Capital fun

When the weekend brings such lovely, warm, sunny spring weather, what better way to spend the day than sitting in a room above a pub in London, playing othello with thirteen other enthusiasts?

Othello returned to its regular London home of the Bath House, just off Oxford Street, and we had a very big turnout for a regional - just about all the regulars and semi-regulars, including the likes of Steve MacGuire and Jeremy Dyer (whose rhyming names make me want to turn this blog entry into a poem), who haven't been to a tournament for quite some time. And a brand-new player (new to real-life othello, anyway, but not to playing on the internet) by the name of Stephen Spencer, too! I've mentioned it on other forums before, but the point is worth mentioning - Stephen Rowe was also at the Bath House today, and I went to primary school with a boy originally called Stephen Roe who changed his name (for some reason I don't recall) to Stephen Spencer. As you all know, I have a history of getting othello players' names mixed up, and this kind of thing really doesn't help me!

Still, the tournament went surprisingly well for me - I lost to David Beck, but he squished everyone he played today, and I also lost to Ian Turner (I did beat Kali in my first game, which was a relief), but Ian then lost to Geoff Hubbard and I finished the day by beating Geoff, so the three of us ended up jointly in second place!

Since David, Geoff and Ian all didn't come to the first regional of the year, and since Iain Barrass, who came second in Oadby, had a bad day today and ended up joint eighth, this gives me a big impressive lead in the British Grand Prix standings! It probably won't last, of course, with three regionals to go and there being so many people who are better than me, and me probably not going to the last one since it's down in Farnborough and getting there is a hassle and it's my brother's birthday the next day, but still, yay for me!

And although it's true that the BGP has a tendency to be a prize for the player who turns up to the most tournaments, the winner does get to play in the World Championship! (If it doesn't clash with the memory one, of course - it's normally in November, and the WMC is currently scheduled for that kind of time...) And there's even a trophy now! It made its debut today, all gleaming and shiny, the George Greaves Memorial Plate, and was presented to last year's BGP winner Iain.

It would be extremely groovy to see my name engraved on it (I've never had my name engraved on a trophy before - the WMC used to have a trophy like that, but hasn't for years now, it's a long story) and who knows, if I get another couple of flukey wins or second places, it's possible...

Also, since I dissed the local Labour/Lib Dem council in my blog recently, I feel I should record that I got a leaflet through the door today from the Conservatives that spells 'sincerely' wrong. Bunch of illiterates, I'm not voting for them...

Simpsons

I do watch the Simpsons quite a lot. It's just that it's always on in the evenings when I'm sitting around and feeling lazy. But somehow, even though season one seems to be repeated over and over again and they never show season 2 or 3, I don't seem to have seen "Homer's Odyssey" for years and years, until tonight. And it's quite good, actually! Maybe I'll get the DVDs and watch all five million episodes in one sitting...

I realise I should probably be spending my evenings memorising numbers instead of watching the Simpsons. But, you see, I just can't be bothered. It's Friday.

Oh Canada

I was feeling really productive and fired-up at work today for some reason, and considering staying late even though I didn't need to, just to get lots of stuff done. This isn't the kind of mood I'm often in - I do do a good job as an analyst, but I don't generally get so into it that I want to be in the office all night when there's football on telly - so it's probably a good thing that I snapped out of it with remembering that I'd agreed to do a phone interview with a Canadian journalist tonight.

If you're Canadian, and read newspapers (I don't know which ones - any or all of the publications printed by Sun Media), make sure to check it out, sometime in the next couple of months, probably. It's not going to contain anything I haven't said in dozens of other interviews before, but I'll be saying them in a different order, probably, so you'll want to read it anyway.

In other news, I notice that there's a programme on BBC1 tonight called "The Narnia Code" in which, according to the Radio Times, a Dr Michael Ward claims to have discovered a "profound subtext" to "the books' ostensibly fairy-tale events". Um, is that really a new and shocking idea? Perhaps poor Dr Ward is the only person in the world who's never noticed the subtext before, and thought it was just a story about a magic land with a talking lion?

