I fixed my video!

That tape I trod on last week? Fixed! Thanks to Ravinder, who advised me that you can cut the clear plastic bit out without ruining it, and gave me permission to blame him if I did ruin it despite that.

Apart from that, I've done nothing else all day today, but I still have a great sense of achievement.

Windows, at all?

There are some things about Boston that are going to stay the same forever. The double-glazing saleswoman in the market who has spent every Saturday since time immemorial trying and failing to hand out flyers to passers-by with a forlorn, muttered "Windows, at all?". The graffiti on the wall behind Kwik-Save ("R.N. BOASTS WE SANK TWO IRAQI TANKERS") which has been there since the first Gulf War. The May Fair, on its way next week (notices already up telling people, all of whom must surely know already, that the market will move to West Street while the fair's in town. If people don't know, the complaining market traders will soon fill them in without the need for notice boards). George the friendly mentally-handicapped old guy who can always be found in the town centre somewhere on a Saturday, cheerfully saying good morning to everyone whatever time of day it is. The dishevelled exotic birds in the shabby aviary in the park. And a football team who can't win a home game against the worst team in the league who've had a player sent off in the first half.

When you support the second-worst team in the league, there are few occasions when you can look forward to a win with some trembling confidence, but this was one of them. And the omens were good - we had a whole eleven full-time players to choose our team of eleven from, Torquay had already been relegated and had nothing to play for but pride, the home fans had turned out in droves for once (attendance about 2600, roughly eight of whom were die-hard away fans who'd come all the way from Torquay) - and the Pilgrims started brightly. We could have had half a dozen goals in the first half, it's a long time since I've seen them look like they could actually score. David Galbraith in particular had an amazing curling shot from outside the area that Wayne Rooney would be proud of, which was tipped over the crossbar by an equally Premiership-worthy save from the Torquay goalie. Three or four more times the ball was somehow cleared off the line by their defence at the last second. Then one of their players was sent off for hitting Ernie Cooksey while the ball was at the other end of the pitch and he presumably hoped the referee's eyes were too. Still nil-nil at half-time, but it looked hopeful.

When a team comes out after the interval and plays much, much better, people tend to attribute it to an inspirational manager's speech. So I can only assume Steve Evans delivered the exact opposite in the dressing room, because the Boston who came out again for the second half were woeful. Torquay were still awful too, so it shouldn't really have mattered, but then they got a goal out of nowhere, to everyone's surprise. Another of their players was booked for shoving Cooksey in another off-the-ball incident (he's not much of a player, but he must be great at annoying people). The crowd, who'd been enthusiastic all the way, switched to yelling abuse at the Boston players, especially the defenders who seemed very reluctant to tackle the opposing strikers, or even move at all unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

But Drewe Broughton got an equaliser in the 83rd minute, and it ended up 1-1. Which could have been worse, I suppose. Basically, this means that it all comes down to the final game, away at Wrexham next week. If we win that, we'll avoid relegation (at the expense of Macclesfield or Wrexham themselves). If we don't, we won't. Goodbye, football league. And it's five years to the day since we won promotion, too. I personally don't think we have a chance of winning that game. I know it sounds disloyal, but bluntly, we suck. I'll keep supporting them to the last, but... gah! Maybe I'll switch to Derby County.

Movie star, a movie star...

I've been talking at great length just lately with Ravinder about this documentary. It does look like it's definitely going to happen, and it's really definitely going to involve filming me and everyone I come into contact with in Cambridge next weekend and Bristol the weekend after. And probably elsewhere, too. Actually, it's only really occurring to me right now that this might get annoying pretty quickly. It probably won't - I could tolerate Nick following me around, and Ravinder's more fun to talk to (and I'm not just saying that because he reads this blog). Although it is going to be a director in charge of the filming, rather than Ravinder himself, and I might not like her. And then there's the worry that I'm going to end up looking bad, and the billions of people watching the documentary will be thinking "gor, lumme, what a complete eejit that Pridmore person is". I'm assuming all the viewers will have a sort of cockney-cum-Irish accent, naturally.

I was actually thinking of emailing all the friends I can think of to see if they want to be filmed hanging out with me, working on the theory that the less of me and the more of other people in the film, the more watchable it'll be. But then last time around the VPS people were all rather reluctant to be taped at one of our get-togethers, just because they generally involve drunken and unseemly behaviour. I suppose we could hang out and be sober and seemly, but then it would just look boring.

