Cough, hack, snort, sniffle

I'll resume regular blog output when I'm feeling better. For now, I'm going to bed. Get-well-soons would be gratefully received.

Ohhh, my head...

Sorry about last night's unusually brief post. I wasn't planning to go out drinking - for one thing I'm suffering from a terrible cold at the moment - but my brother phoned me and invited me to come out and buy him drinks, and how could I refuse? But I blame the cold virus for the fact that I've had the worst hangover of my life today. I didn't even drink all that much, but I still feel pretty terrible even now, and I'm sure it can't be that I just can't cut the mustard like I used to.

Still, to look on the bright side, while we were loudly singing and carousing and breaking things, a passer-by glared at us and said "Bloody students..." Obviously I still look youthful for a 32-year-old, bald accountant!

Sorry, no blog tonight.

Drunk. Brother. Singing was involved. Need bed.

Cambridge! Roll up, roll up!

Okay, this coming weekend is my official emailing-everyone-about-the-Cambridge-Memory-Championship weekend, so here's a little advance warning, just in case anybody wants to email me first and tell me they're definitely coming. Because the 'definites' list consist of a Norwegian, two Swedes, two Germans and an Italian from Tunbridge Wells, so it would be nice to also have a confirmation from some of the British people who've said they're probably coming along.

Maybe I should lose weight

Or perhaps it's just the ancient dining chairs this flat came with. Either way, while memorising cards this evening, I tilted my chair back on two legs as I always do, only for it to fall to pieces and drop me comically on the floor. Oliver Hardy couldn't have done it better, I just wish I'd had a camera filming me at the time.

I should get some more chairs this weekend. I've been meaning to get some new furnishings to fill out this semi-furnished flat of mine, perhaps I'll go to SAS Furniture (the strangely military-sounding shop down the road that I've been driven past on the way to Grandma's house for my entire life, but have never gone inside) and splurge on some tacky and tasteless items!

Just how much of a celeb am I?

Let's just look a bit more closely at last night's "clever celebrities" lineup on Watchdog, and bear in mind that they invited me to be on it only for me to turn them down because of the Welsh Memory Championship. The team consisted of Keith Chegwin, Konnie Huq and Iain Lee. Those are all Real Celebrities! Okay, I'm sure even they would agree that they're not exactly A-list superstars, but they're all unquestionably people who the man on the street would describe as celebrities, rather than people who've been on the telly once or twice. Except possibly Iain Lee, who I had to look up on the internet, but he's got his own radio show, so he must be cool.

And they wanted me on the team too! I'm really chuffed by this. That means I must be a genuine famous person! I'm quite serious, by the way - I realise that there are people in the world who wouldn't consider it a high point in their career to be listed alongside Cheggers and her off Blue Peter, but I really do! This really is fantastic stuff, and I'm all delighted! I wish I'd blown off the memory competition and done Watchdog now...

Other things I've learned recently

Bristol Parkway train station hasn't got a platform 1. Just 2, 3 and 4. Which is groovy, because it reminds me of good old Skegness station, which has six surviving platforms numbered 2 to 7, although only one of them ever gets used. Cardiff Central makes up for this by having a platform 0.

Slightly more interestingly, I had something of a revelation while on my way down to Wales on Friday night. I just thought to myself "You know, actually, the reason I have an aptitude for memory stuff is probably that I've had a lifelong obsession with cartoons, comics and any and all forms of visual storytelling. And the basic principle of memory techniques is to use mental visual storytelling to remember things. Hey, I've never thought of it like that before!" Dai's response when I told him was, I suspect, pretty much what everybody else will be thinking too - "Well, yeah, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?" - but this is a whole new outlook for me. The fundamental interconnectedness of all things amazes me!

STOP PRESS: About five seconds after typing Dai's name there, blow me down if I didn't get an email from him, reminding me that Watchdog was on tonight, and guess who they got for the pub-quiz segment after I turned them down? Keith Chegwin! Wow, I'm cooler than Cheggers! When do I get my own series of Zoomy Plays Pop?

Cymraeg Chof Chydymgais / Welsh Memory Championship

'm hovercraft ydy llonaid chan llyswennod. I have returned from the land of bilingual traffic signs and train station announcements after a very fun weekend! Ai Ddeudais caech a 'n arddun chorff , afaelech 'i rhago? Wales is certainly an interesting place to visit, and it's funny that I've never found a reason to do it before now. Dwi na 'n bellach heintiedig. The first-ever Welsh memory championship was a big success, even attracting three Welsh competitors (as many UK competitors who turned up for the first UK championship) as well as six outsiders. 'm ddidennau chwala ag ddifyrra! And I did rather better than I'd expected to do, which is reassuring!