Things I don't own but which people seem to think I should own

A mobile phone
Hammers, nails, screwdrivers, electric drills, basically anything you can buy from B&Q
A microwave
Nail-clippers
A car
A frying pan
A razor
More than one pair of shoes
A DVD player that isn't my laptop
Paper tissues
An ipod, or for that matter a CD player that isn't my laptop
Basic cooking ingredients like eggs, flour, spices etc
A wig.

Big city othello

London regional this weekend, and I've been playing online a bit to see if practice helps me or hinders me. I can't quite understand my othello-playing ability. Some days I have a run of great games where I spot all the clever little moves and plan ingenious strategies far in advance, other times (and against the same opponents in the same positions) I find that I have no idea what's going on and I just make really stupid moves. Possibly there's some kind of loose connection in my brain. I need some kind of brain scan. Actually, there is some kind of neurologist or something who wants to talk to me, maybe I'll get round to emailing him back and have him check my wiring...

Holidays

Well, it's back to work tomorrow after four days off, and naturally this puts me in the mood to plan not going to work again at some point in the near future. It's a new financial year, you see, I've got 25 days between now and the end of March next year, and I'd quite like to plan it out properly for once, instead of taking them all whenever I feel like it and ending up with no holidays left for the second half of the year. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd sit down and work out how much time I'd need for each memory competition, including recovery time afterwards, then plan a couple of other little breaks at appropriate times in between them. I'm not going to, but it's definitely a step in the right direction for me to acknowledge that it's a good idea to do it.

Breakout!

I've got worryingly addicted to playing Arkanoid since I discovered it online yesterday. It's a very compelling game that I haven't played since the BBC Micro version when I was still at school. Although I have got the extremely similar Breakout on the Master System, and had a good long game on that tonight, too, in an attempt to get it out of my system. In fact, I'm pretty sure I got further than I ever have before, in the whole history of me playing video games - perhaps it's all the memory training and discipline that I've instilled in myself since the days when I was regularly playing it!

Tomorrow, I'll finish creating the memorisation papers for Cambridge (just need to write all those historic dates...) and send that long-overdue email to all the definite and possible competitors.

Why do these things always involve horses?

Flat 7, Gordonstoun Court, Suffolk Street, Oulton Broad, Suffolk is the subject of an interesting law, enacted in 1537 by Henry VIII and still in effect today. The law requires two living horses to be within the flat at all times, failure to adhere to this law carrying a minimum twenty-year prison sentence for the owner, occupants and any visitors to the property in the previous seven weeks. The last time anyone was prosecuted under this law was in 1987, when building works forced the then resident Humphrey Dalmas to briefly move one of the horses out into the corridor in order to access a leaking gas pipe. The team of twelve police officers who constantly monitor the flat sprang quickly into action and had Dalmas taken into immediate custody.

The current owner, hippopotamus breeder Hugo Bugeleisen, has made sure to keep at least four horses in the flat, so as to avoid prosecution should one or two of them spontaneously drop dead, and describes himself as "happy" with the situation, "although not as happy as those whose flats contain no horses at all, obviously."

The law was introduced at the request of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, whose cousin, Derek Tunstall, lived in Pakefield and kept a mistress in Camps Heath. Oulton Broad being roughly half way between the two locations, the law enabled Derek to ride as quickly as possible to his mistress's house every Saturday afternoon, changing his tired horse for a fresh one at Oulton, steal a quick kiss and return home again before his wife had finished her weekly bath. The law originally applied to a large country house with attached stables; this was destroyed in the war and a block of flats built in its place in the early fifties, when it was ruled that for the purposes of the Living Horse Law, Flat 7 should be considered the successor of the original property. A small, one-bedroom, three-kitchen flat, the presence of two or more horses leaves no room to swing a cat, let alone breed a hippopotamus.

The law serves no practical purpose today - Derek Tunstall lived to a surprisingly ripe old age but was eventually executed in 1667 on the posthumous orders of Oliver Cromwell for treason and unlicensed dispensing of rat poison - but an attempt to pass a bill through parliament invalidating the law was unanimously defeated in 1992, with even the MP who introduced the motion deciding to vote against it.