Anyway, I'm going to the football tomorrow. An even more crucial, must-win game than the numerous other crucial, must-win games I've mentioned so far this season. If we win this, and it's only against Torquay so we darn well should, it'll lift us out of the relegation zone with one game to go. Woo! Now if only we can find eleven fit players, we're sorted. We'll survive for another season and then get relegated next year (about to go into a voluntary arrangement because of the huge debts, which will mean a 10-point penalty).

Noone know what I do, but everyone calls me "boss"

For some reason, everybody in the world has emailed me about the Cambridge championship today. Okay, partly my fault since I posted on the forum to confirm that the event is being filmed for a Channel 5 documentary (woo!), but also Aubrey has volunteered me to organise the rest of the Cambridge MSO event on the Sunday (he's somewhere exotic prolonging the human lifespan). It's just a case of telling the other competitions where to go, but that's liable to make me unpopular, because there's the big sports hall and a separate room, and I'm having the latter for the memory competition. However much the go and shogi players complain about having to share space with backgammon and chess. There's only a separate room at all because I pestered Aubrey into arranging one the other day when he sprung it on us that he'd only arranged the sports hall. If there was a bit more time before the event, I'd find another venue in Cambridge, but at a week's notice it'd be hard to come up with a cheap, quiet and small place. I hate being in charge of things. How did I end up in charge of things?

Creative fervour

I've spent the whole afternoon doodling. That comic strip I was artist's-blocked with last week - I suddenly had the urge to sit down and draw and not care how bad it looked, so I did. And once I'd started, I obviously didn't want to stop in case the enthusiasm evaporated.

Also spent an hour and a half talking on the phone with Ravinder about this documentary, and he specifically asked me to mention him in my blog, but I'll go into more detail about that tomorrow, because all that scribbling has taken up too much of my time.

Oh, and I don't think I'm quite ready to actually SHOW anyone what I've been drawing yet.

Tradesmen and the scraper still troublesome

I'm watching "The Diary of a Nobody" on BBC4. It's not a dramatisation so much as Hugh Bonneville reciting edited highlights, Talking Heads style, and I don't think it entirely works. It's not a book that really lends itself to TV adaptation (although it has been done before), but it seems pointless to do it like this. It's a lot more enjoyable to read the book yourself - this version doesn't really add anything and takes quite a bit out. It's part of the Edwardian season on the BBC, although I'm not sure what definition of "Edwardian" they're using, since the diary dates from the late 1880s. But on the other hand, that's the kind of pedantic observation that Mr Pooter might have made himself, so I probably shouldn't say anything.

Curse my clumsy great clodhoppers!

I trod on a video tape and now it doesn't work properly any more. It's one of the ones with cartoons taped off the telly, and there are some good ones on it too. The most irritating part is that I have a feeling I could maybe fix it, but that if I tried to do so I would almost certainly ruin it for good. The tape itself is all fine, it's just the plastic casing that's cracked and sort of pushed in a bit, and not in a way that I can just pop it back into the right place. Now when I try to play it it stops after a few seconds and starts rewinding.

I suppose this might be a lesson to me to store videos on a shelf or on top of the telly or somewhere other than just lying on the floor, but I don't have a history of learning this kind of lesson. But darn it, what if I want to watch "Go Fly A Kit", or "Johnny Smith and Poker Huntas" or "Scaredy Cat" or "High Note", or about 40 other classic Looney Tunes? I'm annoyed now.

Supermarket Sweep

Doing my shopping at Sainsbury's today, I found myself at the till behind a large, elderly woman whose credit card was declined. Obviously, this is an embarrassing situation for anyone to be in, so I did my best to pretend I didn't notice anything as she rummaged through her handbag looking for money. When she only turned up a single two-pound coin, I decided to volunteer to pay for her stuff myself. Random acts of kindness are always good. But while I was considering whether that was really, definitely a good idea, she was looking through her groceries to find the most important item and came up with a four-pack of cans of stout. This cost £3.29, and she asked if she could just have two cans for £2. When the woman behind the till said no, she demanded that another shop assistant go and fetch her a single bottle of Guinness, and wasn't prepared to listen when the assistant told her they don't sell those in singles either. She eventually stomped off to get one herself. I decided to save my money for a worthier cause. Having paid for my own shopping, I was just leaving when I saw her coming back with a single bottle that she must have pulled out of a six-pack, and contemplated hanging around to see the rest of the story, but decided to beat a tactful retreat.

Another consequence of me entirely running out of food items last night was that I had to go to McDonald's for breakfast because the supermarket doesn't open till 10:30 on a Sunday. I burnt my tongue horribly on a cup of tea and it still feels all burnt now. Perhaps I should sue them. Or perhaps I should just get into the habit of drinking tea more often, so that I can judge how hot it is without taking a full mouthful.