It's great to be officially back in the memory-competition season! Ringland Community Centre, near Newport, welcomed a posse of new and old memorisers - a Welsh Team made up of old hand James Paterson, newbie Carl Griffin and new-to-competitions-but-not-to-memorising-cards John Burrows; an English Team of me, Katie Kermode and Ameel Hoque; and a Foreigners Team of Dagfinn Hammar (Norway), Idriz Zogaj (Albanio-Sweden) and Conor Muldoon (Ireland). Plus an all-important organising and arbiting team of Dai, Dai's dad and neighbour Sian, Phil, Warren and (Ameel's girlfriend who mentioned during one conversation that nobody ever spells her name right but who for some reason I didn't ask to tell me the correct spelling, so if this is right I'll be very surprised) Dionne.

I haven't got the final results to hand, so can only rely on my memory, but we started off with a new world record in the 5-minute words, from Katie of course, with 109 (or something close to it). I think that was the only world record of the day, I certainly wasn't up to speed enough to set one, unless there was one in the names and faces right at the end (we did that discipline last, unusually, for technical reasons - the papers needed to be printed out during the competition). I got an 82 in the words, which I was entirely happy with. I moved into the lead after discipline two, 5-minute binary, with a pretty impressive 840, and I think held on to it all the way through from then on. Throughout the competition, I was some distance away from my best, but not as far off as I'd thought I would be - my brain was running slower than it does when I've been training, and I was completely burnt out by the end of the day, but I posted quite acceptable scores in nearly everything.

Katie was a fairly comfortable second place - she's the top contender for next-new-British-World-Champion at the moment, unless she forgets everything during the general excitement of having a baby in August - and Ameel and James were fighting it out all the way through for third, with Ameel ending up on top. Hooray for Team England!

Dai provided floor-space (and even bed-space for me! I'm privileged, on account of I'm the world champion, you see), food, drink and fun for everyone, and organised a cracking weekend. Book your tickets for the next one, this time next year!

Ponty-Prid

Well, tomorrow I'm attempting to find my way to Risca & Pontymister train station, deep in the wilds of Wales, somewhere. I've never actually been to Wales before, even though some people dubiously claim that the name Pridmore originates there, so it'll be weird and different and unusual. But probably also fun!

Of course, if not for the Welsh Memory Championship, I could be furthering my TV career - I had a last-minute invitation this evening to be on Watchdog! They're filming a thing on Saturday for a piece about phone directory services, funnily enough (see my post of a couple of days ago), which made me think it's fate and almost made me consider ditching the memory championship in order to do it. But then I remembered that I'm unlikely to keep getting this kind of TV invitation anyway if I don't win the World Memory Championship this year, and I'm unlikely to win the WMC if I don't go to any memory championships. So it's a good celebrity-career move not to be on telly next Monday. Be sure to tune in and see who they managed to recruit at even shorter notice!

Healthy, wealthy and wise

I had a photo shoot this afternoon with Men's Health magazine. And a surprisingly painless one, too - the guy is a proper professional photographer who was under instructions to produce 'a strong portrait of Ben Pridmore' (quite a challenge), and my experience of such things is that getting one photo tends to involve at least three or four hours of rearranging/accidentally breaking all my furnishings, setting up huge camera/lighting apparatus, taking pictures from all angles and finally using the one that makes me look fat. However, this shoot took less than an hour from start to finish, nothing got broken, set on fire or eaten, and although I don't know which shot they're eventually going to choose, I seemed to come out looking positively slender!

In fact, here's the link to the photographer's website, which I mentioned but didn't link to in a previous post. Give him a call if you're looking for a photographer for your wedding! He probably doesn't do weddings, but he might know someone who does. He made me look just as glamorous as Kate Winslet in that picture.

Planning

How many packs of cards to go for in the 10-min cards on Saturday? I could probably do six and not make a mess of it, even out of practice as I am, but I don't like to attempt something that's worse than the world record. It bugs me. This is why I'm not a serious, dedicated professional, of course - I always end up going for something I know perfectly well is beyond my capabilities when I'm out of practice, for no good reason.

I'll also probably go for a 20-something seconds pack of speed cards and get it all wrong. I can just see that happening.

Blood, blood and more blood

When giving blood today, the nurse made a mess of getting the needle into my left arm, and they ended up draining a bag of B-positive from my right arm instead. Which doesn't bother me unduly, except that I've thereby ended up with sticking plasters on each of my inner elbows. And I've got surprisingly hairy arms for a nerd, so getting plasters off my arms is always painful and unpleasant.

Still, I was cheered up completely when I came home to find that 118 247 have launched an ad campaign based on Magical Trevor (and Trev himself even makes a cameo appearance in the brilliant advert)! Could this be the end of 118 118's advert-campaign-fuelled domination of the directory enquiries market? I'm certainly going to call 247 next time I want to know a number, anyway. Everyone loves Magical Trevor...

Britains Space!

Talking with my brother today reminded me how cool these things were! A series of spaceship/spacemen/alien toys, that could be taken apart, to a certain extent, and combined in exciting ways! We had just about all of the toys shown on that page - they were cheap, really cool and on sale in Perkins newsagent in Horncastle in the early eighties. We've still, indeed, got some of them, under my bed in what remains of our toy collection. That website is quite right about the robots' soft plastic bits going sticky and unpleasant after twenty-something years, but they're still awesomely cool. Long live Britains!

