well at every tournament rather than a Bath House-specific one. This occurred to me late one night in bed, a couple of days after I'd sent the article to Adelaide, but I decided it probably wasn't worth emailing her and asking her to stop the presses and change it, especially considering I missed the deadline for submitting it in the first place.

What, you're not a member of the BOF? Well, go and join, right now! £6 a year and you get to read the entertaining newsletter articles of me and others, you get to come to tournaments on a regular basis and hang out with a lot of very nice and entertaining weirdos, and an ability to play othello isn't essential. It's easy to learn, and I'm sure you'll like it. Go on, join the club, even if you're reading this blog in the hope that I'll talk about memory stuff for a change.

Anyway, I've got the day off work tomorrow. Kind of bad form to take a holiday on your fourth day in a new job, but I'd arranged long ago, while I was unemployed and thought I'd probably need the money, to be a guest speaker at the annual convention (or something along those lines) of Maximize Your Potential, up in Tamworth. Not the kind of thing I normally agree to do, I know, but it might turn out to be fun.

The commuter's lament

I'm working in Beeston now, I don't think I mentioned that, which means travelling there by train. Which isn't so bad, but tonight the train was cancelled for no adequately explained reason, so I got the bus instead, which takes longer, and the whole thing cut into my sitting-around-at-home-doing-nothing-of-importance time. I bought a local paper while I was in town to see if there are any nice flats to rent in the town, but it seems there aren't any, nice or otherwise, within a ten-mile radius. I did walk past a four-bedroomed house for rent, but I thought that would probably be a bit excessive.

Hello, I'm the new Jeremy

It's fun being the new bug in an office. You know you've settled in when people stop introducing you as the replacement for your predecessor, but until then you remain a semi-anonymous New Jeremy. In my time I've been a new Kevin, a new Phil, a new Dave and a new Natasha - jokes about that one lasted the longest; it varies proportionately to the physical differences between you and the person who did your job before. One of these days, maybe I'll be the new Ben. That'll keep an office full of people rolling in the aisles for weeks!

Office workers are easily amused, as a rule.

In which I postulate a mediaeval memoriser

You know what there isn't enough of in blogs these days? Poorly-researched theories about 14th-century poetry, that's what.

I'd like to rectify that with a summary of my opinions about the two different prologues of Geoffrey Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women". The Legend is a collection of lengthy accounts of the lives of great women of ancient times, in rhyming couplets, and it's not Chaucer's greatest work. It probably went down better among his circle of poetic friends in the 1390s who wanted to see a new English-language summary of the story of Hypsipyle or Ariadne or Hypermnestra than it does with the casual reader today. The problem with the exercise is that all the great women of ancient legend did nothing of interest - they either nobly refrained from having it off with other men while their husband went out and had adventures, or killed themself because their lover cheated on them. It gets a bit repetitive when you put them all together.

The only bit really worth reading is the Prologue, in which the God of Love takes Chaucer to task for his past translations of antifeminist writings and orders him to make amends by writing about all these Good Women. It's got some funny bits, some beautiful poetry of the kind that only Chaucer could do with an ugly language like Middle English and, to the puzzlement of literary critics of the past six hundred years, it comes in two distinct versions.

The two versions of the Prologue are known as the F version and the G version - the F appears in all but one of the surviving manuscripts (Chaucer lived before the invention of the printing press, when books were all hand-written and thus a lot more scarce. All the surviving manuscripts of the Legend are clearly copies of copies, dating from the 15th century, and none of them is exactly the same), and the G version exists in only one manuscript, MS Gg 4.27.

As an aside, I really feel sorry for old Gg 4.27 (Gg to its friends). It's a really important manuscript - dating from no more than twenty years after Chaucer's death, it was the first known attempt to combine all his works into one volume. It's hugely significant to Chaucerian students, and yet unlike the Fairfax manuscript (after which the F prologue is named), or the Ellesmere, the Hengwrt or dozens of other snappily-named documents, Gg hasn't got a real name, and we just have to know it by the code it was given by the Cambridge University Library.

Anyway, the G prologue is found only in Gg, which is the earliest of the eight manuscripts that contain the prologue, and critical opinion until the 20th century held that G was the original draft, and F was Chaucer's revised version. Victorian editor the Rev Walter Skeat said in his edition that he wasn't aware that anyone had ever suggested otherwise (which probably means that someone had and Skeat wanted to deride their theory in a public forum - Skeat was a very cool guy who thought nothing of describing other editors' editions as "worthless" and much of the subsequent work on Chaucer seems to have mainly been aimed at getting back at Skeat for his opinions). But since then, there has been a lot of writing on the subject arguing that G was the revision, done some years later. A hundred years of heated debate of the kind only academics are capable of and the question is still up in the air.

It's a tricky question, and my theory on the subject is that everybody's wrong. I reckon that the G prologue is nothing to do with Chaucer at all - he wrote the F version, and G came about by virtue of a manuscript being produced by memorial transmission. It looks to me like the scribe of an ancestor of the Gg manuscript had access to the text of the legends, but his exemplar for the Prologue had been reconstructed from memory. I've been known to memorise poetry myself - not many people do this in these modern times when you can record a poem in millions of different technological ways, and modern editors tend not to believe that such a thing was ever possible - and I can see the signs of a not-quite-perfect recall.

The main differences between F and G are rearrangement of various passages, changes to a word here and there, and some pieces omitted in one or the other - most of these appear in F but not in G.

The rearrangements are an easy mistake to make when you're trying to memorise a long text. You remember individual sections, but forget exactly what order they came in. The story does seem to flow better with the sections in the F order - at least one of G's rearrangements seems to break a sentence in half and continue it a couple of dozen lines later.