Wedding belles

Yes, I said Sunday. Consider this a bonus. The civil partnership ceremony and subsequent festivities finished early enough that I decided to get the train home today rather than staying another night in Norwich like I'd been planning to. This way, you see, I can do lots of serious work tomorrow. (I don't know who I think I'm fooling when I write something like that, I really don't.)

I could have been back even earlier, actually - the trains from Norwich to Nottingham leave at 57 minutes past the hour, every hour, except the 15:52 which for some mad reason is five minutes earlier. And I got to the station just in time to see it leaving. Still, that did give me time to go and look around the charity shops, although Norwich's selection of cartoon videos was frankly terrible.

Enough complaining, anyway. The do itself was wonderful, and the crowd of people attending were all fun. I had a surprisingly good time, all in all. Everyone reading this now has to chorus congratulations to my mum and Pam, the happy newlyweds who've been together for 24 years.

I'm on the road again

Norwich this weekend! Never been there and have no idea what it's like. Still, hopefully I'll have time to poke around the charity shops and see what cartoon videos people have been getting rid of lately. Judging by Derby at least, the official period you have to keep an unwanted video you got for Christmas is just under four months, because the shops are full of second-rate Christmas cartoons on VHS at the moment. That said, in Ashford after the othello I found one excellent tape - a W H Smith exclusive from the mid-nineties that I'd never heard of before, with three hours of Looney Tunes including some quite obscure ones I still needed to collect.

So no more blogs until Sunday night from me. I hope you'll survive. I did consider taking my laptop with me and using it in the hotel, if it had internet access. I could pretend to be a businessman on an important trip. But then it probably does me good to get away from the internet every once in a while.

I want to be an artist!

I've been trying to draw a comic strip. I sometimes get the impression that if I sit down and try to draw things I'll acquire great artistic ability in the space of a couple of minutes. Then when I don't, I get all annoyed and discouraged and vow never to pick up or even look at a pencil again. It's very frustrating. One of these days I'll do the sensible thing and go on a course to learn to draw halfway properly.

I just have a mental block on the whole subject of art, though. It, like most of the great wrongs in the world, is entirely my brother's fault, because he was always better at drawing than me even when we were little, and it gave me a lifelong complex. If he'd had a good memory I would now be completely unable to memorise a one-digit number. Although come to think of it, he also always had a better memory for things like Transformers' mottos when we were young. Oh dear, I feel a complex developing...

A further example of my uselessness with computers

I had a phone call yesterday saying "hello, this is the Maid's Head hotel, we had you booked in to stay with us last Friday...". I thought to myself, what the heck? That's not the hotel I stayed in in Ashford. Did I book another hotel and forget about it? Am I quite that forgetful? Then it struck me that that's the hotel in Norwich that I'm staying in this coming Friday. A short conversation later, it turned out that I'd booked it for the wrong weekend over the internet. Good thing they called, really. If I was a hotel, I would just have charged my credit card and thought no more about it.

I'm sorry, I thought the above anecdote was interesting when I started to write it. Now I come to look at it, I realise it's the dullest thing you could ever possibly want to read. I do apologise.

Anyway, I'm busy with "historic dates" for the Cambridge competition. Have you any idea how difficult it is to dream up one hundred and ten one-to-five-word phrases describing ficticious historical happenings along the lines of "peace treaty signed"? Well, once you've got your head around how difficult that is, double it, because I've also got to use phrases that I didn't use when dreaming up the previous year's dates. And then after I've composed this list of fake events, I still need to ask the only Russian of my acquaintance whether he can help me translate them - I've got a Russian competitor coming! Okay, he's a student in Germany, where everyone seems to be mad about memory, but he's still Russian, which counts as a whole new territory for 'memory sports'!

Also, yay, they're repeating Ripping Yarns on BBC4!

Speed

I did a pack of cards in 25.98 seconds today, which I think is possibly a new personal best. That I can't remember for certain whether it is or not bothers me a little. You'd think I'd keep track of this kind of thing, seeing as memorising cards as quickly as possible is basically my sole purpose in life. Still, I'm sure I've never beaten 25 seconds before, and I'd really like to achieve that some time. Or maybe I should be focussing on finally beating 30 seconds in a competition, so that that stops being the holy grail of card-memorising? But then what would we do without a nice round number of seconds to aim towards. I suppose we could all start aiming for 25 seconds, but that's not as catchy as exactly half a minute, somehow.

