Happy birthday to you, Cliff!

The great Cliff Richard reaches pensionable age today. Many happy returns are also in order for Roger Moore, the late E E Cummings and the very late Battle of Hastings.

And I'm tired out. I set my alarm clock for half seven, same as usual, and ignored it as I always do, only to be dragged out of bed five minutes later by my dad phoning with birthday greetings. He'd been at work for four hours, so it was the middle of the day by his standards, and he'd assumed I'd be going to work today. Even when I do go to work, I'm never out of bed by 7:35, but the early risers of this world just don't appreciate that.

Anyway, I've spent the whole day since then buying supplies and making preparations for this party. I've baked a cake, or rather two cakes since I didn't have a cake tin big enough for all the cake mix I'd prepared. They're not going to win any beauty contests, but I'm hopeful that they'll be edible. Also made a trifle and jelly and blancmange, and found my Back To The Future board game (free with Smith's Crisps back in 1985) - if there's anything else you need for a great party then I certainly don't know what it is.

I found a bunny-rabbit mould for the blancmange in the Co-op, which I just had to buy. A pink blancmange bunny and green jelly grass was an essential part of birthday parties for the first ten years or so of my life - see, that's another good thing my mother's done, in accordance with those resolutions yesterday. Had a perfectly civil conversation with her on the phone this afternoon, if anyone's keeping track. I was even doing my best to nudge it over the line into 'friendly', but we generally stuck to 'polite'.

It's a good thing I phoned Grandma to get that number, actually, because she was distraught at not having sent me a card or phoned me, due to an incident with marmalade and her address book. I filled in the bits that had been obliterated by orange sticky stuff and promised to come down and take her out for a fancy meal when I get my redundancy money.

My brother had called earlier, also assuming I'd be at work but phoning me anyway with the intention of leaving a message (he hasn't got a phone at home so has to call from his office or a phone box - we don't go in for mobiles in this family) so I signed him up for this lunch date and gratefully accepted his generous promises to buy me a card and present if and when he has any money.

I don't know if other people can have conversations with their family without it sounding like something out of a sitcom (or, in my mother's case, some kind of deep BBC2 drama). Still, which would you rather be, weird or boring? No contest.

Twenty-nine tomorrow

Which inspires me to look back over the last year and think "What have I achieved while I was 28?"

Not all that much, really. The year when I was 26, I quit my job, grew a beard, spent a lot of time wandering around wondering around the subject of what to do with my life, spent a month in Cambridge learning how to teach foreigners English, came up with some revolutionary new techniques for memorising numbers and playing cards, lost a lot of weight, got a new job, quit it, went to Kuala Lumpur and muscled my way into the top echelon of memory people.

When I was 27, I got a better new job, moved to Derby, made what I think was a real contribution to stopping the whole 'memory sports' thing splitting into warring factions, won the world championship (and the 'world cup' that would have been another world championship if I hadn't suggested the name change), played some uncharacteristically good othello and qualified for the world championships of that, and was on The Weakest Link.

What have I done while I've been 28? Played in the world othello championships that I'd qualified for in the previous year of my existence, and did quite badly. Found that I couldn't motivate myself to try to win the world memory championship again, decided to memorise pi to 50,000 places instead only to give up on it when someone else did it better, entered the world memory championship after all and did quite badly in that too. Got made redundant.

No changes of job, address, facial hair, no world champion titles, a definite sense of lack of achievement in any of the areas that matter. Am I just being pessimistic? It just seems like the pace of my life has been slowing down as I inch my way reluctantly towards thirty.

So what am I going to do with the final year of my third decade on this planet? I think it's time for some new year-of-my-time-on-this-planet resolutions!

Well, there's going to be a new job, for starters. And unlike the last one which mainly relied on me doing really easy things that everyone else thought (wrongly) were difficult, this one is likely to involve actual work. Making a go of that is going to be a big achievement, I think.

There'll probably be a new address if I stay working in Burton too. Consider me officially resolved to get a nice place and keep it relatively clean and pretty-looking.

Memory things? I'm not sure what to resolve, just yet. To keep in training is a good one, whether I go for the WMC or not (and I think I probably will). Next weekend, I'll make sure to do a proper training session, and keep in the habit of doing it whenever I get a chance. Will I go for pi or not? Seems a shame to waste all the work I did earlier this year, but then again at least half of it has drained out of my brain already, so it'll mean a lot more work. Oh, what the heck. Consider that another resolution. I'll be checking my progress against this ill-advised list for the next year, so I'll regret it later, but yes. Recite pi to 50,000 places, maybe next March. Depending when or if Boris does his speed cards contest thing.

I think this also calls for a general resolution to do something new and spectacular. Getting a book of some kind published would be good.
Be it How To Be Clever, Jayce and Alex, or something else entirely. In fact, I hereby resolve to write not just HTBC, but something else entirely too, and make a decent effort to get someone other than my circle of friends to say it's good.

Also, I need to resolve to be nicer to my mother. I know it's a bad idea to write about that here, since as previously mentioned she's almost certainly reading it, but what the heck. Got a card and present from her this morning, with a letter attached - and none of this "I wish it was easier for us to relate" stuff either, a nice friendly letter. Seems she's been part of a study on synaesthesia by University College, London. "I have it quite strongly," she says, which is news to me, but as you might have gathered we're not big on communication in this family. I haven't, but synaesthesia has been a frequent subject of discussion in memory circles. Daniel Tammet says he's synaesthetic, and so did the famous (and, according to Oleg Stepanov, wildly overrated) Russian memory man Shereshevsky. But none of the 'real' memory people, as far as I know, do.

By 'real' people, I mean the ones who do well in memory championships, of course. I make no claims that this relates in any way to actually having a good memory. Anyway, I'll give my mum a call tomorrow, if I can summon up the nerve. Although I'll have to get the number from Grandma, obviously.

