It's the weekend of the Memory League Asian-Oceanian Open! You may remember that there are three of these online Slam tournaments a year, each at a different scheduled time eight hours apart, so the players around the world each get at least one that's at a more or less convenient time to play, and one that's in the middle of the night. This is the latter for me, and I wasn't expecting to play in it after being knocked out in the qualifying round, but Don had to drop out at the last minute, I got a lucky-loser play-off against Naoya (squeezed into my lunch break on Thursday) and surprisingly won it. And so my reward was a match against top seed Simon at one o'clock this morning!
So having finished that match at 2am and shared a bit of banter with Simon and Hannes (as always providing awesome live streamed coverage at MemorysportsTV) in which they talked about me as the old timer of memory sports - I had to point out that they've been doing it for nearly twenty years now, and they're only a year or two younger than me, so there's no need for that 'old man' talk - I went to bed. See, not expecting to be playing in the Slam, I'd arranged a normal league match for nine o'clock in the morning, an end-of-season dead rubber, and I thought I'd still have time to catch up on my beauty sleep before having to play again.
But I can't really get to sleep straight after an exciting match, what with all the adrenaline coursing through my veins, not to mention the overdose of cherry coke that I thought would keep me awake long enough to play the match and then politely go away and let me nod off, and I was basically wide awake by the time my head hit the pillow.
Still, after maybe a couple of hours' sleep I was up and ready for the match against 'sirc', another German who might be someone whose real name I know, but I don't remember. And lost it, though I wasn't terrible and he/she put in a best-ever performance to beat me. Admitting after the match to being very 'fanboyish' about playing me, which I still hear a lot even after all these years and usually from people who are much better at memory than me.
And once that match was over, there was just time to get to Birmingham for eleven o'clock, when the comic fair opened its doors. It's one of those days when everything I usually do all happens on the same morning.
Being more than a little sleep-deprived, I was pleased that I managed to refrain from buying the three slabbed, very-low-grade, 1940 Adventure Comics with Hourman covers on sale for a rather unreasonable £500 each, because that's the kind of 'bargain' I tend to snap up when I haven't had enough sleep and I can really do without being bankrupt and homeless as well as tired. But who needs Golden Age DC greats when it turned out there were some Silver Age DC classics in another stall's box of loose comics at three for £5? Hiding among the box's unexceptional contents were exactly three slightly tatty but great titles that I just had to get! Go-Go Check classics!
Actually, the Justice League #41 is just before the Go-Go Checks appeared, and just before the days when Batman had to be the prominent cover star, but it's the best of the three. A really awesome story that shows just why the JLA were so sensational! The Superboy is a throwaway but entertaining yarn and the World's Finest in all fairness is almost unreadable, but they're still worthy additions to my collection. Anything with Go-Go Checks is always worth a look!
Now I should probably go to bed, but it's two o'clock in the afternoon and it would only disturb my body's rhythms even further. I'll just wander around like a zombie until this evening, and then spend tomorrow doing all the tedious things like cleaning my house that I might have done today if all these far more important things hadn't come up.
Or else I'll stay up all night and watch the finals of the Open. Let's face it, that's more likely.