Pins and needles, needles and pins

The hotel I was staying at in Ashford is a swanky enough place to have a sewing kit in each room, sitting on top of the Corby trouser press for guests to avail themselves of. At first glance I thought, as I always do in this kind of situation, "What kind of person comes to a hotel and sews things?" I'm more the kind of person who allows clothes to remain buttonless if a button falls off, you see. But then it occurred to me that this might be a good opportunity to try to fix the increasingly noticeable hole in the crotch of my jeans, so I did. And then, while I was on a roll, sewed up the hole in the pocket too. That'll save me a fair bit of money that would otherwise end up down my trouser leg, out the end and down a drain when I forget not to use that pocket. And then for a coup de grace, I sewed a button back on my shirt. Using the pink thread since I'd used up all the blue and white on the jeans (it's a blue shirt with white buttons, so the pink stands out in what I think is a quite stylish way).

It's been middle-of-summer hot around here today. I might just have to break out my unflattering shorts from their winter hibernation and appall the people of Derby. This also raises the question of what to wear to the wedding on Saturday - I was planning to wear my "smart casual" outfit, which consists of all the more or less presentable clothing I own, all of which is black. I'm pretty sure black still looks stylish, and people won't think I'm going to a funeral instead, but it'll be a bit uncomfortable if the weather's like this. Maybe I'll wear the shorts instead.

(Kent)

Okay, so I wasn't quite as successful in Ashford as Oadby. In fact, I came dead last. But, you see, it's not the winning, it's the taking part, and by doing so badly I probably made everyone else feel a lot better about themselves, so in a very real sense, I'm a winner.

Ashford is a strange kind of place for at least two reasons - it calls itself "Ashford (Kent)" to excess, for one. I walked past the Working Men's Club when I got there on Friday night and the sign outside says "Ashford (Kent) WMC". Would people really not know which Ashford they were in if they looked up at the sign and it only said "Ashford"? For another thing, I found when I daringly decided to walk from the station to my hotel that Ashford is some kind of magical land where however far you walk in any direction, you always end up in the same place at the back end of the town centre. After quite a lot of that, I got a taxi like some kind of big city fat cat.

Fun tournament, though, and lovely weather. I even walked from Charing Cross to St Pancras, taking in all the places I was intending to along the way, on my way back. And without once getting lost. It's official, I can cope with London streets now. Perhaps with a bit more practice I'll get Ashford (Kent) too.

Lazing on a sunny afternoon

There are days when I'm all hyper-productive and get lots of stuff done. There are also days when I just don't do anything. This has pretty much been one of the latter. Although I did talk to the Cambridge local paper. And I, well, expressed enthusiasm on hearing that Ravinder's documentary has officially got the sort-of go-ahead from Channel 5. That counts as memory-related work, right?

Anyway, I'm going to Ashford tomorrow afternoon for the othello on Saturday, rather than getting the early morning train, so I probably won't post anything tomorrow night. Yes, I'm still pointing it out every time I don't intend to post anything here. I have a very inflated sense of this blog's importance in the grand scheme of things.

More reasons to be cheerful

Man Utd won 7-1 last night and it was a great game. I saw the first five goals before turning over to watch the last episode of Life on Mars, which was also absolutely fantastic. I found those raffle tickets today without even meaning to, while looking for something else. I also found the something else I was looking for. Boston Utd did indeed beat Macclesfield on Monday, and are now at the lofty heights of 22nd (out of 24) in League Two. This is important, because the bottom two get relegated. Granted, they're only three points clear of Wrexham, who've got a game in hand, but it's the psychological advantage of not being in the relegation zone that matters. Plus, Boston's last four games are against Hereford and Chester (both comfortably mid-table with no chance of making the play-offs), Torquay and Wrexham (the two clubs below us). We've got a good chance of survival. I'm doing an interview with the Cambridge Evening News tomorrow about the memory championship, and hopefully getting it a nice bit of advance publicity. It's definitely spring, you know - it's been all warm and sunny for the last couple of days.

Hello, sunshine! Hello, birds on the wing!

I've got lots of bunnies! By which I mean that I've got The Tale of the Bunny Picnic, which you may remember me bidding for on eBay last week, in rather more formats than I was expecting. For some reason, the seller has also enclosed a "free gift" of a pirate DVD copied (or "ripped" or "burned" or whatever the technical term is) directly from the official, original VHS that he actually advertised, sold and sent to me. I don't get why he would do this. Did he think "well, if he likes the legal version, he's sure to also like a less legal version along with it!"

Come to think of it, "captured" might be the technical term.