Where words are changed, the F version is normally more poetic-sounding (lines 12-15 in F go "...Men shall not ween every thing a lie/ But if himself it seeth or else dooth;/ For, God woot, thing is never the less sooth/ Though every wight may it not see..."; in G, lines 13-14 become "For that he say it not of yore ago/ God woot a thing is never the less so..." . I suspect the G-memoriser was no poet himself, and just came up with something that fitted the meaning without thought for how it sounds when you read it out loud. Of course, a lot of differences in the G prologue are probably the fault of the Gg scribe, who was pretty rubbish, so it's hard to say.

The bits that G has and F doesn't are mainly an extra couplet here and there which doesn't add anything to the meaning, except for one lengthy digression on the subject of books. This is entirely Chaucerish in tone and relevant to the discussion at hand (although it slows down the action more than it needs to) - maybe it's from another, lost, poem of his and the memoriser mentally joined them together because they were about the same thing?

Anyway, I could go on at length about this poorly-thought-out theory, which I'm quite fond of, but I probably shouldn't stay up all night writing about it. I should probably go to sleep and wake up refreshed early tomorrow morning for my new job...

Advertisement

It occurred to me that, even though I'm being coy about the details of who my new employers are (regular readers may remember that time, now purged from my blog, when I blogged about a choice between two jobs, listing the pros and cons of each, only for one of the employers to read it, take exception to the cons I mentioned and decide they didn't want to employ me after all), it would be entirely acceptable for me to give a plug to the employment agency that found me the job in the first place.

So, if you want a new job in the world of finance or HR, get in touch with Macildowie Associates! Seriously, I can't praise their service highly enough - they called me after seeing my CV on Monster, I had a useful and entertaining meeting with a friendly guy talking through my job history and the kind of things I'm looking for, they had me do an Excel test to prove to them and their clients that I'm as good at it as I claim to be and then within a week of signing up they'd arranged me a couple of interviews for two really cool jobs that were exactly what I wanted, with big, world-famous companies to boot, and another couple of similar interviews waiting in the wings if those didn't work out. As it happened, they did, and I've got a cool job starting on Monday. So yay for Macildowie, they get the Zoomy seal of approval!

Early to bed, early to rise

I need to get back into the habit of getting up in the morning at an office-worker kind of time, not at some time between nine and twelve (or later if I'm feeling lazy). This is one of the many disadvantages of working for a living, such as having to leave the house, having to sit in an office and play on a computer, having to do what other people tell you to do, all that kind of thing. Still, I'm sure I'll get used to it again soon enough. It's probably good for you, although I've got up early in the morning for most of my life and I'm still unhealthy, flat broke and stupid.

But it's the weekend first, and yay, it's a meaningful weekend because I'm working on Monday! Woohoo!

It's like someone's erased my memory

I don't know what it is, but for the last few days I've felt sort of at a loose end, with lots of time on my hands. It's as if I'd previously been doing something that took up a lot of my time on a daily basis, but now I'm not and I need to find something to fill all the time I'd previously devoted to it. But what is it? I've been sitting around doing absolutely nothing for months now!

Job-hunting? That didn't take up too much of my time, and I seem to have spent a lot of time today anyway fending off calls from people who've seen my CV on Monster and want to offer me jobs. Seriously, they all seem to have come along at once lately!

Memory training? I haven't done too much of that just lately, but I've been pretty good about training at weekends and I don't normally feel vacant after not doing anything for a couple of days.

I think it must just be that I've officially got a job now, so I'm feeling like not working on a weekday is strange and gives me lots of spare time. Or perhaps I've been on secret government work of some kind and my memory has been blanked out. I like that second theory best.

Hmmm

Well, I've analysed my money situation carefully, and even a talented accountant like me can't juggle the numbers to come up with the answer I wanted to get. There is officially no way on Earth I can afford to go to the German Memory Championship in a fortnight.

It's unfortunate, but I can't go jetting off to Tuttlingen before I start getting paid for the new job, which won't be until August. Not without borrowing more money than is at all sensible, anyway. I'll just have to stay at home and memorise numbers and cards here. Maybe if I phone the competition and tell them my scores, they'll still give me a round of applause...

Get a job!

Yes, I'm talking to you, all you scummy unemployed people out there. I can now officially look down on you all again, because I've now got a job, starting Monday, subject to confirmation. Yay!

Feeling very accomplished and in the mood to achieve something else amazing this afternoon, I tried to fix a puncture on my bike. Now, I'm a man of many talents, but few of them involve fixing things. I'm entirely hopeless at fixing anything that's broken. And I can cheerfully report that after a great deal of effort getting the tyre off, finding the hole in the inner tube, patching it up with that glue stuff and little rubber patches, getting the tyre back on and injuring my hand in the process... my rear tyre is still flat as a pancake.

My natural instinct in situations like this is just to buy a new bike and avoid all the hassle, but under the financial circumstances, maybe that's not such a good idea. Let's wait till I get my first paycheque, at least.

Olympics here, olympics there, olympics everywhere!

I won't be going to the one in China, but luckily, everybody always wants to jump on the bandwagon in an olympic year, so there's a couple of other olympiads I'm thinking of checking out.

First off, there's the good old Mind Sports Olympiad, returning this year for the twelfth time. I've just got the schedule, and I'm considering whether or not to go along. I'm inclining towards probably not - I will be in London for the first weekend, for the UK Memory Championship, and that only takes place in the mornings (because it's sharing accommodations with a big chess competition in order to get a free room - hilarious arguments are sure to ensue when the memory competition overruns and hasn't finished by the time the chess players want to come in), so I could go along and join in the fun in the afternoons. But there isn't anything happening just on the Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday afternoon it's just othello, and will anyone else turn up for that? They haven't for the last few years.

