My Own Genie

The Dandy isn't generally worth reading. It never has been, really, although it's had its moments over the years, it's always been second best to the Beano somehow. But there's a strip in it nowadays called My Own Genie which is absolutely freaking hysterical every single week. It outshines everything else in there by a long way, with its genuine wit and perfectly-timed comedy. The artwork's unconventional, in keeping with modern Dandy policy, but in this case it still manages to put the point across like it should. And the writing is in a class of its own.

I just thought I ought to mention that. No time to say anything else, off to Cambridge. I'll be back on Sunday, bloglings!

Good grief

The US Memory Championship has just announced (at rather short notice) that it will be adopting a radical new format, with different events and a focus on things that look good on TV. I'm all in favour of this kind of thing if it gets a bit of publicity for the event, even if it is completely different to the way the big memory championships work.

Gunther, on the other hand, has suggested that the World Memory Sports Council might like to take legal action against the organisers of the US Championship to stop them doing it. It takes me back to the summer of 2004, when he was suggesting similar sanctions against Andi's Memory World Cup (although Andi was the first one to threaten other people with lawyers there). I don't see why anyone takes the whole thing so seriously, I really don't. It's just a bit of fun, for crying out loud!

Still, Dominic made the very valid point that some of the budding American memorisers would probably want to get onto the world ranking list, for which we need standardised competitions all over the world (something they've never yet had in the USA, preferring a shrunk-down version in the previous years). Not that there even is a world ranking list at the moment, because the WMSC haven't got round to working one out yet, but still. It is cool to be able to say "I'm Number X in the world!". It's even cooler to be able to say you're the number one in the world, of course, so I hope I end up on top again when they do release the new list, however they work it out (I have my own world ranking list based on past WMC performances, and I'm number two on that, after Andi).

After the 2002 world championship, I really enjoyed going around telling people I was number sixteen in the world of memory competitions. Of course, there were so few people taking part in those days that it was really easy to get into the world's top twenty, not like today. But you didn't have to tell people that, did you? For some reason, I was less inclined to boast about it when I got up to number four, and then number one - probably because I'm just completely unable to boast without turning it into self-mockery of some kind, and it's hard to do that when you've got an achievement you're genuinely proud of.

What I do like telling people is my position on the othello ranking list. If only someone would manage to put together a proper world ranking list including all those great players from Japan and elsewhere, it would be even better, but Number 141 with a bullet on the French European Rating List is still pretty cool. I had to look it up to see where I was, by the way. I was thinking 142, so now I'm quite happy with myself. But I notice I'm one place behind Joel Blackmur, on 1708 points to his 1709. I'll have to do something about that this weekend...

Why I'm not a good accountant

I really don't care whether the company I work for makes a profit or not. I care about accurately reporting how much profit or loss it's made, as a matter of professional pride, but I don't give a monkey's whether it's making millions or going bust. The really good accountants genuinely do care about that kind of thing.

Also, I don't feel more than a tiny bit guilty about leaving on time tonight while my underlings work late (one of them's on holiday for the next few days, the other was late in because she had to pick up a bag she left on the bus, and anyway I'm going to have to start early and finish late tomorrow to get everything done, I just couldn't be bothered with it tonight).

Anyway, I've got Friday afternoon off work, which is nice. Only because I had half a day's holiday accrued that I need to take before the end of the month, but it'll let me get an early start going down to Cambridge for the weekend othello tournament. I have a tradition at the Cambridge International in February every year of going down there on Friday night and writing a diary entry in my room in Sleeperz. Of course, now I've got a blog and write about my life every day, that's kind of redundant. But on the other hand, I tend to get more into deep introspection than I do here for the world to read, so it's probably still beneficial, psychologically speaking. I don't know why, but it's fun to sit down at a prearranged time every year and write down what's happened to you in the twelve months previously, and what the heck you think is going to happen in the year to come.

Having written this essay every year, incidentally, I keep the bit of paper in my bag for a couple of weeks, then lose it or throw it away. That's probably psychologically beneficial too.

Work sucks

Actually, it really doesn't. I've just spent the day doing the most complex, tedious part of my regular monthly job, and I still quite enjoyed it. I feel kind of guilty about enjoying being an accountant, sometimes.