Anyway, I'm glad that I've got it. I've watched it twice today, since that's obviously what the seller wants me to do, and watched a couple of the brilliant songs at least hrair times. I haven't seen the Bunny Picnic for years and years, and I'd forgotten just how great it was. If I had the first idea how to go about doing such a thing, I would burn/rip/capture/sync the wonderful musical number at the end when the bunnies confront the farmer and put it on YouTube for you all to watch, because nobody should go through life without hearing that song.

I find it hard to describe to normal people the feeling of sheer delight and euphoria I get from watching a stirring musical tale of bunny bravery like this. Suffice it to say I've been in a deliriously happy kind of mood all day. It even helps me put a positive spin on things that I might otherwise consider bad - having done a bit of Cambridge championship preparation work today, I've been thinking "well, it's nearly all done now and well ahead of time", rather than "I still need to do the historic dates in multiple languages, and that takes ages, plus I need to arrange stopwatches or timers for the speed cards and I should have done that yonks ago".

And when the charity Cerebra phoned me tonight to ask for money and I suddenly remembered I've got some raffle tickets of theirs that I'm supposed to be selling and have no idea where they are, my thought is "wow, good thing they called or I would have forgotten all about it and then felt horribly guilty when they write to me asking for money", whereas had I been in less of a cheerful mood, I might have been thinking "aw, now I'll have to turn my living room upside down looking for those raffle tickets. How could I have forgotten them, anyway? I'm supposed to be a memory champion. And why are Cerebra pestering me for more money when they haven't finished with this raffle yet, for Pete's sake?"

Everything's better with bunnies. Man Utd are 3-0 up after 20 minutes! It's the bunnies, I tell you! Incidentally, Lugsy is the real hero of Tale of the Bunny Picnic, not Bean. He's the one I always admired.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Woo! Did an hour cards practice today, attempting 33 packs and got 29½ right. And the half (you get half a pack if there's one mistake) was just stupidity on my part - I memorised it right, I just wrote the wrong thing down and didn't notice. I'm still not 100% confident with going for more than thirty packs, but I'm feeling now that I can maybe eventually speed myself up just that little bit more so that I can look at each one three times. Today the sixty minutes ran out when I was just short of the end of the 27th pack for the third time. And my recall was still good on the ones I only had time to look at twice - it was harder work and took longer, with a bit of educated-guesswork, but I got most of them right. The mistakes came on packs 24, 29 and 30, plus the aforementioned annoying blunder on pack 7. And I was finished with the recall with ten minutes of the two hours still to go, rather than frantically scribbling till the end. All in all, I'm happy with that.

And while I'm talking card-memorising (I have quite honestly been told that there are people out there who really like reading things like the above paragraph, you know), I'll throw out a favourite tip of mine for "memory athletes" in training - try to practice things in the exact format of the championships. Between memorising and recall when I practice hour numbers, while I'm putting those fiddly little rubber bands back around the cards and stacking them up neatly, I like to turn the telly or radio on to simulate the talking that goes on at competitions during the hiatus. I also avoid consciously trying to recall any of the images I've seen until the recall time has started, because you never know what distractions are going to come along at the world championships.

When it comes to speed cards, I also always wait the full five minutes until recalling, even though I'm going through the pack in thirty seconds and then just sitting in silence. Sitting still and not saying anything is something I have difficulty with, you see, so it's good to get in a bit of practice. I'm an incorrigible daydreamer, and I can never spend the whole four and a half minutes thinking about the cards I've just memorised without drifting off on a mental tangent, so practicing like that really helps - now I can daydream all I like and still keep the cards bobbing around in my brain until I have to regurgitate them.

When did my hobbies turn into work?

Not only am I wrestling with writing a book about memory and stuff (that's "wrestling" in the sense of doing nothing about it, which is an unusual but quite acceptable use of the word), but I'm also trying to entice people to chip in with some prize money for the Cambridge championship (I'm still hopeful on that front). And if that wasn't enough, I've been wrestling with a question about the British othello rating list that David asked the committee about - should people who don't live here any more still be included?

I can think of lots of sensible arguments both for and against the idea, which is confusing me a bit. I would have expected not to care either way, since the only rating I ever look at is my own, but in fact I seem to be deeply passionate about every possible argument for and against every possible arrangement. Perhaps I just need to get out more. Come to think of it, I maybe shouldn't be posting publicly about this in the first place. Some people might argue that it's private committee business (the committee of the BOF doesn't generally do anything, so it's probably a good idea to shroud anything we do do in mystery, so as to give the impression that we do more). Ah well. They can always excommunicate me, or whatever the expression is.