Othello and some other competitions are cheaper than previously, just £8 rather than £12, but that's still more than British othello players are used to paying for a tournament (especially since the MSO competitions is shorter than the normal regionals that we pay £5 for). And the full-week, play-anything cost is still £99, and if you add the cost of accommodation to that, it all adds up to more than I can really justify spending on a holiday right now. So, all in all, I'll probably give the MSO a miss, maybe just turning up for the othello.

Olympiad number two is a Memoriad, which is even cooler! It's in Turkey, in November, and it's an olympiad composed of memory, mental calculation and speed reading competitions and promising to pay big prizes for the winners! I'm sort of sceptical about it, just because it's never happened before that a competition has popped up out of nowhere and given people money for memorising things, but I'm all in favour of the principle, naturally, and I'll certainly go along to this one if it doesn't end up being called off. It could actually turn out to be a lot of fun!

Exterminieren!

After just making a passing mention of the final episode of Doctor Who last night, I thought I should probably say more on the subject, since it was actually quite good. Certainly a big improvement on last year's season finale, although it still had its flaws - rather too many technobabbly pseudo-justifications of magic things happening for plot convenience. And the poor old Daleks not quite being the indestructible killing machines we all love (it really shouldn't be possible to make them all blow up by pressing a few buttons on a control panel).

But what it did have was Julian Bleach's wonderful portrayal of Davros! He was amazing, clever, loud and stark raving mad, exactly what a real villain should be! He needs to come back as soon as possible. And exterminate people. Also, the Daleks should win. Daleks are great.

Busy day

Well, there was a lot of tennis and Doctor Who on telly that needed watching, but I still fitted in three hours of memory training, so I feel good about myself. Or I would feel good if not for the fact that I've eaten a big bag of liquorice allsorts and feel sick. But overall, everything is good. Tomorrow I'll do more memory stuff and then win the German, UK, French and World championships. Probably. If I get a job and can afford to go to them.

And any other memory championships I end up going to. There's an Indian one, I understand. Maybe I can hitch-hike out there.

High-five!

Woo, two days, two interviews that both went really well! I'm sure I'll get a job offer out of one or more of them. And there's the added advantage that they're both really great jobs that I'm pretty sure I could do very well, too. So yay! If you're American, celebrate by setting off fireworks tonight in my honour. Got a complex display in the shape of the star-spangled banner? Rearrange it into a gigantic picture of my face!

Or not, if you don't want to. Anyway, it's the weekend and memory training is upon us. Let's see how much I can cram into my brain in a series of half-hour periods. Yay! I'm very excitable today for some reason. Yay!

Busy doing nothing

I seem to have got behind with things I've been meaning to do, despite being a jobless layabout. There are lots of people I need to email and generally keep in touch with, plus I need to write some entertaining articles for the othello newsletter before the deadline on Sunday. I'd say I'm going to make an effort to do it tomorrow, but I'm going to another job interview. And then this weekend I want to spend a lot of time practicing memory, just in case I get a job and can afford to go to the German championship.

Today's interview went well, anyway, so who knows, maybe there'll be a job there. Hope so, because it sounds like a good one. Tomorrow's interview incorporates an Excel test, which makes me all nervous for some reason. Last time I had an interview with an Excel test, long ago, I thought I did really badly at it, although the people testing me subsequently said I'd done very well. They didn't employ me, though, so perhaps they were just being polite. Or perhaps I just have unrealistically high expectations.

Hairy face: good or bad?

I'm thinking about shaving off my beard. I've had it for nearly six years now, and I was wondering whether it might be a good idea to see what I look without one now, just in case I like it. What do my loyal blog-readers think? Especially the ones who remember my pre-beard days and can make a comparison? I think I look good right now, and not having to shave in the morning is very nice, but who knows, maybe I'd look better and enjoy the shaving experience if I was beardless?

But on the other hand, I haven't shaved for six years. Can I still remember how to do it? Can I cope with advances in shaving technology? Last time I was shaving regularly, two blades was still considered an acceptable number for a razor to have. Nowadays they're up to six or seven, I've lost count. I'm not sure my face could cope with the ultimate close shave, 2008 definition.

Oh, and also, interviews tomorrow and Friday, wish me luck, you know the drill.

Overheard conversation in the street

"... and it looks like the doctor's sucking Jesus's tits. It's not Mary Magdalene, it's his doctor friend..."

I'm guessing they were discussing a photo from a fancy dress party, but I think it would be great if they were archaeologists who had unearthed an amazing lost first-century illustrated Gospel manuscript.

Supporters

Well, I take back most of the things I've been saying about Andy Murray. I've been going around predicting that he wouldn't stand a chance at Wimbledon because he still can't play a five-set match without collapsing, but he seems to have got that problem licked. Fantastic match tonight, although you had to feel sorry for Richard Gasquet, with all the British fans yelling their heads off.

I had a similar experience today, or at least I had one man on the street tell me that he and his wife really enjoyed watching me on The Mentalists, and wish me good luck in this year's memory competitions. It really is great that I still get this kind of thing quite regularly here in Derby and other places around the country, nearly six months after the programme was on telly. The Mentalists really seems to have struck a chord with a whole lot of people! There really would be a huge audience interested in watching TV coverage of this year's world championships, anyone out there who might want to broadcast it? Hello, Channel 4, I'm talking to you, it's exactly your kind of thing and it'd be a hit!

I should probably be cheering

I just can't find it in me to support Spain in a football match, though. I somehow find it impossible to have an opinion one way or the other about them. I need to meet some Spanish people, get some kind of emotional attachment to the place that would let me cheer them on when they're up against the likes of Germany in a big final.