Of course, doing nothing but work does leave me without much to write about in this blog. A main reason for doing this thing is so that I can look back on it in years to come and see what I was doing. Do I want to see that I was doing nothing but work, all week, every week? I should skive off occasionally and do something exciting instead.

I'm definitely, absolutely, thinking about finding a flat in Burton now. Just as soon as I get round to it. Also on the getting-round-to-it-eventually list is getting some dollars for my trip to New York. Hey, maybe I could fill the blog with things I haven't done yet but really intend to!

Non-famous

I know I didn't want anybody to see me on telly, but I'm a bit annoyed by the fact that nobody saw me on telly. Doesn't anyone in the whole company watch Child Of Our Time? Sheesh.

Never mind. What's more annoying is that I'm listening to Virgin Radio and it's just the idiot DJ Geoff talking. They don't normally do that - I turn the radio on if I want to listen to music, and Virgin are normally quite obliging like that. Can't be bothered with skipping around the stations until I find something I like, I've just turned it off. Time I was in bed, anyway.

I'm never going to be a TV personality

I wasn't going to watch it, but in the end I couldn't resist it. Could have been worse, I suppose - it could have gone on longer than the couple of minutes it was. But that was more than enough of me shyly mumbling about impwoving your memowy to put me off doing anything like that again. Apart from the thing like that that I'm still doing at the moment, with Nick. And I had no idea I rolled my eyes up into my head in such a scary way while I'm memorising. I'll have to watch that, it makes me look really weird.

Anyway, this Child Of Our Time is a funny kind of series. I've never watched it before, and probably won't again, but it's quite fun in its way. Although one of the bits involved giving one group of children a new toy and another group nothing, which seems a bit on the cruel side, and they actually made one little girl cry in another bit when she and her family got a test wrong. That's just nasty. Isn't there a law about being mean to small people in the name of entertainment?

A cool bit on now about gaze aversion, though. I've always found that fascinating, seeing as I have real trouble looking at people's faces at all. This is why I'm so bad at the names and faces discipline at the WMC (well, that and the mental conditioning I've given myself by going around saying I'm so bad at it - my scores in that one event have got progressively worse over the years, because I've convinced myself I can't do it. I really need to break that habit). And if you look at me on that bit on today's programme, I keep averting my eyes and looking around the room while I'm talking. I do that all the time when I'm nervous.

Anyway, enough science stuff. Topped 2000 in hour numbers today for the first time. I think I really am better now at the memory stuff than I ever have been. If I don't win the world championship this year, it'll be because someone else has got even better, not because I haven't done my best. So I'm going to be happy whatever happens.

What kind of butterflies grow from trains?

That's the final line of a Tony Buzan poem. It just about qualifies as 'profound', as per my promise of the last couple of days. If you're still not satisfied, you might like to read this down a really big hole. Anyway, it leads in to what I actually wanted to talk about...

So, one of the traditional events at memory championships is memorising a poem. Usually a Tony Buzan one nowadays (he's the founder and leading inspiration of the world memory championships, has done a lot of great things in the field of learning and education and expanding the mind's capabilities and believes he's a great poet too), but the first few world championships had poems specially written by Ted Hughes, and it was one of the few disciplines with some kind of real-life application. But since the world championships became genuinely international, and especially now that all the good memorisers are German-speakers, it's become increasingly difficult to translate the poem in a way that's equally difficult to memorise in multiple languages.

Because of this, the World Memory Sports Council, which basically consists of Tony and the couple of people who do the actual work of running the world championships (god bless 'em), has decided to replace the poem with something new. So Phil Chambers, the guy who does 99% of the work (and I'm never sure what exactly he gets out of it, putting in long nights shuffling cards, calculating the scores, arranging a million and one little details, but I'm very grateful) contacted the top five competitors of the moment (me, Clemens, Gunther, Astrid and Joachim) and the rest of the WMSC to ask for ideas and suggestions. We kicked around lots of different ideas for new disciplines, and in the end put it down to a vote between four different ones.