Incidentally, it's Neil Aspinall's birthday today. Tends to get overlooked in all the John Lennon hoopla that goes on at this time of year, but I've always thought Neil seemed like a really great guy. Maybe not the Fifth Beatle, but at least the ninth or tenth.

Two and a half hours (and, if we're being technical, three minutes, since I was born at 12:03am) of being 28 left. Is it too late to do something spectacular? The only thing I can think of is to take all my clothes off and run screaming down the street, but it looks a bit chilly out there. And there's no streetlights, so I might tread in something nasty.

Now we're cooking on gas!

Am I leaving it too late to make a fruit cake? Most of the recipes out there seem to expect you to make the thing weeks in advance of eating it. They don't explicitly say that it will kill you if you don't, so it's probably okay. Anyway, Crispy's promised a cake anyway, I'm only making one because I had one of those irresistible urges. And I'm making a trifle and jelly and blancmange and things, and I'm sure it's not possible to go wrong with those.

No more work till Monday! Things I need to do before the party on Saturday:

Pick up that pile of books in the bedroom and arrange it a bit more tidily.

Hoover the place so it's not quite so obviously filthy.

Acquire some beanbags and cushions and things so there's something for everyone to sit on (apart from the floor).

Go shopping and buy the bits of equipment I didn't think to buy earlier (a whisk being the main one) and the ingredients for the aforementioned cake. Also booze.

Make the aforementioned party goodies.

Move the sofa into the bedroom so as not to get in the way. It's uncomfortable and falling apart, so sitting on it probably isn't an option at the party.

Meet that TV producer guy and find out whether I want to be in a documentary or not.

Hmm, just had a phone call from Step asking me exactly what day my birthday is, and how old I'm going to be. Sounds like he's planning something. Perhaps he's going to check my horoscope for Saturday to make sure I'm not going to be struck by lightning or some other party-cancelling calamity before he gets on the train. Ah well.

The picking-up-books-and-then-hoovering thing was going to be tonight in my original plans, but I've decided to watch the football and generally not bother instead. England are playing reasonably well, for a change, although they haven't managed to score a goal yet, 25 minutes in.

Bedtime story

I really can't wait to finish work at Parkhouse. There's just nothing to do there. I've gone home for lunch the last couple of days - I don't normally bother, seeing as it's a 20-minute cycle ride each way, and 40 minutes travelling is a bit much for 20 minutes sitting at home - just to have a bit of time away from playing on the internet or otherwise doing nothing. Still, just another couple of weeks and I get to go to my scary new job and see if I can remember how to do actual work.

I watched the Booker Prize award ceremony last night, since for once I'd read one of the books on the shortlist, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go". It didn't win though, which is probably fair. Much as I love the book, it's probably not his best work (the problem with having written "The Remains of the Day" and "The Unconsoled" is that it's a very hard standard to keep up), and so I'd say there's a good chance it's not the best book of the year. Besides, he's won it before, which none of the other shortlisted writers had. So now I'll need to go out and read John Banville's "The Sea" and pretend I'd heard of it before it was cool.

His acceptance speech was fun - it's hard to thank your agent, publisher and family and not make it terminally boring, but Banville managed it. Considering he was a surprise winner, it's funny to note that he had his speech prepared on a little bit of paper in his pocket. I wonder if all the others had prepared a little speech too? And what they did with their notes afterwards?

Of course, it's not the Booker Prize now, it's the Man Booker Prize, 'Man' being the name of the sponsor. It's silly enough having the prize for best book being called the 'Booker', but calling it the Man Booker makes you wonder if there's a Woman Booker Prize too.

Apparently it was a split decision on the judges' panel between Banville and Ishiguro, with the chairman, John Sutherland, casting the deciding vote. John Sutherland is an enormously clever man, with great taste in literature, so I'll take that as a recommendation to go out and read "The Sea" as soon as possible.

It's no secret that one of my many, many ambitions in life is to be a great writer (I'm still determined to get "The Adventures of Jayce and Alex" published one of these days), but Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the people who makes me realise that I'm just never going to be that great. I think it was Stephen King who once said that there are writers who have great ideas, and writers who can write well, and only a very few who fall into both categories. Ishiguro and King are certainly both among them. I'm not sure which I am, but I'd be inclined to say 'neither'. I mean, look at the last five paragraphs of this. It's all disjointed and doesn't flow at all, dotting about from random thought to random thought on the subject.

I need to go out and read some of the rubbish that makes it to the bookshops, just to reassure myself that any old idiot can become a published writer.

Wave World Municipal Children's Miniature Golf Emporium

I was going to write about a really weird advert I've just seen, but then I remembered I'd decided to write about something other than TV tonight. So the reason why it inspired the title of this post will have to remain just one of those mysteries. Until tomorrow, at least.

Instead, let's talk about pictures of me. Always an entertaining topic, I'm sure. Sam's comment today about having to get a passport-sized photo for a railcard reminded me that I'll have to do the same. Not for a Young Person's Railcard, obviously, seeing as how I'm such an Old Person, but for a monthly season ticket to Burton-on-Trent when I start a new job.

I haven't got many pictures of myself, but I do have, somewhere, a collection of old passport-size mug shots that I've had taken over the years for one reason or another and obviously only used one or two out of the four. They date back to when I was about 17, and it's fun to chart the progression of my facial features over the last ten years or so.

There's my largely unsuccessful attempts to look like a long-haired layabout, the unflattering moustache that I genuinely thought looked good on me when I was 20, the debut appearance of the hat looking all shiny and new in 1999, the gradually disappearing hair on top of my head over the years, culminating in the latest ones, from early 2003, with stupidly long beard. I didn't grow the beard because I thought it looked good, incidentally, it was just the realisation that the time I spent shaving every morning could more profitably be spent lying in bed a bit longer.

