On The Road

Or if not the road, on the railway. I've spent more time on trains this weekend than usual, since there's engineering work somewhere between Derby and London than trains are having to take a lengthy detour around. But there was an abandoned News Of The World on the train I took home from London this evening, which had a free CD called 'On The Road', containing a few quite good tracks - Addicted To Bass, I Get Around, She Sells Sanctuary...

Anyway, the othello [reversi] went pretty well. I ended up joint fifth with three or four other people, on five wins out of nine. I thought I was going to equal my last year's performance and only lose to the Terrible Three - Graham Brightwell, Imre Leader and Michael Handel - but then I was comprehensively thrashed by Elisabetta Vecchi in round 8, which put paid to my chances of making the 3rd/4th place play-off (which had been at least a possibility all the way through).

Imre won overall, beating everyone except for a shock defeat at the hands of Steve MacGuire, who's never played a live tournament before. Another of that 'internet generation' I was talking about, you see. I beat Steve, which possibly conclusively proves that I'm better than Imre (who beat me 47-17). The final was between Imre and Graham, which probably didn't surprise anyone. Jeremy Dyer, having beaten Michael in the first round, got to the 3rd place play-off against him when Lisa Boardman lost on time to him in the last round, and put in a repeat giant-killing performance to get third place and the final spot in the British team for the world championships. That's the third time in a row Jeremy's beaten Michael, actually, which definitely eclipses my Imre-beating statistics (twice in four years).

So my chances of going to Iceland in November seem quite slim - Graham's definitely going to play in the worlds, Jeremy almost definitely and Imre possibly. I'm somewhere between second and sixth on the list of reserves if one or more of them doesn't want to go (I'll have to see how the tiebreak worked out).

Aww, I've got to go back to work tomorrow. Although calling it 'work' nowadays is a bit of a stretch. Spent the best part of two hours at the pub on Friday lunchtime, and the rest of the day in enforced fun quizzes run by Sue. Still, six weeks to go, and then I might be in a job that requires me to actually work, for the first time in ages. I hope I can remember how. I'm going to take the job with Nord Anglia, by the way. Haven't thought about it all weekend, obviously, but I haven't got a good enough reason to turn it down. I might just look for other work in Derby on the sly up till the time I actually start, or then again I might not bother. We'll see.