I don't think this was intentional, but Phil in all good faith suggested a simple enough idea - everyone involved in the discussion would vote on their favourite new discipline, with Tony having the casting vote in the event of a tie. This of course created the possibility of all the competitors voting for one thing and still losing out to the WMSC's favourite choice. And that's exactly what happened. After some wrangling, we all voted for Gunther's word-pairs suggestion, while Tony, Phil, Dominic O'Brien (eight-times champion who's not actively competing any more), Chris Day (the other person-who-does-the-actual-work) and Ray Keene (chess grandmaster who if he actively does anything for the WMSC besides being Tony's friend, I don't know what it is) picked Dominic's "abstract images" idea.

So now we have a situation where the WMSC have 'consulted' the leading competitors and then ignored them. Doesn't create much good feeling all round. Not that I really mind in principle - I don't actually like the idea of the competitors being able to choose the rules in the first place (what other 'proper' mental sport does that? But it's been the norm in the world of memory in the past, especially during Dominic's heyday) - but what bugs me about the whole thing is the part of Phil's results-announcing email saying "Tony Buzan has asked me to thank you on his behalf and let you know how pleased he is with the extremely high level of mentally literate discourse."

Tony has a tendency to think of himself as a god-like figure, revered by all, and no doubt really feels that those patronising words would be well-received by people who are being told that their views have been acknowledged and ignored. And Phil genuinely does revere Tony, so that thought no doubt never crossed his mind. That's the thing about this - nobody's setting out to do anything but be considerate of others, and it's still ended up with all-round bad feeling. Not Andi Bell levels of bad feeling, but Gunther especially is in a bad mood over the whole thing. Coupled with the decision to hold the WMC this year in Kuala Lumpur, the WMSC aren't hugely popular at the moment.

It'll all blow over, of course. But it's fun to watch while it's going on...

Profound and fascinating

I promised to be profound and fascinating tonight, but I forgot that I'm going out with work people, so I haven't got time. Tomorrow, definitely.

Twelve for a pound, not six

I turned my computer back on specifically to say that.

A moral dilemma

Should I eat those hot cross buns in my kitchen cupboard? I've got three of them left - they were six for a pound in Sainsbury's, so I bought two packs. But then I felt more like my usual bacon butties for breakfast the last few days, and stuffed myself with my usual teas in the evenings, so I haven't eaten them all yet. They're a bit past the sell-by date now, and a tad on the stale side, so I really should have them tonight if I'm going to. But I can't decide whether I really want to or not. I don't generally eat things for the sake of eating them - I could always feed them to the birds tomorrow morning, although the pigeons round here get more than enough already, and they bully the little sparrows and things so they don't get anything.

I kind of object to hot cross buns being on sale in the first place, at this time of year. Things are less special the longer you stretch out the period of time when they're available. Of course, I endorsed the sale of them by my purchases, but you see I respond to simple commands like "Buy these things! They're cheap!" Not that six for a pound is really all that cheap, come to think of it, but the supermarket made a big deal out of it as if it was. I can't resist a big red sticker.

There are more important things I could be talking about, I know. I was planning to go on at length about the new event at the memory championships, and the various competitions to come this year, but I like to strike a balance between interesting things like that and pointless drivel like this. Tomorrow I'll be more profound and fascinating. Probably.

They need all the help they can get

Boston United's website is lamenting that the team is 72nd (and last) in the Coca-Cola "Win A Player" league table at the moment. It's not entirely surprising - we have fewer fans than any other league team. In fact, the town of Boston has a significantly smaller population (I'm talking about a factor of ten or more in most cases) than any other with a team in the league. Except for the tiny little village of Rushden, but they're going to get relegated anyway so they don't count. So really, it's quite impressive that we're doing so well at the moment (on what the manager optimistically describes as the fringes of the playoff places).

What really pleases me at the moment is the transfer window activity. Or lack of it - the most important thing is that the board had the foresight to turn down a very generous offer from Milwall for Julian Joachim. Getting Joachim to sign for his home town's club on a free transfer was one heck of a coup - his Premiership days are behind him, but he's still way too good for Boston United - and it shows intelligence to refrain from cashing him in to make a bit of quick money, in favour of hanging on to him and letting him bring in the extra money that comes from the team winning a game every now and then.