It'll be fun to add a new set of photos to the collection. While I'm at it, I might see if I can replace the one currently in my passport. It dates back to mid-2000 and really doesn't look anything like me any more. I get all kinds of funny looks whenever I travel abroad with it.

Snooker loopy, nuts are we

I realise that this is the third post in a row where I'm talking about something I've been watching on telly, but what's the point of having weekends if you can't switch off your brain every once in a while and just soak in the radiation from the idiot box? It hasn't even been about cartoons either, which I think displays a refreshingly broad range of interests from me.

Anyway, it's good to see the new season of snooker back on TV. I think it's a peculiarly British kind of entertainment, seeing men in evening dress gently hitting balls around a table with a stick, and getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to do it. I think a lot of the appeal comes from the way it looks so darn easy - you sit there and think 'well, I could do that, no problem!'

Actually, it's harder than it looks. It's always been one of my many dreams in life to become a great snooker player, but I'm prepared to admit that that's one of the ones that will probably remain unfulfilled. I suppose with a few years of practice I could still get good, but I think that's more time than I can really afford to put in, especially since I can't fit a snooker table in my flat.

Ho hum, back to work tomorrow. A three-day week, what's more! Who knows, maybe something not on television will come up that I'll want to blog about?

Where's me washboard?

I thought I should mention that my washing machine worked perfectly today. It would be terribly unfair of me to complain on my blog when it doesn't work and then not mention it at all when it does. Three cheers for my washing machine!

What's wrong with England's football team lately, anyway? Is there some kind of rule saying that just when our cricket team start playing really well, the footballers have to get much worse? Okay, Beckham certainly didn't deserve the red card, but we didn't really deserve the penalty either, and never looked like scoring at any other time. Without Beckham against Poland we probably won't have a chance (the team always goes to pieces, seemingly as a matter of principle, whenever he's not playing), but hopefully the other results will make the Poland game academic.

In more interesting football news, Boston Utd won that game last night that I was thinking of going to but didn't. We had five players booked and two sent off, and apparently there was a fantastic goal by Joachim and a hilarious own-goal to put us 2-0 up, so it must have been fun to watch. Ah well.

Operation: p.a.r.t.y. (prepare apartment ready to ya-ya) is proceeding apace - I've picked up my pile of clothes and put them all in drawers for the first time ever. That'll make a bit more space to swing a cat in my living room, and if I move the settee out of the way, there should just about be room for everyone to fit in next Saturday. Otherwise I haven't really done anything all day, but that doesn't matter. I'll buy some cooking gear tomorrow, but since I've unexpectedly got Thursday and Friday off next week, I'll have plenty of time for preparations. Yay!

Exterminate! Exterminate!

I love the new Doctor Who. I've just been watching episode 12, "Bad Wolf", and even the stupid storyline that takes up the first half of the show (the Doctor and companions find themselves in lethal versions of Big Brother, The Weakest Link and What Not To Wear) can't stop it being a classic. Who would have thought that when the BBC finally relented and brought Doctor Who back, that they'd do it so absolutely right? The writing's excellent, the special effects are something special and, most importantly of all, the regular actors are brilliant. Who would have thought Billie Piper would turn out to be so good? Or, let's be honest, that she'd turn out to be anything other than awful? Christopher Eccleston will be sadly missed, he's been a wonderful Doctor. And John Barrowman as Captain Jack, probably the best of the lot. This is what British TV's been needing all these years.

Sorry, I just felt a need to enthuse. Anyway, the whole fame-and-fortune thing is still going on. I'm meeting the producer (who, from his emails, seems to be a very nice guy) next Saturday morning (ie before people start arriving for the party) so he can try to sell me on the documentary idea. I'll see what he's got to say, at least. But I don't know what's in it for me, really, seeing as I don't consider appearing on TV to be much of a reward for the inconvenience it'll put me to.

I'm feeling slightly guilty tonight. As I've mentioned before, my dad always insists on sending me birthday presents, by post, weeks in advance of my actual birthday. I always try to resist the temptation to unwrap and eat the inevitable big bar of chocolate, but I usually fail. I haven't eaten it all yet, so there might still be some left by next Friday, which would essentially qualify as being good, wouldn't it?

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home

There's a ladybird wandering around my living room. Do ladybirds hibernate or die in the winter, or are they around all year? I don't remember. This one's still up and about, anyway.

I had a phone call this evening from a TV producer who wants to make a documentary about me. This being a phone call, I said he could, and then quickly sent him an email afterwards to say I wasn't sure about it. I checked up on him, though, and he's a very reputable and well-respected kind of TV producer, who does serious academic documentaries and is a vocal opponent of dumbing-down on telly, so it would probably be quite a good film if we did make it.

He says in his email that "I want to do for memory what the documentary film Spellbound did for spelling". I'm not sure how that works, exactly - Spellbound took something that's an enormously popular American institution and made people in Britain aware of its existence. Memory competitions can at best be charitably described as a minority interest. But if he did make a hit film about it, wouldn't it be cool? People in the memory world have been talking for ages about memory becoming popular with the masses, without ever really believing it will happen.

Trouble is, at least with spelling bees you get to hear the people spelling the words. What people don't appreciate until they've been to a memory competition is that they can most accurately be compared to an exam - it's all written, it's almost all done in total silence and there's very little in the way of visual effects. I just can't see it making a compelling documentary.

Incidentally, in the sentence after talking about Spellbound, the producer offered to come up to "Darby" to meet me. Just a slip of the keyboard, or did he run his email through a spellchecker before sending it to me? Even if he did, that puts him in a class above the guy from Endemol who emailed me before the world championships, if nothing else. I've never seen so many spelling and grammatical mistakes in one brief paragraph, and I've dealt with no end of illiterate types in my time!