But since I can't support Spain, I was hoping Germany would win this one, and memory-competition international rivalries be damned. So now I'm all disappointed. Still, maybe all my rivals will sink into deep depression and be unable to memorise quite as much stuff, allowing me to win despite incompetence and lack of practice (did a half-hour numbers today but it didn't go very well - I'm feeling a bit slow-witted lately, and I was below optimum pace of going through the digits. At top speed I can go through 1640 digits three times with a minute or two to spare, but I was 200 short of the end third time through when the 30 minutes ran out today).

What?

I got a water bill in the post this morning. Dated 14 June 2007, for the period 18 August 2006 - 12 November 2006, 'please ensure that your payment reaches us by 5 Jul 07.'

And it's not a bill for this place. It's for the flat in Boston that I used to live in until November 2003. I mean, what's going on here? It says 'this is a copy bill' on it, so I assume the people who live there now have asked for a copy and through some confusion of the computer system it's come to me by mistake. But the enquiries phone line isn't open again until Monday, so I'll just have to remain confused until then.

It surprises me that Anglian Water have got my new address in the first place. Unless I'm misremembering, I didn't pay the water bill at the Boston flat, the landlord did. I don't recall telling the water company where I was moving to. It's all extremely strange. Possibly it's all some kind of elaborate practical joke performed by a really uninspired new TV show.

Must... resist... temptation...

Sometimes it's so hard to refrain from poking gentle fun at companies that might possibly be going to employ me. Tell you what, if I don't get this particular job, I'll deride them at length next week. In a harmless kind of way, of course - there was even a thing on the BBC news website a while ago about stupid corporate jargon, so I'm sure it wouldn't really hurt to write about it on the blog. But better safe than sorry, eh?

I'll complain about the BBC instead. That'll teach them. Is it me, or is their coverage of Wimbledon more rubbish this year than it has been in the past? They seem to have cameras on fewer courts for people to watch via the red button. I like to watch the doubles games if I've got nothing better to do, but they've barely been televised at all this year so far.

Nothg. happened

Sorry, twenty to eleven, watching hilarious comedy "The Inbetweeners", have divided day between chasing up jobs and somehow not remembering to blog earlier, no time to write more. Or to frame complete sentences. Will make up for it tomorrow. Pronouns too.

He's called David Higginbottom?

"I've already killed three people with my skimmer, but that hardly counts - they were all Senior Citizens."

So says Dano Gazzard, slipped nonchalently into a paragraph describing himself and his surroundings, so casually that it goes unnoticed by a ten-year-old reader looking forward to some kind of science-fiction children's story. By the time this ten-year-old gets to the end of "Time Trap" with its ingeniously tightly-knotted time-travel circular insanity plotline and the pretty horrific ending where the good guys don't win, he's hooked on the works of Nicholas Fisk for life.

So it was nice to find out that the favourite author of my boyhood years has acquired a Wikipedia page since I last tried to look him up on the internet. And hey, check it out! Not only is his real name David Higginbottom, he shares my birthday! And he's, as far as whoever wrote the wiki page knows, at least, still alive, and nearly 85. I need to find a way to send him a long-overdue fan letter.

Words can't describe how cool the books of Nicholas Fisk are. Calling them children's sci-fi does them a real disservice - I'd never read anything so adult in tone (and still haven't read much that can compare with his best stuff, even now). It's criminal that he's not better-known. I'd love to see his stuff back in print again, because most of his books I got from the library. All I've got on my bookshelves now are tattered old copies of "Time Trap" and "Robot Revolt" and a more recent edition of "Trillions" I found a few years ago.

Now my interest has been piqued by that bibliography (including some that the libraries at Horncastle and Boston didn't have in their collections), I really want to track down copies of the likes of "A Rag, A Bone And A Hank Of Hair" ('And please do not tell me that Jack cannot be killed, because I say he can') and "Space Hostages" (the rather graphic description of the dying, deranged Flight Lieutenant sticks with me even now). And so many other long-lost favourites on that list, too - "Leadfoot" was always a particular favourite, no sci-fi in that one, just a boy and a car, Oddiputs the evil robot from "Sweets From A Stranger and other stories", "On The Flip Side", which gave me weird dreams for a month afterwards (those blobs were scary!)...

I need to start trawling eBay and charity shops. And re-reading the handful of books I've still got. Starting with Robot Revolt - great story, bad title. I think a lot of his titles were forced on him by the publishers, but this one especially - sure, it's snappy and it lures readers in, probably, but the point of the book is that while it is about a robot revolt, we don't realise that until late on in the story. We think it's about Hez and Abi and the Pastor, until things come to a head and we see that Max has been using the heroes for his own purposes. And then there's another twist to come after that...

Great stuff. Seriously.

Idleness

Curse this self-imposed ban on blogging about jobs I'm applying for. While it does reduce the chance of me inadvertently offending a potential employer, it does leave me short of something to write about when I haven't done anything else of interest all day. I get the feeling people are going to read this and think I'm living a life of vacuous sloth, when in fact that's only partially true.

I suppose I could pretend I've done something exciting. I could make up a thrilling tale about how I rescued a kitten stuck up a tree - poor thing, it was blown up there by the gales the other day, it didn't climb up there by itself. In fact, it can't climb, it was brought up by pigs after its mother died in an unusual helicopter accident when it was only a baby, and it believes itself to be a piglet. And I must confess that while I was rescuing it, I accidentally let slip that it looks more like a kitten to me, which has thrown the poor thing into a state of terrible confusion. It went straight back to its surrogate mother and demanded to know whether it was adopted.

