Hand in glove

I realised just as I was about to leave the house this morning that I'd lost one of my woolly gloves. Drat, I thought, but never mind, I'll wear my leather gloves that I don't like very much because they're slightly too small for me. So I went back upstairs, grabbed the leather gloves and left the house. On arriving at Long Eaton train station, I dug in my pockets and noticed that somewhere along the train journey I must have dropped one of the leather gloves too.

Drat, I thought, now I'll have to wear one blue woolly glove and one black leather glove on the cycle ride to work, and motorists will point and laugh at me. Oh well, they would probably have laughed at me anyway, because I really need a haircut. So I reached in my pocket for the woolly glove that I hadn't lost, only to find that I had now also lost that one.

Drat, I thought again. I've lost three gloves in the course of one morning. I wonder if that's a world record? There can't be many people who've lost three gloves in less than half an hour.

So, to make a long story slightly longer, I survived the cycle ride to and from work with only one glove, even though it was a bit cold, and when I got home I found one of the woolly gloves again. So now I have a pair, albeit a non-matching pair. Life is good.

Memories are made of this

It's a four-day Easter weekend coming up! Strangely enough, Saint-Gobain take their bank holidays on Monday and Tuesday, instead of Friday and Monday (have they no respect for the sanctity of Good Friday? I know I haven't, but employers should. And for the sanctity of the Monday after Easter too, because that's important). Still, that means that even after lunch with my brother on Saturday, and the inevitable heavy intake of alcohol that goes with it, I'll have three days to myself, which I rather think I should spend practicing the long disciplines of memory. 30-minute binary, hour cards (need to get my cards back from James, he borrowed twelve packs for the uni competitions that nobody came to) and hour numbers. And I'll post my results here, so if I don't, you'll all know I've been lazy, and can jeer at me. That's the way to get me motivated! Fear of derision!

Advertising

I sort of halfway persuaded someone to come to the Derby Memory Championship on the ten-minute train journey home today, even though he knew nothing about it beforehand, just because he asked me where I got the Blue Peter badge. I hadn't thought of the benefits the thing has for spreading the word about memory, but I can see how it could be a help. I just need to get in the habit of replying "Yes, I got it for doing an amazing memory feat, such as you yourself could do with a little practice, so why not come along to my competition in a couple of months", all in one breath, before the person has a chance to escape.

A "Zoomy Answers Your Questions" kind of thing

Welcome, one and all, to the kind of thing where I answer questions people have asked in comments to previous entries. Starting with the one that made me think it would be a good idea to answer them in a blog entry to themselves:

do you know if it [The Mentalists]'s going to be repeated, please, and if not, where might I obtain one of these DVDs?

As far as I know, there are no plans to repeat it. But then, they didn't tell me when it was on the first time until the last minute, so you never know. On the other hand, I have sent the DVDs of most of my recent TV appearances to Raggy, and when I overcome my laziness, catch up with him and find out whether he's been able to combine and copy them into multiple DVDs for anyone who wants one, I'll set about distributing them to anyone who wants. With any luck, within the next few days.

I wonder if you could give yourself extra financial motivation to prepare by placing a sufficiently large bet on yourself to win the next WMC? You could probably find one of the bookmakers who'd be willing to quote some odds

You know, that's not a bad idea. And it leads in nicely to something I've been meaning to blog about for some time now - my motivation still isn't up to the level it should be. It's not anywhere near, to be honest, and I don't know what the problem is. I can't stand the idea of not winning the WMC yet again this year, but that just isn't enough to get me practicing like I need to. I'm hoping that the competitions from May onwards will get me more in the mood, but with my very half-hearted training I've been doing for the last however many months, I'm not sure whether that might be too late to get back into it. It's worrying.

Have you ever investigated arcade emulation to play actual arcade ROMs on your PC?

Actually, I downloaded MAME last year, and I had to delete it, because I was doing nothing but playing Roadblasters and Track & Field all day and night. Horribly addictive thing. I didn't get the arcade version of Bubble Bobble, though, because it's the Master System version that I'm hooked on, and the subtle differences would be too annoying.