In other news, the committee of the British Othello Federation have been discussing the latest amendments to the BOF rules by emails today. The changes came about because Anjar, who run the world championships, have decided to encourage more women to play othello by organising a Women's World Othello Championship alongside the main one. Basically, each country can now send as well as the usual team of three players (of any gender), one extra female player. All the players will compete together in the first two days of the World Championships, then the top four extra-female-players will have their own semi-finals and final for the WWOC title while the top four normal-team-players compete for the WOC. Simple enough?

Not if you're trying to phrase your national othello federation's rules in such a way as to avoid suggesting that we approve of gender-based discrimination (we can't stop Anjar applying it, and it would be just plain petty to refuse to send a participant in the WWOC. The French federation, incidentally, are just plain petty and proud of it). From the original draft referring to a "British women's champion", we've progressed to "When a special event is promoted to accompany the Main World Championship Tournament, the UK shall choose its representative(s) as the highest ranking qualified player(s) in the National Tournament. Should such player(s) have, or potentially have, qualified for the Main Event, they shall choose which Tournament they will play in expeditiously so that whichever place they vacate can be filled by another player. Ties for such places will be resolved in the same way that ties for the Main Event are, by a one-round playoff."

Or words to that effect.

We've got five active female othello players in this country, incidentally. And of those, one is Italian, one Australian and one American. Anjar are right, we really do need to get more women playing the game.

Hazel's last day at work tomorrow - she's using up her saved-up holiday time to finish early. I'd do the same if I had any holidays left to take - I'm actually busy there just at the moment with the month-end accounts, but there's a sense of futility to everything now, and everyone just wants to get it over with. Sixteen working days to go...

I can't think of anything to write about, so...

"In other news, Sunderland was atomised earlier this morning by some kind of cataclysmic explosion," mumbled the newsreader on the radio in his annoying nasal tone. "The government declined to comment, on the grounds that it had better things to do. The weather today will be fine, with scattered showers, except in the Sunderland area where scientists predict heavy cloud and plagues of locusts."

"This is terrible!" Cecil intoned, throwing his cup of tea at the wall and jumping to his feet.

"What is?" asked Phillip, who hadn't been paying attention.

"Sunderland! Incinerated! Locusts! Scattered showers!" bellowed Cecil, becoming quite agitated.

"But we're not in Sunderland," said Phillip, pouring himself a third bowl of porridge.

"Sunderland is my home town!" screamed Cecil.

Phillip disputed this, pointing out that he had known Cecil for forty-seven years, significantly longer than either of them had been alive, and in all that time Cecil had never once mentioned visiting Sunderland, let alone living there. Cecil retaliated by noting that he had never mentioned NOT being from Sunderland, an argument that Phillip refuted with seventeen dramatic reconstructions of occasions when Cecil had done just that, starring Cliff Richard as Cecil, Diana Dors as Phillip and Samuel L Jackson as the man who came round to mend the gas fire in the middle of one of the conversations.

Critics admired the unusual directorial techniques Phillip had used to stage a sequence of unavoidably repetitive dialogues, but considered the graphic sex scenes an unnecessary distraction from the central thrust of the narrative. A glaring historical inaccuracy involving a dodo wandering past the window in a scene set in 1987 was also considered a failing of the performance. In reply, Phillip protested that he had had to stage the re-enactment at literally a moment's notice, and thought he had done a passable job under the circumstances. He conceded, however, that it was not the highlight of his career, and promised to do a better job next time.

Cecil, meanwhile, had appointed himself Prime Minister, and vowed as the last surviving Sunderlander to put right all the wrongs of the world. Phillip ventured to suggest that even if Cecil had been from Sunderland, surely there would be other survivors of the disaster, especially considering that it was the summer holidays, but Cecil brushed aside any such allegations and laid out a surprisingly intelligent strategy for improving the social services, modernising the entire country and bringing about a perfect socialist utopia. Phillip had to admit that it would make the world a better place in every way, but felt obliged to attempt to stop Cecil anyway, because of his inaccurate claims about his place of birth.

At this point, Samantha, who had overslept as a result of drinking too much absinthe the night before, came downstairs and asked if there was any porridge left. This reminded Phillip not only that he had eaten it all, but that it was time he was leaving for work. He asked Samantha to thwart Cecil's benevolent plans for him, put on his clothes and hurried down to his office. Cecil refrained from filling Samantha in on what had happened, knowing that she would take Phillip's side, and put his economic plans into operation while she was distracted by having to make some more porridge and phone her work to tell them she'd be late in.

Phillip had a tiring morning's work - as a mousecatcher, you can often spend days at a time with no mice to chase, especially in a modern office building like his, but on this particular occasion there was a whole army of extremely large rodents gnawing their way through the payroll department, and Phillip was run off his feet. So it was only when he stopped for a lunch break and looked out of the window that he noticed the sweeping social and economic reforms that Cecil had initiated. With everybody in the entire world now having a more than ample share of the planet's resources and there being no more war, injustice or prejudice of any kind, Phillip worried that a lot of people would sympathise or even agree with Cecil's actions if he didn't do something to stop it immediately.

He phoned Samantha to ask why she hadn't done as he asked, but she replied that she'd got her foot caught in the oven door while making porridge at breakfast time, and hadn't been able to leave the kitchen. Phillip hurried back home, hoping that he could get back to work before the end of his lunch hour, freed Samantha's foot and, pausing only to get dressed again, made all possible speed to the ruins of Sunderland in order to rebuild it and sort out this whole terrible situation.