Mind you, these modern kittens adapt pretty easily to this kind of thing. I'm sure it'll be okay if someone just reads it the story of the ugly duckling. The cat-language version, obviously, in which the ducks and swans are all eaten by kittens at the end. That'll put a smile on any kitten/piglet's face.

Okay, I'll make a point of doing something bloggable tomorrow. I'd hate for this thing to become dull and devoid of content.

Right, that does it, no more reindeer games for you.

I knocked over one of the piles of old paper in my living room (remember that exciting post last week about unpacking my box of old paperwork?) to be greeted by a loud, high-pitched, bleepy, acoustic version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". Constantly repeating itself. It took me about five minutes of digging through all the old rubbish before I managed to find the Christmas card that was bleeping at me. I was beginning to think that I'd just have to get used to the constant jingle for the rest of eternity. It would certainly get me into a Christmassy mood, and I think that's something there should be more of in June. Let's celebrate Jesus's half-birthday!

Reunited

I got my keyboard back, if you were worried. By way of the neighbours leaving it out in the hallway. So that's all okay, unless they still think I'm a maniac rock star. Maybe one day I'll learn to play the thing, if it still works, instead of just using it as a window-prop.

Anyway, new week beckons. No football till Wednesday. How will I survive? It's surprisingly easy to get addicted to an international tournament, even when England aren't in it...

Rock star lifestyle

I might have mentioned before that I own an electric piano keyboard thing that I use for the sole purpose of propping my bedroom window open. Well, yesterday, the inevitable happened and I accidentally dropped it out of the window into my downstairs neighbours' yard. Big bang. I did go down and knock on their door to apologise and ask for my keyboard back please, but there was no answer. Looking out the window a little later, I noticed the keyboard had gone, though. I don't know the new people in flat two, they only just moved in recently, and I suspect they think they're living below a temperamental rock musician who occasionally throws his instruments through the window in a fit of booze-addled creative insanity. I'm now hoping to bump into them in the hallway and assume the keyboard incident will come up in the conversation in a way that we can all laugh about it.

Meanwhile, this morning, I was in WH Smith's, and an unfamiliar voice hailed me across the store with "Memory man!" Ah, a fan, I thought to myself. And an unusually loud one, too. No, wait, I know this guy. Who is he? He's coming over. "Hi, Ben, how are you?" Ah, that's who he is. "Hi there... Angus."

"No, try again." Dang. Why did I think he was Angus Walker, former World Intelligence Champion whom I haven't seen for eight years? I've barely thought about him in the intervening time, either, so why did he pop into my head if this person isn't him? "Three more guesses," said the mystery man, clearly enjoying experiencing my famous inability to remember people's names. I flailed around for a minute or two, apologising for having not the faintest idea who he was. "Think numbers," he hinted.

"Ah! Robert! Yes, I knew it all along," I said, unconvincingly. Of course it is. Robert Fountain, Mental Calculation World Cup winner, whom I haven't seen for a mere two years. He does look quite a bit like Angus Walker, you know. And I'm sure I would have recognised his voice, only he'd just been to the dentist. He's just moved in to the neighbourhood, so I'll have to make a point of remembering who he is in future.

Anyway, this afternoon I decided to roll up my metaphorical sleeves and get stuck in to a real memory training session. Half-hour numbers, half-hour cards and half-hour binary, crammed into a six-hour time period, exactly like in the German championship. I did the numbers and cards, but had to give up on the binary after ten minutes, conscious that absolutely nothing was sinking in to my brain. Despite my reputation for working harder than any sane person would at memory training, I just haven't been up to world championship winning standard in my preparation regime for a very, very long time. I really need to work on my stamina. Or maybe schedule my training sessions for a time when I don't know Doctor Who is on the telly.

No problem with the memory in the numbers or cards, though - marked them during the first half of the football, and I got 1340 digits and 17½ packs, which would be two new world records if I did it in Tuttlingen. Would've been nice to get a binary score of some kind to go with them, but we're still a month away. If I'm serious about training, that three-world-records plan of mine might just be possible.

Millennium

Well, if yesterday's blog was number 999, I suppose that means that this is the big one thousand! Woo!

So, I've been racking my brains, wondering what kind of post I should make for this historic occasion. Some kind of song and dance routine? An analysis of my life over the last thousand blogged days? A shocking personal revelation? A blank blog to really subvert expectations?

No, what I should really do is stop talking about myself for once, and say "But enough about me. How's things with you?" What's happening with you, my blog readers, today? I'd really like to see in the comments thread a paragraph or two of what you would be blogging about tonight if you were a blogger. And if you already are a blogger, well, write something else.

Call the police!

This note has been added as an afterthought, realising that a large proportion of my blog readers are American, German or Other. 999 is the phone number for the emergency services. Just substitute it in your mind for 911 or 112 or whatever outlandish number you prefer to use whenever you encounter "999" in the following blog. Thank you for reading.

This is, apparently, blog post number 999 in Zoomy's Thing. Wowee!

Actually, the only thing this inspires me to write about is a question I occasionally get asked about the "Ben System". Doesn't it make more sense, people say, to have, for example, 999 be a policeman, because that's the first thing that comes to mind when you see the number 999, and not Mr Burns's teddy Bobo, or whatever image you might create with the Ben System.

Actually, people who say that are invariably people who currently use the Dominic System, which recommends this kind of thing. People who started off by reading Tony Buzan's books, like me, have never encountered the idea. So that's probably why I always reply "No, that's not the way you should do it. Make a Ben-system or Major-system or Dominic-system image for each number/card/whatever, don't break the rules. Easier to learn them then, believe me."