Come to think of it, can we interest you in trying out for the UK team for the World Puzzle Championship?

Sure, why not? I don't know why I've never looked into this one before, it's exactly my type of thing...

Is it too cheesy an analogy to compare the speed cards discipline to the hundred metres sprint, as being the one whose world record people are most likely to care about if they only care about one world record? (Then again, people used the analogy "four-minute mile" for "30-second pack of cards".)

Yes, this is another thing that deserves a blog-rant! Why did people keep calling it the four-minute-mile? The hundred metres is a much closer analogy, not just in that that's the record that people get most excited about, but because it's fast and furious, not a long grind like the mile or the hour numbers. Okay, for some reason breaking the 10-second barrier in the hundred metres didn't generate all the hoopla that breaking the 4-minute barrier for the mile did (useful How To Be Clever-style trivia - Jim Hines did the first accurately-recorded sub-ten-second 100m, on my birthday, October 14, in 1968).

Actually, having just looked him up to find out who did the first sub-ten-second hundred-metre-sprint, I'm appalled by the lack of websites praising Jim Hines. Put his name into Google and you get lots of pages about a guy who writes books about goblins. But the sprinter Jim Hines seems like a really nice guy. Someone make him more famous, please!

Have you ever considered turning your hand to seven-card stud, where the ability to memorise the upcards that have been folded would be of very great advantage?

Well, I did win a seven-card stud gold medal at the MSO one year. But that was just using my favourite strategy of not having a clue what I'm doing but being dealt really good hands every time. I prefer to play that way - somehow, using memory techniques in a poker game would make it feel like working, whereas using memory techniques in a memory competition feels like having fun. Don't ask me why.

When are you going to send me you book, man?!

I did send it to you! I'll send it again now...

Let's say you accepted a bet, and that bet was something to the effect that if you could drink all the water you wanted, but were limited to only one food to eat everyday, for an entire week, what would that one food be and why?

What am I betting here? It'd have to be something good. And when you say 'one food', do you mean the same meal, or the same general cuisine? Assuming you mean just one meal, let's say spaghetti bolognese. I like the stuff, I can eat an enormous plateful at one go, enough to last me a whole day, most likely, if there's plenty of water with it, so I wouldn't get too tired of the stuff after seven days. And it's probably good for you, contains vegetables and things, it's probably one of the healthiest things I regularly eat. As an alternative, I could live for a week on bacon double cheeseburger meals from BK. Mmmmmm... (drooling with a glazed expression)

If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power, would you?

No, because as I mentioned a while ago when talking about that book of Stephen Fry's, doing so invariably leads to someone much nastier taking his place, Germany winning the war and some hero having to set things right again.

But even assuming I could also, just to make sure, kill off Goebbels, Strasser, Schleicher, Bormann and all those kinds of people who might cause trouble without Hitler being around, I wouldn't. I think the war served an important purpose in the progression of human history - it put an end to big armed conflict between European countries, it established things like genocide as being entirely unacceptable, and all in all, I think averting the war would really not have a beneficial effect on the world of the early 21st century. There were tensions that needed to be burnt off, Hitler brought them to a head and it wasn't pleasant for anyone, but it's all receding into the history books now.

What's a Butfore?

For pooping, silly.

Are you afraid, you book could be a success?

Terrified. Secretly, I don't want anyone to read it, in case they laugh at me and say it's rubbish. But I'd still like to be paid for it, please.

I would like to know if I could enter just one or two events [at the Cambridge Memory Championship] and not all of them?

That wasn't a blog-comment question, it was an email from a competitor, but I thought it was worth mentioning here. Yes, you can come to the Cambridge Memory Championship (May 4th, Trinity College, Cambridge) and only compete in the disciplines of your choice, but it's a lot more fun if you take part in everything. There's nothing to be afraid of, a lot of beginners are coming and nobody's going to throw rotting vegetables at you if you get an unimpressive score!

You can also come to the Derby Memory Championship (May 24-25, Bramblebrook Community Centre, Derby), if you like. It's gonna be really great, lots of publicity, cashing in on my local celebrity status!