On the outskirts of Sunderland, they were met by Cecil. Knowing that if Sunderland was rebuilt, he would no longer be able to be Prime Minister and all of his good work would be undone, he attacked Phillip and Samantha with a garden fork, wounding several passers-by before impaling his own foot and sticking himself to the ground. Thankful for Cecil's limited experience of using gardening tools as weapons, Phillip and Samantha quickly put Sunderland back together and hurried back to their respective jobs, putting their clothes back on along the way.

And so the world was saved from a golden age of happiness and unity. Phillip was three minutes late getting back from lunch and was given a formal written warning, Samantha's employers failed to notice that she'd been absent for the whole morning and gave her a lucrative promotion, and Cecil returned to his uneventful life as an escapologist. The end.

Sorry about that. Something might happen tomorrow that I feel like writing about...

Headache

Forgive me if I cut short the usual three-volume epic tonight. I suspect I've been spending too much time lately staring at a computer screen. Either that or having music on all day at work. Probably that, actually - I've been staring at computers for roughly 16 hours a day, every day for the last ten years or so, so I should be used to it by now.

Besides, nothing's happened today. Back at work, actual work to do there seeing as it's the month end (although only a couple of hours' worth), nothing new. Although I'm watching a particularly good episode of Animaniacs that I've somehow never seen before - twelve years old, but newness is in the eye of the beholder.

It's a good life, if you don't weaken

Brian K Vaughan is the writer of a lot of very good American comics. Runaways, about a group of teenagers who discover their parents are secretly supervillains, Y: The Last Man, about the aftermath of an unexplained event that killed every male animal on Earth, except for one man and his pet monkey, and Ex Machina, about a former superhero who becomes mayor of New York. Apart from writing his own brilliantly different comics, he's a big fan of sequential art in general, and thinks people should read more of it. Specifically, that they should stop reading superhero comics exclusively and check out some other less-known genres.

So he set up a competition on his website, recommending ten graphic novels, and asking everyone to pick one. The ten lucky winners drawn out of the hat would get one for free, out of BKV's own pocket. As if that wasn't generous enough, a comic shop got in touch with him and offered him a good deal on his bulk purchase, so Brian decided to buy a graphic novel for every one of the 122 people who entered the competition in the first place!

Which is how I come to have a copy of "It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken", by Seth, an autobiographical story chronicling his attempts to track down an obscure cartoonist of the 40s and 50s called Kalo. This being before the internet was full of this kind of trivia, it involved a lot of going round and digging up old magazines, looking up names on electoral registers and phone books, and so on. We also get to see Seth's relationships with his friends, family, cats and the various people he meets along the way.

I do actually read quite a bit of non-superhero comic stuff already - aside from the Beano and Dandy (although the latter's not really worth reading nowadays), I'll buy anything by James Kochalka or Alan Moore, and dabble in other writers from time to time. But even so, "It's A Good Life..." didn't really click for me, somehow. One-panel cartoons are Seth's primary obsession in life, but they've never really been my thing, and somehow he doesn't manage to sell me on why he finds them so fascinating. And his self-pitying narration gets on my nerves a bit, as does his habit of saying something trite and obviously thinking he's being profound.

Even so, this is the kind of thing I should like. Every criticism I can think of, whether it be the content, the writing, the art, anything about it, could also apply to Kochalka's stuff, which I adore, so I'm not really sure what my problem is. It might be an acquired taste - I'll read it a couple more times, check out some more of his work and see if I change my mind.

Incidentally, Seth was called Gregory Gallant before he decided to change to the one-syllable name he currently uses. The biography at the back says "Looking back, this may have been a youthful error ... however, little can be done about it now." If I was called something as cool as Gregory Gallant, I'd never even consider changing my name!

The weather's a bit miserable - there was a partial eclipse of the sun up there beyond the clouds this morning, but nobody around here had any chance of seeing it.

I had a really weird dream last night, involving a new variant of the game othello. Weird because I can clearly remember all the details of this game - the settings and people involved in the dream changed from one moment to the next, but throughout it someone was demonstrating this new game to me and I was pointing out its many obvious flaws. The rules stayed consistent, though - it was played on a board with 14 rows and 8 columns, with the starting position in the fifth and sixth rows, and the central two columns.

You could play a disc on the left-hand column at any time, and add a line of discs of your colour horizontally or diagonally back to a disc of your colour anywhere else on the board. And on your next turn you could move that disc (the one that the line of discs from the edge pointed back to) somewhere else on the board in a straight line, provided there were no other discs in the way, rather than placing a new one.

I don't think it would work as a real game if you tried to play it, but I'm just impressed that I dreamed up a whole new game like that. It was called Othello Camouflage, I think. Othello Something-completely-incongruous-beginning-with-C, anyway.

I've just been practising memory stuff - hour cards, which is always the one I can get into the easiest. I think it's something about the tactile aspect of picking up the pack of cards and flicking through it, as opposed to just looking at numbers on a piece of paper, but I can do the cards much more easily without getting distracted. I'm still not as fast as I was before the 2004 world championships - I could do 30 packs in an hour then and just about look through each one four times. I was only trying 24 today and didn't quite finish in time. Still, that's the kind of thing that comes back to me with practice. I might have a go at an hour numbers tonight, if I can find the time. Probably won't, though.

Cordon bleu

Thinking about this plan of mine to cook party food, it occurred to me that I have no idea where the supermarkets keep flour and things. It must be in there somewhere, but I've certainly never noticed it in the two years I've been shopping there.

That being the only thought I've had all day, what else am I going to talk about tonight? Oo, I know, how about memory things? After all my enthusiasm for training immediately after the WMC, I've been rather neglecting it lately. It's hard to get back into the habit of concentrating for long periods of time after taking time off - it takes a real effort of will to force myself to carry on with it when my mind starts to wander, and I must admit I didn't really manage it today. But I'm off work again tomorrow, and I'll give it another go.