However, this response of mine is, I think, a worthy one. When you're learning a lot of images, especially if you're trying your hand at a 1000-image system, it takes time to drill them into your head. And the way to think about the "Ben System" is not as a way of converting numbers into words and pictures, but as a way of learning to read a different alphabet. You want to get to a point where you're looking at the piece of paper and not seeing numbers at all, but automatically seeing the appropriate image. And you will get to that point more quickly if during the learning phase you're thinking "that's buh-oh-buh... Bobo!" instead of "that's 999... policeman!" Really, you will. So pick a system and use it for EVERYTHING. No exceptions. Your brain will thank you for it.

Probably. I mean, Dominic hasn't exactly been a failure at the whole memory thing...

Yah! Fatty!

You'd think, with being unemployed and penniless and everything, that I'd be losing weight, but in fact I'm pretty sure I'm doing the reverse just lately. Looking at some of the pictures from the party on Saturday, I have to admit I look decidedly blubbery. I'm giving that weighing machine in Woolworth's a wide berth. I need a job that involves a good long cycle ride or walk every day. Or in a liposuction clinic that gives free sucks to its accountants.

Superliminal advertising

The boxes of sweets/chocolates/jaffa cakes etc on the shelves lining the queue for the tills in Woolworth's have got big, visible yellow stickers on them saying "IMPULSE LINE - PRE-TILLS" or something along those lines. As a customer, I find it quite offensive that they're owning up to strategically placing goodies in the eyeline of people waiting to pay for the things they came into the shop for! What happened to the long-standing tradition of pretending it's all just a coincidence? The decent, honourable thing to do is to be sneaky and underhanded and insult your customers' intelligence.

Warning: Not for the faint-hearted

Well, you see, it was my brother's thirtieth birthday and he really wanted lots of cool costumes at his party, so I had to make an effort to do something unexpected. So this is what I looked like:

Attractive, eh?



On the right of that one you can see my regular blog-commenter Ian, who had a magnificent costume himself:



Whereas my brother himself was a destructo-robot with a slightly alarming tight-fitting leotard:





And all in all, the evening had a lot of this kind of thing going on:





So yes, don't say I didn't warn you, and I probably won't be wearing another miniskirt for quite some time, probably. I did look good, though. Maybe the costume will find its way into my regular rotation...

Cosplay

Well, that was a fantastic party! I'm still suffering a little from over-drinking and under-sleeping last night, so I'll be brief, but photos will follow soon, hopefully, of me in my costume. It looked a bit like this:

Manure

There's a Manchester United website called manureds.co.uk. To me, that looks like a website devoted to people or things which have been manured, such as Biff in Back To The Future.

Sorry, I couldn't think of anything more enlightening to talk about tonight. Also, I won't be posting anything tomorrow on account of the birthday party, so that snippet of information will have to last you till Sunday night. I hope nobody is in any way dissatisfied about that.

Well, that was embarrassing

I've been suffering with a cold for the last week, although I seem to have been very brave and noble and not whined about it on my blog. Anyway, still feeling sniffly and tired this afternoon I had a lie down and ended up falling asleep. I was woken up (from a dream about losing the world memory championship by deciding to stay in bed and not compete in large parts of it) by the phone ringing.

Possibly unwisely, I decided to answer it, and had a conversation with an accountancy recruitment agency in Nottingham whom I got in touch with a month or so ago. Lucky it wasn't someone offering me a job, really, since I wasn't really with it throughout the phone call, and probably gave the woman the impression that I was drunk, on drugs or just generally dimwitted. I thought it was probably best not to admit that I'd been asleep at half past four in the afternoon, but I think I'll come clean when I go in to see them tomorrow morning.

I've also hopefully kept my subconscious quiet for a while by doing three speed cards trial runs between football games today - 26.47, 24.97 and 22.28, all perfect - to keep my brain ticking over until I get a chance to do some more serious training next week. Another thing I didn't mention in my blog is that I didn't do the weekend half-hour-disciplines training that I was planning to do, and in fact spent the weekend sitting around, watching telly and occasionally sneezing. So I've been feeling a little bit guilty about it ever since, hence the mid-afternoon nightmare.

I'm also annoyed with Howard Webb the referee. I didn't mention it on the blog (what the heck have I been writing about for the last week?), but I had another bet on the last three days of football, and I had Poland down to win. They were 1-0 up with a minute to go and Webb goes and gives Austria a penalty! It's disgraceful! That reduces my winnings on that bet from a potential £16.46 to a £4.92 return from my £6.30 stake. Still, it's an improvement on the £1.91 I got from the first three days, and it's not going to break the bank at this rate. And yes, I did have Croatia to beat Germany, so I was cheering this afternoon.

Really, this betting on games has added hugely to my enjoyment of Euro 08. I've got a result to cheer for in every game now! I've already got my money on the next six games, and I'll probably have a final bet on the last six group matches too, unless I get all of the next lot wrong. Results to watch out for over the weekend:

Italy to beat Romania
Holland to beat France
Spain to beat Sweden
Greece to beat Russia (rather unwisely put my money on this one before seeing how terribly Greece played in their first game, but hey, Russia are rubbish too, you never know)
Portugal to beat Switzerland
Czech Republic to beat Turkey

Of course, it's Friday the thirteenth tomorrow, so luck probably won't be on my side. For some reason, even though my birthday's on the fourteenth of October and my brother's is the fourteenth of June, whenever they fall on a Saturday it never occurs to me that this means they're preceded by a Friday the thirteenth until the day itself comes along. You'd think after 61 birthdays between us, I would be used to the idea by now...