And that's the tooth

I've got toothache and I blame my toothpaste. For reasons that I can't remember now but that probably made perfect sense, last time my brother came to visit, he brought a tube of toothpaste with him and left it with me, since mine had nearly run out. However, it was Macleans Whitening toothpaste. I disapprove quite strongly of whitening toothpastes, although my brother wasn't to know that, since I don't think I've ever mentioned to anyone that I have this unusual opinion. However, I'm actually quite pleased to see that my irrational prejudices have been borne out in this case, because I've been using the stuff for a month or so, my teeth aren't any whiter and they hurt.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I'd like to announce that tomorrow's blog entry will be a "Zoomy Answers Your Questions" kind of thing. 'Your' in this case referring to Chris Dickson, who found my blog today and posted several comments that I think merit a full and public answer in a blog post, but while I'm doing that, I thought I should make it into a full reader-mail kind of blog. So if anyone wants to ask me anything, post a comment here, and I'll answer you!

Let's Do It

I like a bit of Victoria Wood from time to time. And UKTV Gold seems to like her quite a lot, since there's always one show or another of hers on there. And I happened to flick over to it tonight to see an As Seen On TV that I've somehow never seen before, with the song The Ballad Of Barry And Freda, which is the funniest one of hers I've ever heard (and she's written a whole lot of great songs in her time). So, rather than thinking of something to write about in my blog tonight (kurnik othello tournament starts in ten minutes, football on the telly, you know the usual Saturday night ritual), I thought I should share the song with you all, just in case some of my readers have missed out on this classic too. Enjoy!

Pi Day

A few years ago, I was talking with some people on March 14th, and someone mentioned that it's Pi Day, on account of it being 3/14. I said that it shouldn't count as Pi Day in Britain if we have to put the date the American way to make it work, and we should instead celebrate pi on April 31st, to be nice and British about it. Everybody nodded and agreed that that was more sensible, and it wasn't until late that night that it occurred to me that there isn't a 31st of April. I can't remember who I was talking to when I made the April 31st comment - possibly I've been avoiding them ever since, in case they also realised later on what a stupid thing I'd said.

In other memory-related news, I went out to the supermarket in the shopping centre tonight, and in the middle of the centre they had set up a stage with a catwalk where models were parading around and advertising something, presumably. By the time I'd done my shopping and was coming back, the models had been replaced by either hairdressers or makeup artists, who were sprucing up some volunteers from the audience while two guys gave a running commentary and kept the crowd entertained. As I walked past, one of them said, into the microphone, "Hey, I know that guy, he was on TV!" They then introduced me to the crowd gathered around, by name and knowing a frankly scary amount about my memory achievements. Without even mentioning the chimp. Everyone applauded. Am I actually a local celebrity now?

And while it's true, as they announced, that I don't need to make a list when I shop at Sainsbury's, that's largely because I don't decide what I'm going to eat for the next week or so until I get there. If I need to buy something specific, I do invariably forget it.

Dean's Hanger?

MK Doms

Rather than going to work tomorrow, I'm going to Milton Keynes, to watch Dominic O'Brien give a memory presentation to youths at a school, the idea being that I can do some of the same kind of thing in the future. I'm sure it'll be fun, and hopefully the audience will be fascinated by the whole thing and form a new generation of memory competitors to rival all those Germans.

Or perhaps they'll all be terrible yobs who think memory is 'uncool', in which case you can look forward to a blog tomorrow moaning about the youth of today and how in my day things were different and we respected our elders and betters-at-memory-stuff.

Postscript to tonight's entry

I feel bad about saying things about Simon Wootton that he might find offensive. I don't mean any of it seriously, if you're reading this, Simon. In fact, your book is great.

I also feel bad about not namechecking his co-author, who also offered brain advice in the Metro newspaper yesterday, but who I've never written anything bad or good about. His name's Terry Horne. And now I come to think of it, wasn't that the guy James was emailing who said he might come to one of our uni demos but didn't? I think it might be.

Rather than writing these things in my blog and sharing them with the world, I really should get in the habit of just talking to the people who might be able to answer that kind of question, shouldn't I?