Fun fun fun

I feel bad about devoting a whole blog to a TV review, because I like to be a bit more unconventional than that. But I feel that I should mention the comeback of Red Dwarf that was on tonight, seeing as I loved the original series (with the obvious exception of the last couple of seasons). It was fun, better than most resurrections of sitcoms that passed their best long ago, but nothing too special. What really surprised me is that while the cast haven't physically aged too much, Rimmer's voice in particular has put on a few years. And Chris Barrie's a voice actor, I would expect him to be pitch-perfect (Frank Welker still nails the voice of Freddy on Scooby-Doo, and he's ancient now...)

See, now I've got that out of my system I won't be able to devote tomorrow to talking about Doctor Who, and I'll be able to go back to my usual inane witterings...

Maundy Thursday is here at last!

Ahh, a four-day weekend. Exactly what I need to do all that Cambridge Memory Championship preparation I was meaning to do last weekend! It really was very clever of me to arrange the championship for a few weeks after Easter, wasn't it? I take full credit for that decision, even though it was nothing to do with me.

Meanwhile, if you want some fun, type my name into Google blog search and sort it by date. It seems there are fake blogs out there that take popular news stories or posts from genuine blogs, run the words through a thesaurus to make it look at first glance like a different post and use the resulting text to lure unsuspecting searchers into their site, for nefarious purposes of their own (probably involving selling stuff, but maybe spreading viruses or other mischief - either way, clicking on the link is likely to be a bad thing, so don't.)

This procedure has turned that BBC article into phrases like "It attacks less than 30 approves for the reigning World Remembrance Protector to recall the sequence of a pack of hovering cards." and "I ignore the unscathed shebang" and "I prowl into a abide and ignore what I am doing there, arguable the fridge and theorize why I am looking in there."

From now on, please call me the World Remembrance Protector! And remember that I'm splendidly putrescent at remembering people's names.

An important footnote to tonight's post

There's an advert on TV that sings the line "Don't be afraid to be young and free", which I misheard as "Don't be afraid to be onion-free", and wondered whether there were onion-fans out there who would ostracise those who chose not to have onions with their hamburgers. Because I prefer not to have onions, and it does make people look at me strangely, sometimes.

Doctor Whooooooooo!

Yay, it's been too long since the last time the Doctor was on our screens, so I'm looking forward to the Easter special on Saturday. Despite the interview with Russell T Davies in the Radio Times in which he promises "a bunch of ordinary commuters stranded on an alien world". Because the concept of an isolated bunch of ordinary humans facing an alien menace just hasn't been done enough in modern Doctor Who, has it? I think there was one episode in the first season that DIDN'T feature a bunch of ordinary people under siege by weird aliens! Gosh, maybe this latest episode will feature some kind of everyday item turning against humanity and the whole world's population being attacked by monsters that the Doctor is able to defeat by pressing the right button in Cardiff!

But still, I'm just being mean for no reason. I'm sure it's really going to be great!

I'm better now

Thanks to everyone for the messages of sympathy, and sorry for not even mustering a word of bloggery last night, but I decided to just go to bed early instead. Still, I'm well on the road to recovery now, and as if to celebrate the fact, that long-ago BBC website interview has finally made it online!

Sheesh, I'm typing this while watching Man Utd's should-be-easy game against Porto, and they've just gone a goal down after three and a half minutes! Probably because they've got a player called Hulk.

Anyway, back to the subject of memory, and I was at one point at number 8 on the most-read-right-now list, and number THREE on the most-watched/listened-right-now! Right after Kim Jong-Il and an extremely small puppy. To be fair, the puppy's quite a lot cuter than me, so I'd recommend that you watch it instead. For that matter, Kim Jong-Il's probably cuter than me, too. And with less of a silly voice. But still, why should he get all the attention? I've been ill too, and nobody's speculating whether or not I'm still alive. These blogs could be being ghostwritten by my minions, you know, and there's no way to independently verify the date of the footage of me on the BBC. Someone start a conspiracy theory, or I'll have to do it myself!

Well, must go and watch how the football turns out. I might turn down the commentary if they make one more Hulk-joke, though. I can't cope with another hour-and-a-half of "Don't make him angry". Still, it's impressively nerdy of a football commentator to admit that he knows "Lou Ferrigno played Dr David Banner in the TV series", even if he's not entirely right about that...

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?