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!