Small world

Got a big bulky envelope in the post today from Hodder the publishers (that was the one I sent How To Be Clever to as an afterthought after the blog last week when I mentioned sending it to two others - sorry for not keeping you informed) and assumed it was my first rejection. It made me feel quite nostalgic for the days when everyone was rejecting The Adventures Of Jayce And Alex, actually. But it wasn't a rejection, or at least not a complete one - it was a letter from the person in charge of the 'teach yourself' imprint, saying that although they couldn't publish HTBC in its current format, they would like to do a 'teach yourself how to be clever' (the teach yourself books don't use capital letters in the titles, a thing that I loathe and detest about modern trendy books) if I wanted to rewrite it in their style. And they sent me a copy of their latest book, 'teach yourself training your brain', co-written by none other than Simon Wootton, on whom I poured scorn yesterday for his advice on remembering things by telling your mobile phone to remind you. Even though I give the same kind of advice (well, I say "Write it down", when I get asked the same stupid questions.

The first thing I notice on flicking through 'training your brain' is that it covers a heck of a lot of the same ground as 'How To Be Clever'. If I rewrote HTBC into the house style, it would basically be the same book as this one. Why would they want another one? Also, the tone is scholarly and adult, and I think my book would lose a lot of its appeal if it was written like that. It's not really aimed at people who are serious about self-improvement. And all the IQ puzzles are stolen from other people. I at least had the decency to make up my own, in the style of the ones you usually see. And there's even a chapter about creativity, dammit. I thought I was being original there.

No, all in all, I don't think I want to rewrite my magnum opus into a 'teach yourself' book. Not that I was expecting any publisher to say "yes, we'll publish your wonderful book exactly as you sent it to us, shoddily-made diagrams using MS Word shape-drawing tools and everything, so you won't ever need to think about it again until the royalty cheques start pouring in," but I don't want to have to change it to quite such an extent. I think I'll wait on another publisher who's more in tune with my brain. If there is such a thing.

Although I might change my mind later. I always have a rule that I sleep on decisions like this. The rule, come to think of it, really should also preclude writing at length in my blog about it for the publisher to see, but it seems to have failed to stop me tonight. I bet all the Hodder people are regular readers of mine. Or else maybe Simon Wootton will google himself, find yesterday's and today's blogs and snitch on me.

Speaking of googlers finding my blog, let's all say a big hello to Dave, who lives in Tumby Woodside, and found my old entry from last year when the TV people took me back there. Hello, Dave, and all the rest of you Tumby Woodsiders out there!

Brain experts advise: don't use your brain

According to a filler article in the Metro newspaper this morning, it's Brain Awareness Week, or something like that. Every week seems to be brain something week, probably because there are lots of people competing to promote their brain-enhancing books or systems these days. One of them, Simon Wootton, who co-wrote a book about Strategic Thinking, offered his advice on that much-loved subject of newspapers and magazines with a page to pad out, how to remember birthdays and where you put your car keys. He came out with the suggestion to "Use a diary or a mobile phone as an electronic prompt for birthdays or anniversaries."

So Brain Awareness Week (or whatever it is) is a time for us to not even try to use our brains to remember things, but just rely on our mobile phones to do our thinking for us? It's disgraceful! I was thinking of writing an outraged letter to the Metro about it, but I decided that my blog readers would be more likely to get the joke.

But I can offer you a meringue, if that's any use

Can I use the great advertising power of my blog to urge people to go out and buy the second issue of Black Meringue, the alternative wedding magazine? Yes, even if you're not getting married, because there's a very entertaining article by my brother in it. I should really have made a similar advertisement when the previous issue came out, since he also wrote stuff for that, but I didn't, and now it's much too late. But go and read it and see that insanity does indeed run in families.

Meanwhile, the FA Cup this year seems determined to call on all the trivia I know about the competition. As you'll recall, I memorised the results of all the finals for our university demos, and also lots of little snippets of interesting information so that I can make recalling them more entertaining for everyone. And now everyone's getting in on the act, looking up all the when-was-the-last-time-this-happened statistics that the mad semi-final lineup this year demands.