We still have a stupidly small squad, especially with Noel Whelan and Nathan Abbey being released from their contracts (Whelan to go and get help for his alcohol problems and Abbey because we somehow ended up with three goalies and he was never much good anyway), but that's probably a good thing for team spirit, and always means the youth squad get more chance of a first-team game than at any other club in the country.

My great claim to fame is that my mum taught Julian Joachim at school, you know.

Just a band, you know

One thing I don't think I've mentioned enough on this here blog before is that I really, really love the Beatles. I'm listening to "With The Beatles" at the moment, my little collection of CDs is roughly 50% Fab Four, and I'm quite certain I spend as much time listening to their music as to every other piece of music ever recorded put together. I'm never any good at explaining why I like or dislike things, so I'm not even going to bother here, but the wonderful, imaginative music just strikes a chord with me - the early stuff that the band themselves were embarrassed by after a few years just as much as the genius later works. The whole collected musical history of the group just has a unity to it that seems too perfect to be accidental.

And yes, John Lennon is very high on my list of idols. My good friend Jimi summed it up very nicely once - he said that Lennon was, at heart, a complete bastard who really tried his hardest not to be. I think that's something we can all aspire to.

I've got a dirty mind

So I was just about to start blogging about journeys, mindful that I keep dropping memory-jargon like that into this thing without bothering to explain it for the benefit of my overwhelmingly too-sensible-to-know-all-about-memory-jargon audience, when the phone rings. Nobody calls me at ten o'clock at night, because they know I go to bed early a lot of the time, so I was wondering who the heck it was, but it only turned out to be filmmaker Nick. And maybe it's just the thought of late night and phone conversations, or maybe I'm just in a silly mood tonight, but at one point he said "Another thing I want to do with you is...", and I suddenly thought "He sounds like he's talking on a phone sex line!" and had to spend the rest of the conversation trying not to giggle at everything he said. I think he's just got the kind of voice that you'd expect to hear on one of those lines, not that I'd know.

That's mean. I say all kinds of horrid things about Nick in this blog (the word 'evil' crops up quite often, doesn't it?), but it's just my way of mentally dealing with the idea that I'm quite excited despite myself by a film being made about my mnemonical exploits. And he's a very nice guy to work with too - if I didn't want him hovering around me with a camera, I wouldn't have told him I was going to New York, would I?

Anyway, when I said 'journeys' last night (the first time in that sentence, not the second time. God, I'm a terrible writer), I was talking about the mental journeys I use to keep the information I'm memorising in sequence. What I do is have a series of backdrops, in order, pre-prepared in my mind, and at each one of these settings, visualise images that I've made from the numbers or cards I'm looking at. These images, of course, are also pre-prepared, and I'll go into detail about how that works another time.

But what it all boils down to is that I have lots of these journeys, each consisting of 26 different points. Some of them are around houses or buildings I've worked in, one point in each room, and some are around streets, with a point at each corner or place of interest. I have twenty-five-and-a-half journeys at the moment (the half is one where for some reason I could never remember what the last few points look like, so I eventually gave up and just used it as a half-length journey for whenever I need one. It's around the little villages between Boston and Tumby Woodside, taking the scenic route - through Anton's Gowt to Gipsey Bridge and down to Bunker's Hill. Don't you love those Lincolnshire village names?), but I need a minimum of 34 for a full world championship, so I need to dream up some more, or I'll have to use some of them twice (which causes problems because if I reuse them too soon, I remember the images I put in them last time).

I've come up with three more today - one around the new office at Burton (which might be a problem in the future, because half the building is still, well, a building site, and I don't like it when my mental journeys no longer match what the places look like in real life), one around Meadowhall in Sheffield and one in and around Ace's parents' house in Nottingham. But while racking my brain for other places I know that I haven't made a journey from yet, I thought of Peterborough, and dragged something up kicking and screaming from the dark crevices of my long-term memory.