If there's nothing on telly, that is - luckily for me, today's all-day-cartoon-fest on Boomerang was Tom and Jerry, and not even I can watch a whole day of Tom and Jerry cartoons without it starting to get a tiny bit repetitive. And Cartoon Network's two featured cartoons this weekend were Ed, Edd & Eddy and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, neither of which I've ever really got into. I've always felt that Billy & Mandy was the kind of thing I should like, but somehow it's never quite clicked for me. I don't know what it is, but I don't think I need another cartoon I can never bear to miss, so I'm not that worried.

Match of the Day

Boston won their first match of the season without me being there to cheer them on today - one-nil against Peterborough (three bookings apiece and the only goal came from a penalty - sounds like another local derby classic!). They're coming to Notts County next Friday evening, don't ask me why it was scheduled for such a strange time, so I might go along and watch that one.

I went to Nottingham today, picked up some comics and watched a really cool street performer jump through a tiny little hoop with sharp knives all around it. I'd love to be able to do something like that. For that matter, I'd like to look good with my shirt off, like this guy did. Maybe I should join a gym, and pump iron or whatever it is people do in those places. That mens sana in thingummy doodah works both ways, I'm sure, so it would probably enhance my memory skills drastically if I had a flat stomach and rippling muscles.

My all-time favourite performers I've seen on city streets are The Alley Cats, a fantastic family folk/blues/skiffle etc group I saw in Lincoln years ago. Hopefully they're still going strong, because they were absolutely fantastic.

Having got home, I dug up my CIMA certificate from the bottom of my box of paperwork, since Michael Page have been hassling me about it (presumably they think I'm lying about my qualifications). It looks quite fancy, actually - I haven't really looked at it since I got it three years ago, but it says "Advanced Diploma in Management Accounting" in big letters. Maybe I should have it framed.

Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle

Payday today - the penultimate one from Parkhouse. And I'm already planning how to spend it all. I've got to clean up my flat in preparation for my party, then buy some cooking equipment and bake a cake. Okay, I don't really HAVE to do that, but I want to. I haven't properly baked things for years.

Elsewhere, the war of words is still going on between the Mind Sports Olympiad and the British Othello Federation. BOF chairman Aubrey has kindly posted all the emails between him and MSO boss Tony on the BOF mailing list, so we can all keep up with it. Basically, Tony is saying that the MSO needs money from the BOF because it costs them a fortune to host othello tournaments along with all the others they have at the MSO, while Aubrey is politely expressing amazement that any event like the MSO could cost anywhere near the amount Tony is saying it does, as well as explaining that the BOF hasn't actually got any money to spare.

As an MSO and BOF person (possibly the only one who falls quite so much into both camps), I'm really not enjoying this whole affair. It's like having your parents fighting in front of you. I was actually planning to give some of my redundancy money to the MSO fund, since Tony's actively appealing for donations, but then I don't want him to use that to score points over Aubrey. I'll just keep out of it altogether - I'm not in a position to judge the MSO's finances, seeing as Tony asked me to do the accounts for them a couple of years ago and I turned him down.

In other news, my washing machine's playing up. Actually, it has been for ages, but I think it's getting worse. It's still just about washing clothes, though - if I can keep it going until I move out, I'll get a new one then.

The good, the bad and the ugly...

...things about moving to Burton-on-Trent.

Good: It's much bigger than I thought it was. Lots of shops and things, with a town centre about the size of Lincoln's. Glen did actually tell me that before, but I didn't believe him until I went along and looked around. There's also a Conference football team, Burton Albion, which would mean I could go to an affordable game on a Saturday afternoon without a train journey. And it would certainly be a lot more convenient for work if I lived there.

Bad: I'm pretty sure there isn't a comic shop, although there might be one hidden in a back street somewhere (like comic shops always are). If there is, though, they don't advertise it in Comics International. That'd mean a hassle getting my weekly fix of superhero action. Also, moving house is such a drag in the first place. And I'm still not convinced this job will last.

Ugly: The whole town smells like a brewery. I suppose you get used to this kind of thing if you live there...

All in all, I think I'll commute for a couple of months until I'm sure I'm not going to get sacked for gross incompetence, then find a place to live there.

Anyway, having the day off also gives me a much-needed chance to cram a few more hours TV-watching and comic-reading into a day. I discovered a fascinating cartoon called 'Gnoufs' this afternoon. It's French originally, dubbed into English with a strange variety of regional accents, and as best I can determine from the episode-and-a-half I watched, it's about a group of aliens who've come to Earth in the form of cuddly toys. The half episode was the best - I missed the start, but I have a feeling I wouldn't have had the faintest idea what was going on even if I'd seen it all, which is always a good thing.

Basically, it seems that one of the gang, a jack-in-the-box, had retreated into the dream world at the bottom of his box and the others joined him there. Cue a whole lot of floating past psychedelic imagery and bizarre dialogue: "You all have your own dream world at the bottom of your boxes." "But we haven't got boxes. We've got feet." "Everyone's got boxes. Everyone's existence is on the end of a spring."

And it subsequently turned out that everyone's dream world was the real world, because they all like it so much. The second half of the double-bill, in which one of the characters swaps bodies with a dog, and is nervous of its owner on the grounds that he's Welsh and therefore probably a cannibal, was comparatively tame.

What's particularly weird about this show is the script. I watch a lot of cartoons, and there's a general rule that anything at least theoretically aimed at kids (as this seems to be) should have somewhat dumbed-down dialogue. Nothing too drastic, just enough to keep it comprehensible to younger viewers while still entertaining for older ones. That doesn't seem to apply to the Gnoufs, though. If anything, they go out of their way to use big words, without explaining them. I have not the faintest idea what age group this is meant to be aimed at - possibly it's aimed at very weird 28-year-olds. Possibly I've just watched a very atypical episode and they're normally standard preschool fare. I'll have to see more, anyway. If I could remember what time it was on and which channel, I'd set the video tomorrow.