So before they're in all the newspapers tomorrow, let me impress you with the facts that Barnsley, Cardiff and Portsmouth have each won the cup only once in the competition's long history - in 1912, 1927 and 1939 respectively. And they had all been runners-up before that, in Barnsley's and Cardiff's cases two years before winning the trophy, whereas Portsmouth were beaten finalists in 1929 and 1934. And having won the Cup for the first and only time, none of them ever reached the final again. West Brom, unfortunately, refuse to conform to this interesting statistic, since they were a major force in the early days of professional football and have won the cup lots of times. The last one was in 1968, though.

Furthermore, the last time the Cup was not won by one of the Big Four was in 1995 (Everton 1, Man Utd 0). The last time none of the Big Four made it to the final was in 1991 (Spurs 2, Nottingham Forest 1). The last time none of the Big Four made it to the semi-finals was in 1987 (Coventry, Spurs, Watford and Leeds - not as weird a lineup then as it would be today, because all but Leeds were top-division teams back then).

The last team from outside the top division to win the Cup was West Ham in 1980. There has never yet been a final between two non-top-flight teams. The last time three non-top-flight teams made the semis was exactly a hundred years ago, in 1908. When Barnsley won the Cup in 1912, they were in the second level of league football, and the club they beat in the final was West Brom. All these things I knew before it was cool to know them.

Every second counts

You know, there was a time, I can remember it well, when I knew how to play othello. Those days are gone.

I got up this morning at a reasonable time, knowing the tournament was just down the road in Leicester, so there was no need to rush around. I actually relaxed rather too much, and ended up having to hurry down to the train station after all, but I caught it in time. I realised along the way that I'd forgotten to bring my clock, but didn't think it would really matter, seeing as David was bringing the BOF supply of clocks, and we'd only be short if there was a huge number of competitors. I decided to take my bike, as I said yesterday, which may have been a mistake - I managed to get lost navigating the single, long, straight road between Leicester station and the venue.

Nonetheless, when I got there twenty minutes late, it was to find Steve, Iain and Jeremy standing around aimlessly in the church foyer, traditional venue for the tournament, with boards but no clocks. A little internet research turned up an apology from David for having overslept and being still in Colchester. With the clocks. Steve and Iain had also thought about bringing their own clocks, but neglected to do so. I suggested that we improvise an ingenious timing system using my stopwatch, Jeremy's digital watch and the clock on the wall - it would have worked just fine, but the others were sceptical. We ended up playing without clocks at all, and with plenty of discussion as to whether the tournament would count for the BGP. It probably will.

Still, my performance deserves rotten vegetables throwing at me - I lost five and drew the other, and that was a completely undeserved draw too, because Steve had a win at move 58 but somehow didn't see it. I have no idea why I'm so rubbish all of a sudden. It's depressing.

But still, in other news, I got home in time to see Barnsley demolish Chelsea in the Cup! It's slightly annoying in that I used to be the only person who knew that Barnsley won the Cup in 1912, and that there's a line in How To Be Clever about how that was the most boring F A Cup in history - now everyone will think I only picked up this knowledge because there's all this hoopla about them beating two of the big four, instead of having known it since I first started memorising cup final results last December.

But isn't it cool that the big guns are all out before the semi-finals? Just somebody knock Bristol Rovers out, please, so as not to confuse me (as explained in a previous blog). I'm not sure whether to cheer for Barnsley (who were actually the better team today and really deserve the trophy after all their giant-killing) or Portsmouth (who I generally cheer for because the last couple of years they've been playing so much better than they have any right to). On the other hand, I dislike Harry Redknapp, so I think I'll buy a Barnsley scarf. Or turn Welsh like James and support Cardiff.

Cuddly

I've been cycling all week, but I suspect I'm still a bit fatter than I should be. Maybe I should have liposuction. It'd have to be the do-it-yourself sort involving a vacuum cleaner, because I've still got no money, but the alternative is stopping eating so much, and I'm fairly certain that's not going to happen.

I might take my bike on the train to Leicester tomorrow and cycle out to Oadby. Partly because of the health benefits, and partly because the alternative is taking the bus, and that requires me to remember what the venue looks like, spot it from the bus window and stop the bus in time to walk back to it. Which is complicated and I worry that I'd end up in Bognor Regis, or wherever the local bus that passes through Oadby ends up.