I used to have journeys around Peterborough, and I'd completely forgotten them. After the 2004 world championships, when I stopped practising, a lot of my newer journeys faded out of my mind. Several others I extended and used for pi, which kind of ruins them now so I can't use them any more, but a few I just forgot completely. Going into the world championships last year, I remembered a few of them, but the Peterborough ones had slipped my mind completely. I'm trying now to put them together again, and it's hard work. I remember individual locations on them, and a few short sequences, but not how it all fitted together. I can't remember how many there were, but it might have been as many as three - I think there was one based on the route into town on my motorbike, from when I used to go to college there from Boston (an hour on a little motorbike in winter is no fun at all, by the way). It's coming back to me now as I write this, which is part of the reason I'm babbling on at such great length.

And another two, I think, around the Queensgate centre and around the town. It'll come back to me. Of course, I could just think up a new journey that wouldn't exactly match the old one, but where's the fun in that?

Broody

I'm now the age my dad was when I was conceived. This isn't just a mathematical curiosity to me, it makes me think about how I'd always assumed my life would go. I've always thought that the age of thirty is about the right time to have children, and just always had it in the back of my mind that I would at that age. Now that I've got there, of course, I still don't feel grown-up enough, even if anyone wanted to help me out with the technical details of procreating right now.

It kind of bugs me, actually, that I'm probably never going to have offspring. Although the idea horrifies me on lots of different levels, there's still part of me that likes the idea of passing on my accumulated wisdom and ideals to some poor impressionable child. A sort of drive to make some kind of concrete contribution to making future generations not quite as unpleasant as they would otherwise be.

And it's Monday tomorrow and I've got to go back to work. I haven't done a lot of memory practice this weekend - just a half-hour binary (3650, a bit below the record but better than anyone else has ever done in competition). I'm going to dream up a few more journeys this week, on train journeys (effective time management, you see), and drum them into my head with a bit of training in the evenings. With a night out with the work people on Friday and then othello the next weekend, I'll not have a free and non-hungover weekend for a while, so I'll need to keep in shape.

Peter's Friends

I noticed that the brilliant film "Peter's Friends" is on Channel 4 tonight, at 1:45am. I had a vague memory that my video of it was broken, but when I checked it it turned out not to be, so I watched it this afternoon. If you haven't seen it before, I'd advise anyone reading this to set their videos tonight - it's one of those obscure movies that I think everyone needs to watch at some point in their lives.

Stephen Fry plays Peter, who after inheriting his father's huge mansion and fortune invites his best friends from university around for a party. And over the course of a weekend they talk, argue, break up, get together and generally entertain. It's funny and moving and compelling, and the acting from all the central characters is top-notch. Tony Slattery is actually really great as the hapless middle-class boyfriend of Alphonsia Emmanuel, who just doesn't fit in with the friends any more than Slattery fits in with the likes of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson in real life. And the film added Rita Rudner to my list of people I must check out some day (it's been about ten years since I first saw the film, but I'll get round to it eventually). She co-wrote it as well as appearing as Kenneth Branagh's awful American wife who he's deeply embarrassed by. All this and Hugh Laurie's musical talent on full display, a beautiful scene where everyone sings "Just the way you look tonight", and a soundtrack of great hit tunes. One of my all-time favourites.

Ah, the weekend

And not a moment too soon. I'm all worn out for some reason. Can't even think of anything to blog about tonight. Well, I can, but when I actually came to sit down and type it (the astute readers among you will notice that I'm sitting down and using my laptop, not lying on the floor to use my inaccurately-named desktop), it occurred to me that it was boring, whiny and offensive to both my parents, so I won't bother.

Conflict of interests

I've just noticed that the World Memory Championship clashes with the British Othello Championship - they're both currently planned for the first weekend in September. This is really, really annoying, and not just because it's taken me a good two weeks to notice. It's not like I've got a difficult choice to make between the two, I can't miss the WMC after all the work I've put into it, but I really like the othello nationals and it'll bug me, being half a world away while they're taking place.

Also, that means my only chance of qualifying for the world othello championship is winning the Grand Prix - which in othello circles means getting the best results from the five regional tournaments in the year. And I can't go to Oadby because that's the weekend I'm in New York, and another one's in Salisbury, which I normally don't bother with because it's just too far. And Geoff will be going to all of them and he always beats me anyway. I've only got myself to blame for there being one in Salisbury, by the way - it would be in Derby if I'd agreed to host it, but I'm just too darn busy this year.