Also (I've got extra time for writing this thing tonight, so I'm going to go on and on and on for pages and pages. Feel free to skip it) I watched an episode of DS9 on Sky. I confess to being a Star Trek fan, and DS9 in particular, but this particular episode was one of the two I actively dislike, so rather than explain why I like (or at least put up with) all the others, I'm going to go into detail about why this one is so bad.

It's "Inquisition", the episode that introduces Sloan and Section 31, horrible mistakes in both cases. The problem is that the episode does its best to make it clear that a perfect society like the Federation couldn't possibly exist without a shady undercover organisation doing nasty business and dressing all in black. This is really infuriating to me, and completely against the whole idea of what Star Trek is supposed to be about. Individual characters can and should be multi-faceted, even downright evil on occasion, but the setting they're in really should be a representation of what human beings are capable of. A big part of Trek's appeal is that it's so optimistic about the future. When you make out that there's 'dirty work' going on behind the scenes to make the future look bright, it spoils it.

The other DS9 episode I hate, incidentally, is "Body Parts", which is based on a huge, fundamental misunderstanding about how Ferengi culture works. And, like "Inquisition", it has major repercussions on the ongoing storylines, so you can't just ignore it. There are plenty of other bad episodes, but those two are the ones that have something so wrong with them that they tarnish the whole series. "The Storyteller", for example, misses the point of the whole DS9 series (it's a Next Gen-style episode changed with the bare minimum of rewriting into a DS9 show), and has laughably bad plot, dialogue and characterisation, and unforgivably ends with the line "No thanks, I think I've had ENOUGH storytelling for one day!"... but it's fun to jeer at, is never mentioned again and doesn't do anything that undermines the fabric of the universe it's set in. So I'd rather watch that one than "Inquisition".

I've also been buying comics today, and while I've got nothing better to do I thought I'd talk about them too. It has occurred to me, incidentally, that I could split these kinds of rambling posts into several shorter posts, but I quite like the idea of forcing everyone to read the whole long thing. That way people interested in only one of my various hobbies and obsessions can learn about the others. Or just ignore me completely. Either is good.

So, comics. Only two new ones I was interested in buying this week - Young Avengers #7 and the ABC A-Z. Still need to get Ultimates #8 somewhere - I really need to find a good comic shop (by which I mean one that orders too many copies of each comic so they don't run out) or start ordering them in advance. I also got the fifth volume of Exiles in trade paperback form - I'm collecting them now after years of reading it occasionally in the shop but not generally buying it.

The ABC comic is strange. The whole ABC line was set up for Alan Moore to do whatever he liked with a whole new range of characters. It was uniformly brilliant, like everything Moore does. When he got bored with it and moved on to whatever strange things he's doing now (involving human sacrifice and tarot cards, probably), he let other writers play with his characters, foremost among them Peter Hogan, who's writing this one. It consists of a lengthy Tom Strong story recapping his origins and introducing his large supporting cast, and a shorter Jack B Quick story doing essentially the same thing. I have no idea why they thought anyone would want to buy this. Tom Strong is only occasionally published nowadays, and new readers really don't need to know the back story in summary form to understand it. Jack B Quick hasn't appeared in a new story for ages (and I hope he carries on like that if Moore isn't writing it - nobody else could capture the sense of pseudoscientific insanity that makes Jack such fun).

If you want to know what happened in the old Tom Strong stories, go out and buy them. Nobody needs to read an ultra-abridged, soulless synopsis like the A-Z to like the new stuff. I doubt anyone will buy it apart from people like me who buy everything with the ABC logo as a matter of principle. It's not even entirely accurate, for crying out loud - it suggests that Fingel Parallax is still alive, which is either foreshadowing of an upcoming story or (more likely) a flat-out mistake.

Young Avengers #7 is the first part of a new storyline. Marvel comics nowadays come in six-part story arcs so that they fit nicely into a paperback collection, and the first six issues of Young Avengers mostly consisted of writer Allan Heinberg fulfilling the awful remit he'd been handed ("We've decided to do a series about young versions of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and Hulk. Because Teen Titans is cool, so Young Avengers would be even cooler. Go and write it.") The opening story did that, introduced some less stupid characters, killed off Iron Lad and set it up with some great promise for the future. And did it very entertainingly, albeit with some incomprehensible time travel logic. The first part of the new story looks like it's going to be great. It really could be a big hit - it's selling well, and word-of-mouth is only going to get better now Heinberg's writing the kind of characters he wants to write, and hopefully avoiding world-changing drama. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read a genuinely good modern superhero story.

As for Exiles, this collection is Chuck Austen's five-issue fill-in run from 2003. Austen is much maligned in the comics business, and with good cause because he's just not a very good writer, but these ones aren't too bad. The stories don't make a great deal of sense, but that's never been a requirement for Exiles stories. The character interaction is quite fun, and the abundance of characters in the X-Men crossover really works somehow. Stories with more than ten major roles all doing something have always appealed to me for some reason. It's not as good as the Judd Winick stories that appear in the first four collections, but it's still worth reading.

Anyway, that's probably enough babbling for one afternoon/evening in between watching cartoons (Justice League Unlimited is great, by the way). Conclusive proof, if any were needed, that I'm only writing this thing to entertain myself. Imagine being someone else and reading through all that. I shudder to think of it!

In heaven's name, what am I DOING?

The above is my all-time favourite Wile E Coyote quote (closely followed by "I wouldn't mind, except that he defies the law of gravity!". It also rather melodramatically sums up the theme of this entry - for at least three different reasons, I've been thinking today about exactly why I'm writing this here blog, and who I'm expecting to read it.