Discreet customer service

I was in Oxfam today, looking for cheap accessories to supplement the costume I'm wearing at my brother's fancy dress party on Saturday, when I noticed a wig for sale that I could use to make me look even more like the character I'm supposed to be (I was planning to be a bald version - the theme is characters from my brother's stories, and like all fiction writers, he has shamefully few handsome, bald-headed heroes). The wig didn't have a price on it, so I asked the woman on the till how much it cost, and she responded by yelling across the store "Gloria! There's a gentleman here wants to know how much the wig costs!"

So the entire Oxfam shop full of people, and I'm sure quite a few people passing by outside, turned to look at me. It'll be in all the papers tomorrow, I'm sure - memory champion buys wig!

Can't you talk about anything else?

Okay, final football-related post for at least a few days, I promise, but I would like to retract my prediction of Greece to win Euro 2008. They were atrocious tonight! I mean, I know they've got a reputation as a negative team, but they're not normally that negative. What kind of team goes out for their first group game against a team like Sweden and plays for a 0-0 draw? Dear me, they were bad.

Anyway, the interview went well today, so please keep your fingers crossed until some time early next week when I should hear whether they want me or not. It'd be a great job for me to get. And I'm sure the inconvenience of you trying to go about your everyday lives with your fingers crossed is a small price to pay for my eventual job satisfaction for the next nine months or so (it's a maternity leave cover job).

Dang

Well, the embarrassing defeat for France turned out to be a very dull embarrassing draw for France, and the dull 0-0 draw between Holland and Italy ended up being a thrilling 3-0. So I'm never going to make my living as a professional gambler, obviously.

Anyway, enough watching football, time to get a job. Another interview tomorrow, as I might have mentioned, out in Edwalton, a pleasant four-mile cycle from Nottingham station. Or, if it's as hot tomorrow as it was today, an extremely unpleasant cycle. Nonetheless, I'm going to cycle instead of taking a bus. Healthy exercise is good for you. Wish me luck! For the interview, not the cycling. Although you can wish me luck for that too, if you want. I might need more luck for that, actually. There's less chance of being hit by a lorry in an interview room.

Technical question

Why doesn't my internet explorer auto-redirect me on some web pages that really want me to be redirected? I bet it's some kind of security setting. This stupid laptop is riddled with security programs and settings and things. Okay, it stops people using my computer for evil purposes, probably, but it's mildly annoying when it does things like this and I don't know how to stop it.

Speaking of people using computers for evil purposes, I decided to count up all the emails I get in my spam folder from the Bank of Africa in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso offering a share of some vast fortune left in the bank by a wealthy foreigner. I've had five different ones in the last two days, the most entertaining being the "very huge sum of money belonging to a deceased person Mr.Emmanuel Etukudo who died on May 2nd, 2004 in a gassy car accident with his entire family on there way back from Bobo-Dioulasso the formal capital city of Burkina-Faso, and the fund has been dormant in his account with this Bank without any claim of the fund in our custody either from his family or relation before our discovery to this development."

I hope I'm never involved in a gassy car accident, it sounds nasty. You know, I should create phishing emails for a living. I sometimes get some that I think would really work if only the creators had put a little bit more effort into it. I could make a really convincing one and con lots of stupid people out of lots of money. You know, if I had someone else on my team who could do HTML and things, obviously...

Nearly

The first game could easily have been a draw if not for one lucky goal, and Portugal did indeed win easily. See, I'm great at predicting football results. I'm a little less good at making lunch, possibly, having filled the flat with thick, acrid smoke while cooking chicken kievs, but I think the place is mostly aired out now, and the damage to my lungs probably wasn't too severe.

Oh, and Doctor Who tonight was complete gibberish. Complete gibberish that looked on the surface like intelligent, thoughtful and different semi-thriller drama, but think about any element of the plot for more than five seconds and it all falls apart.

Gambolling in the fields

An extra early-afternoon pre-kickoff blog today. In a probably vain attempt to make the England-free European Championship in some way interesting to me, and since I haven't had a bet on a football game since leaving Adams six years ago, and since gambling is the last refuge of the unemployed layabout, I've decided to have a flutter on the first three days of games. My picks are as follows:

Switzerland - Czech Republic draw (all sane logic suggests that the Czechs should win this one without any trouble, but it's the first game, the home fans will be excitable and it'll probably be an anticlimactic 0-0)

Portugal to beat Turkey (they could win this one with their eyes closed, barring any kind of injury to Ronaldo)

Croatia to beat Austria (Austria are hopeless and should lose every game without too much difficulty)

Germany to beat Poland (Poland aren't that bad, actually, but Germany should overwhelm them in the end. I'm thinking a late goal just when the Germans are starting to panic)

Romania to beat France (France have an amazing ability to mess up games like this, and I'm confident they can do it again)

Holland - Italy draw (another game that'll have lots of hype and very little action)

So now you can all follow along and see how wildly inaccurate my predictions are, as a substitute for getting excited about England's failure to win the championship. Yay!

Also, my tip to win - Greece. Nobody thought they had a chance four years ago, and strangely enough, nobody thinks they've got a chance this time either, although they're playing really well, they've still got the same great manager and a lot of the same great team, and they're looking like they could go far.

Boxes

I unpacked my big box of important papers and stuff the other day, and now the contents are sitting in the middle of my living room in a big, densely packed pile at least three times the size of the box they came out of. It's magic. I did find lots of cool stuff while failing to find what I was looking for in the first place - the posh photos I had taken in 2003, so now I can send one to that guy who wanted an autographed picture of me; my copy of Othello Brief & Basic that I thought I must have lent to someone else and lost long ago (maybe I'll donate it back to the BOF, we're running out of copies and can't get any new ones); lots of wild-west-themed cardboard accessories left over from that party many years ago (fun party, we need to have another one); and even my CIMA certificate so that any prospective employer who demands proof that I'm qualified won't have to just take my word for it. All these discoveries are well worth the inconvenience of no longer being able to see my living room floor.