The other alternative is taking a taxi, but you all know how I feel about taxis.

Nearly the weekend!

I've really missed being able to make a distinction between the weekend and the rest of the week. It makes you appreciate Saturday and Sunday so much more if you're spending the previous five days in an office (even if it is an office all to yourself). And woo, in a couple of weeks' time, it's Easter! A four-day weekend! Woohoo! I would have hated to be not working around that!

This weekend, incidentally, it's the first othello regional of the season, in Oadby. I wrote quite lengthy blogs about each of the tournaments last year, if memory serves. Perhaps that means I shouldn't do it again, in case I get repetitive, and should write about something else entirely. We'll see.

Competition time

It was the first of our university competitions today, up at Preston, and I didn't get to go and oversee things, seeing as the second day in a new job is generally considered a bit early to take a day off. Still, I'm sure it all went fine - I handed over my speed cards timers to James at the train station on my way to work this morning, even the one I would otherwise have used this evening to practice with. See the sacrifices I make? I had to do my practice the old-fashioned way, with my stopwatch, and so that's my excuse for not doing very well at it.

Having a job does get in the way of these extracurricular activities, though. I mean, having money and being able to buy food and things is always an advantage, but it would be nice if I could split myself into two like the guy in a book I read once, and do both.

I can't remember what that book's called, but the central character was called Gordon, he called his duplicate of himself George and they developed a great juggling act. Anybody know it? Because that's going to bug me now. Why didn't I just say 'split myself into two like the superhero the Multiple Man'? I know all about him.

The Office Boy

You know, there's nothing like having a job for inspiring me to do more with my leisure time. I've been memory-training and doing things around the house and emailing and all kinds of stuff this evening. Whereas when I'm at home all day, I sit around doing nothing.

Also cool about my new job is that it's quite fun to do, and I get my own office. I've never had an office all to myself before - it's rather frowned-upon in these modern days of open-plan office spaces, but the building I'm working in now is ancient and harks back to the days when people got their own little room if they were suitably important. And the toilets are really amazingly 19th-century in decor, they have to be seen to be believed.

My job is very boring, I'm an office clerk

The second interview at Gardner went pretty well, I thought. They'll be making a decision by the end of the week, and I'm quite hopeful. Which makes me feel guilty about the job at Saint-Gobain I'm starting tomorrow, because it's a bit rude to quit a job after only working there for a week or so. But maybe I'll be super-efficient and get all those payments reconciled within a day or two - I am really great, after all.

In order to get there, I've decided to take my bike on the train to Long Eaton and cycle the nearly five miles there. It'll give me lots of healthy fresh air and exercise, and perhaps after this month-long contract is over (being pessimistic now and assuming the Gardner job doesn't work out) I'll be able to look that Woolworth's weighing machine in the electronic eye.

Anyway, I'm back in the routine of the working man - I've ironed a pile of shirts, I just need to make some sandwiches for tomorrow and I'll be all set.

Meanwhile, I have made an effort to bring my book to the attention of publishers - only a couple of them, so as not to have a flood of rejection letters all at once, and with Carlton Books I accidentally sent them the same covering letter I'd sent to the other publisher, the appropriate-sounding How To Books, so they'll just sneer at the complimentary references to their rival publisher and put me on their enemies list. So really, I've only properly submitted my book to one publisher. When they tell me to get stuffed, I'll try someone else.

I respectfully disagree

The film of The Green Mile is on ITV tonight, and I see that the Radio Times only gives it three stars, and feels that it's 'overlong' and 'sentimental'. And they give four stars to all kinds of rubbish. I saw the film in the cinema when it first came out for some reason (I practically never go to the cinema, so why I went to see this one when I normally avoid adaptations of books I like, I can't imagine) and thought it was really pretty good.

I should be the Radio Times movie critic. I'd be a good one, except that I wouldn't want to give any film a bad review in case the director read it and got upset.

And yes, I know I promised a long and interesting blog tonight, but I can't really think of anything to write. Tomorrow's entry will be three times as long as usual, and so fascinating, your head will explode. Twice.