Pseudo-preparation

Well, I did a tiny bit of memory training today. By which I mean a words practice, a binary practice and a names and faces practice, five minutes for each. Which isn't exactly a busy day full of training, but never mind. I'm sort of relying on the competition next week (and the accompanying chats with fellow competitors) to kick-start my interest in memory sports again. There's no denying it, it really is hard to stay motivated when you're the world champion.

I'm not going to do any practice tomorrow, either, because I'm going to spend the day watching cartoons with my brother. This kind of activity was described as 'preparation' in The Mentalists, so who am I to argue?

Hands!

That's weird. I've just found an old 50p coin on the floor of my living room - one of the reasonably-rare 1973 coins with the ring of hands instead of Britannia on the reverse, that look like this. It must have come from the carrier bag of copper coins, miscellaneous old motorbike keys and similarly-sized objects, which has been lying on the floor since I moved in (really need to find a cupboard or maybe a bank to put it in) and has recently been accidentally ripped open by my sofa and spread its contents all over the floor. But I wasn't aware there was a 50p in there. I must have saved it, years ago, when the old-style 50ps were being phased out, but I don't remember doing it.

I like surprises! I must make a point of concealing other little trinkets among my old junk, so my future self can find them! What with the old 10p I got from Roel last month, I'm indulging in pleasant memories of the halcyon days when money was quite a bit bigger than it is now. Ahh, wasn't life great then?

Wow!

Have you seen the 'Street View' feature on Google Maps? You can see right in my living room window! What if I'd been dancing naked when they took the picture? Actually, you can't really see anything past the reflection of the glass, and anyway the picture must have been taken before I moved in, because there's no curtains, but even so! This is a wonderful piece of technology, and I'm all in favour!

A letter to the council

I have a rule that I don't talk politics in this blog, but since my post today consisted of a glossy leaflet from my MP (who, despite being acquainted with Chris, isn't someone I've formed a good impression of during my time in his constituency) and a council tax bill, and since I can't think of anything else to talk about, let's poke fun at the stupidness of the booklet that comes with it.

Council tax around here ("around here" meaning I'm pointing fingers at Nottinghamshire County Council and Broxtowe Borough Council, specifically, just so everybody knows who I'm deriding. Wouldn't want to offend any neighbouring councils) is extremely high, so it's fun to see how they try to justify it. The best part is a section called "Setting the record straight", a summary of the complaints that a 'Citizens Panel' came up with, and the Council's answer to them.

The consultation exercise gave rise to a number of comments, we would like everyone to know the real situation:

"Our roads are in a poor state"

Compared to other counties, the condition of our major roads is amongst the best in the country and our minor roads are above average condition.

"You have too many people on high salaries."

75% of our non-school staff are paid less than the national average. A few years ago we reviewed our senior management structures and saved £1 million.

It goes on in this vein. I just love that kind of "if you don't like it, go and live in Russia" response! It is of course true that the roads around here are awful and the top-pay-grade council staff are vastly overpaid, and I suppose it's nice that they're not denying it, but are they really implying that because the situation is arguably worse elsewhere, they don't need to do anything about it?

Really, it's this kind of hypocrisy that someone ought to do something about. Come the revolution, brothers, they'll be the first against the wall. Meanwhile, I'll just go back to not reading these stupid council pamphlets and watching cartoons instead.

Traditionally built

I was meaning to write about the BBC adaptation of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which started a six-episode series on Sunday. I'm quite a fan of the books, but I didn't see the one-off special a while ago. I normally avoid TV and film versions of good books, because they invariably ruin them (I might still go and see Watchmen if I get a chance, though - I've heard vaguely encouraging things). But this one was actually really good! Particularly the casting - all the characters look exactly like they should (with the possible exception of Mr J L B Matekoni, who I thought would be taller and thinner), and the conversion from book to screen is done very nicely. I approve! It's nice to have something to watch on the telly of a Sunday evening for once.

Throw those curtains wide!

We're officially at the point where, even if I'm starting early or finishing late, I'm going to and from work in broad daylight. Words can't describe how great this is. Quite apart from the savings I make on batteries for my bike lights, there's nothing more depressing than spending every daylight hour in the office.

Well, it's also quite depressing to have to be in the office while it's so lovely and warm and sunny. Ideally, in non-depressive terms, it's best not to go to the office at all. Well, maybe when it rains. Really heavily.

I don't remember

It's the Welsh Memory Championship the weekend after next, and I've done no training for it. I'm probably going to do really really badly, like in France last year. But at least that competition put me more in the memory-training mood, and I went on to win some other competitions (as far as I can recall).

I should spend next weekend practicing for it, but then I should have spent this weekend doing that too, and I didn't. I'm still really struggling with the motivation.