Anyway, a weekend of memory training is coming up. I'm trying to get into the kind of training schedule I would be following if I was working (as, with any luck, I will be before too long - another interview on Tuesday, out Nottingham way this time), and that means long-discipline practice sessions every weekend I haven't got anything better to do. And there aren't many such weekends between now and Tuttlingen - next weekend I have the delights of my brother's fancy-dress thirtieth-birthday party (transvestism encouraged) and then, if I do end up having the money, there are other appointments for at least two of the weekends between now and the end of July. So it's important to get a good bit of training in this weekend in the 30-minute events and also in abstract images, trying to get that system up and running effectively. Let's make 2008 the year of me winning memory competitions, instead of coming second!

My stars!

On the train this morning I read my horoscope in the free paper, and it said something along the lines of "everything's topsy-turvy today, people you expect to be nice to you are nasty, and vice versa". And funnily enough, after I got back home I got a call from the bank - not the department of complaining about people who exceed their overdraft limit (which is apparently outsourced to India) who called me the other day, but the department of calling for a friendly chat and offering long-term customers credit cards and increased overdrafts (based at the local branch) who call once a year or so. I'd sorted out the overdraft miscalculation with some transfer of funds from that credit card I never use, and the guy who called me seemed blissfully unaware that I'd gone over the limit in the first place, calling me a valued and reliable customer and things like that. I didn't take him up on the offer of another credit card or a bigger overdraft or anything-else-we-can-do-to-make-your-banking-experience-more-satisfactory, but he still wasn't unpleasant about it.

So I've had the niceness from people I expect to be nasty (also a cheque from my mother, but if I list her as 'people I expect to be nasty' it would make me seem like a horribly ungrateful son, so I won't - thanks, Mum!) but I'm still waiting for the nastiness from people I expect to be nice to me. The interview today went fine, without any nastiness, so who's going to be mean to me? It's going to be the person I least expect, according to the horoscope. I'm a nervous wreck with anticipation...

Plans for the future

Interview tomorrow morning in, funnily enough, Oadby, just down the road from the church where I've lost many an othello game. Really good job for a company that I couldn't say anything bad about even if I didn't have this self-imposed ban on talking about companies I potentially work for - smallish family company that has a super-professional-looking website with perfect spelling, grammar and punctuation! What more could a friendly and pedantic accountant want in life?

So let's talk memory instead. I did a practice 30-minute cards this evening, attempting 21 packs and getting 14 right. But I really wasn't far off with the other seven, and I'm contemplating trying 21 at the German championship in just under two months' time. Now, some might say that would be unnecessarily risky (and others might describe it as 'ludicrously stupid') when I can attempt 18 and be reasonably confident of only making one or two mistakes and beating everyone else by some margin... but I wanna break records and it's pretty unlikely I'm going to break my new record of 17 if I only attempt 18.

Maybe I'll do a bit more practice and see how it goes. I'd hate to get even more of a reputation as the kind of person who loses big championships by trying to show off...

Drifters!

I've been extremely unhappy ever since Drifter chocolate-toffee-wafer bars stopped being available, so I was absolutely delighted to find them on sale in a newsagent's in Derby today. I think they were new ones, too, rather than leftover stock from last year, so I'm hopeful of seeing a new influx of my favourite unhealthy snack in the shops soon!

Really, I couldn't be happier - unless of course I had a job and money to put in the bank and stop them complaining about me going over my overdraft limit. Anyone got a bit of spare change that you might want to lend me until I'm back on my feet?

Job advertisements I considered

Dog Congratulator
Salary: £50k + car + donkey
Location: Biggleswade
Start date: June 2009

An experienced Dog Congratulator is required for a busy company located directly above Biggleswade town centre. Applicants should have at least three years' experience, preferably of congratulating dogs although experienced metalworkers will also be considered. The successful applicant will be between five foot eight and five foot eleven in height, admire the works of Chopin and disapprove of radio. Holders of a degree in dog congratulation need not apply.

Man
Salary: 3
Location: Biggleswade
Start date: Last week

A man is required to perform certain duties at a hockey stick and artificial dolphin factory in western Biggleswade. No experience necessary, but applicants must have a minimum of three GCSEs grade G or above. Five days holiday per year, uniform provided on Tuesdays. We are an equal opportunities employer, but no applications from women will be accepted.

Horse
Salary: oats
Location: Biggleswade
Start date: December 2037

A horse, a horse, our kingdom for a horse. Needed by a small company of financial consultants/dressmakers in Biggleswade. Duties include eating grass, swatting flies with tail and neighing. Applicants must have legs, tail, eyes and be a horse.

Management Accountant
Salary: none
Location: Giggleswick
Start date: immediate

A qualified and experienced Management Accountant is required for a friendly family company, not located in Biggleswade. Part-qualified CIMA preferred, good Excel skills and knowledge of Sage Line 50 essential. Good package except for lack of monetary payment. The successful applicant will be remorselessly flogged by a cruel slavedriver while attempting to perform his/her duties. All applications must be made by carrier pigeon or via a trained gorilla-impersonator. This job requires the wearing of clothes.

Right, job-hunting time

I've had more than enough of being unemployed. I'm going to spend tomorrow applying for jobs left, right and centre. I don't care how vaguely related to management accounts they are, if it's a job, anywhere in the country, it's going to get my CV. I'll probably end up as a window cleaner by accident and discover that it's the perfect job I've always been looking for.