Firstly, I was googling myself again yesterday (don't judge me, it gets lonely sometimes, living on your own), and noticed that of course my previous post on the subject, in July or August or whenever it was, which mentions my 'real' name, shows up on Google searches. This made me realise that anybody who chooses to look me up on the internet will find my blog. Not normally a problem, but I have it on good authority that my mother Googles my name every now and then, and I'm pretty sure I've said some snippy things about her here before.

Then I spoke to my dad on the phone today (happy birthday to him, by the way!) and he told me he's entered the 21st century, and has an email address and everything now. So he might conceivably work out how to use the internet and find this thing too, and I (entirely affectionately) poked fun at him here the other day. Plus it'd spoil the surprise when I get round to treating him to a day on the steam trains. And even my brother (who, as you'd expect from someone with a PhD in English literature, has trouble with reading and writing) has been known to go on the internet occasionally and might find Zoomy's Thing too.

Apart from the horror of my family reading my diary (which, let's face it, happened all the time when I was a teenager), I felt that last night's entry was a bit... unexceptional. Links to two interesting websites and a couple of thoughts of my own on the subject. There are millions of blogs that do that. I want mine to be different. Quirky. Entertaining. Fun! And I think I manage that most of the time.

So I thought I should set out why I'm writing this thing, and what I'm writing in it. Just in case I forget and need to check back.

I'm writing this primarily for myself. I enjoy doing it! I like looking back on what I've written, and chuckling to myself about how entertaining my life seems when I've written it down. And I like finding ways to make the things I do every day seem entertaining.

Secondly, I'm writing this to give my friends a laugh. I have a wonderful collection of friends who (I hope) are genuinely pleased to read my feelings about Coco Pops adverts and job interviews. Happy birthday to Suzy, too, incidentally! It's a good day for birthdays.

As for what's in it, the only rule I've had up to now is no mentioning of politics or religion or any other subject that might be considered controversial. There's too much talk about this kind of thing in the world already, and nobody needs another blog of some idiot expressing his half-thought-out views. But after today I'm also going to put a ban on two more subjects - firstly, much-too-serious posts like this one. Nobody wants to read rubbish like this. And secondly, links to entertaining websites as a substitute for talking about something entertaining I've made up myself. Although I'm going to be kind of flexible with this rule - basically, it just has to qualify in my brain as sufficiently different from all the other blogs out there.

Anyway, serious stuff over. Pointless rambling resumes tomorrow. I've got the day off legally, and I'm going to go to Burton and see what it's like.

I've been everywhere, man

Stealing ideas for blog topics from Sam again, I've produced this map highlighting all the countries I've been to:



create your own visited country map

That's just pathetic, isn't it? I've been to nine different countries including this one, or 4% of the world. And most of them don't count - I've only passed through Belgium a couple of times on my way somewhere more exciting, and my visits to Italy and Switzerland were day trips while on a school trip to France, back at the dawn of time or thereabouts. And it seems silly to have Alaska highlighted in red like that, just because I've been to a couple of the less arctic states.

It's always been one of my many life's ambitions to travel to every country in the world, in alphabetical order. That last bit is very important - it seems to me that any old fool can visit every country in the world, so I'd need to find a unique way to go about it. That's an ambition that'll have to wait till I'm a millionaire, though. Or if Danny Wallace or Dave Gorman need a new adventure, it sounds like their kind of thing. There's probably a TV series in it somewhere.

Anyway, I'm not likely to be a millionaire any time soon if I succumb to temptation and bid on this. Assuming it's not some kind of con, the guy's selling all his worldly posessions, among them no end of cool things that I'd like to have - electric guitars and drums! Digital cameras! And a cuddly white tiger!

I can just see my new place furnished with all this junk. It'd be like buying someone else's life. It's not terribly sensible of me to be considering bidding on it, but consider this - he lives here in Derby, next month is going to be the one time in my life I'm ever going to have more or less that much money in my bank account, I am (as mentioned the other day) in a very impulse-purchase frame of mind at the moment. The universe wants me to bid on this.

It's worth mentioning that I'm probably more in debt than this guy, but I've always believed in buying lots of material goods in case inflation or economics devalue all your money, and it's about time I started putting this firm belief into practice. And I want an entertainment centre.

Skiving

Okay, I'm here after all. I was feeling a bit off colour this morning, so I exaggerated it a bit and called in sick. I don't know why I never remember that I get horribly bored sitting around at home all day when I'm supposed to be at work. Plus I feel guilty about not being there. Ah well. Back tomorrow, and then I can remember how boring it is being there in the first place.

Still, in just a month and a bit, there'll be a new job, with exciting new responsibilities and irritations. I'm getting increasingly nervous about it, to be honest. I bet I'll be the worst management accountant they've ever seen.

The proof in the pudding

This being my second blog entry in one day, you might describe it as the 'pudding' to a main course of coco pops. And it's about proof-reading.

I bought a new book today (I always do much more impulse-buying when I'm flat broke at the end of a long month), 'Little People' by Tom Holt. It's fun - I've only read one of his before ('Expecting Someone Taller') and had trouble getting into any others, but the sense of humour is quirky enough to appeal to me, and there's some great wordplay and hilarious turns of phrase. The story is good too, although it suffers a bit from an overload of exposition to explain the concept without enough things actually happening once the setting's been established. But then, I'm not half way through it yet, so it's probably a bit early to start criticising.

What really bugs me, though, is the huge volume of typos - 'of' for 'or', 'by' for 'my', that kind of thing. As I said, I'm not half way through, and there have been six times I've picked up on one of these and it's yanked me out of the flow of the writing. Do they still have proofreaders at modern publishers, or do they rely on the computers to pick up the mistakes? Either way, someone needs to be fired or reprogrammed.

Going to the dogs (not in the usual way, to the greyhound races) in Nottingham tomorrow night with work people, so I might not be back in blogging action until Tuesday.