Also, my back hurts. I think I've sprained it or something. Probably when I woke up in the middle of the night for some reason and thought I saw someone standing in my bedroom. I can't recall whether I actually screamed out loud, but I jumped about ten feet in the air, and was suddenly wide awake with my heart going like the clappers. It was just a shadow or something like that, possibly a ghost, but I'm still kind of freaked out about it. I've never done anything like that before.

Going Underground

I'm reading "The Secret People" by John Wyndham at the moment. I found it in my pile of books, and I have no idea how long I've had it or why I haven't read it before. Maybe someone sneaked it in among my belongings with some kind of sinister purpose in mind. It's good, though. Ancient science-fiction is always fun to read. There's something quite charming about the opening chapter, in which our hero, flying his rocket plane from France to South Africa, stops in Algeria to refuel.

I need to get some more books. It's not like I spend all that much time reading (just half an hour or so in bed every night, as a rule), but I seem to get through them really quickly, and I feel like I've read every book in my posession so often that I could recite it off by heart. I can't really rely on keeping on finding ones that I didn't know I had. I need to go to Oxfam and buy a shelf-full.

No one knows what lies behind the masquerade

I might be going to a masked ball in September. It's at a place called Ingestre Hall, and it does sound like quite fun. It sounds like what I think of as a typically Jenny kind of affair (which isn't meant to sound nearly as insulting as it does now I come to read it) - pre-1900 costumes preferred and masks compulsory, workshops on how to dance in the afternoon and a proper ball in the evening. I've never done anything remotely like this before, and I was lying in bed last night thinking of the kind of outfit I could wear for it. The trouble is, it would be staggeringly expensive, not just for the tickets (which will cost about £60), but for a proper mask (I'd have to get a really good one, a dragon of course, and they cost a lot of money) and an outfit to go with it (dark green velvet Victorian evening dress isn't the kind of thing you can pick up from Oxfam, in my experience), considering I'd only wear the get-up once. But on the other hand, you only live once, and it's fun to splash out and do something different and extravagant every once in a while. And why should my brother be the only one in the family with a range of stylish costumes for every occasion?

So little time...

I very nearly forgot to write this tonight. I was about to go to bed. I seem to be suffering a lot of memory lapses - after waxing lyrical about Life On Mars last week, I would have missed it entirely if I hadn't turned the telly on just as it was starting, with the intention of watching a cartoon on video. And what with all that confusion, I forgot I was going to write my blog next on the schedule.

Not that I was going to talk about anything earth-shattering, just that I was feeling lazy this morning and decided to get the 8:38 train (which gets me to the office bang on nine o'clock if it's not delayed), rather than the 8:27 like I normally do. So I got to the station at half past eight, only to find that the 8:38 had been cancelled and the 8:27 was just pulling away from the platform, only three minutes behind schedule for a change. So I was half an hour late for work this morning, which annoyed me enormously.

I'll get the 8:06 tomorrow. I need to get something as a thank-you present for the Cheadle people who are all finishing tomorrow, having stayed on a bit longer than originally planned to help with the transition. They've all been very helpful, rather more so I think than we Parkhouse people were when the same thing happened to us. Having decided to buy the three who trained me a big bar of chocolate each, I was irritated to hear my boss talking on the phone about her intention of doing something similar. She'll think I stole the idea from her now.

I should mention that my boss is great, actually. A couple of previous times when I've been two or three minutes late because of trains, she's said "don't worry about it" in tones of complete astonishment that I would feel any need to apologise. I think I'd rather be told off, actually - I don't take my job seriously, but I expect the people who get paid lots of money to do so. Still, I've just about resolved to move to Burton. There seems to be a real scarcity of cheap flats there - I haven't seen one that costs less than my current rent plus my monthly train season ticket yet! I know this place is extremely cheap, but it's still surprising. So I don't know why I'm so set on moving - the hassle of trains would be cut out, but the hassle of relocating would be a whole lot more hassly (if that's a word). I'm accustomed to the stench of fermenting beer that pervades the town now, though. I don't notice it any more.