Practice makes 90% accurate

I need to do some memory training. Haven't done any since the world championships, demonstrations for journalists and TV people aside, and I need to stay in shape all year if I'm going to actually win the blasted world memory championship next time round. I also need to work on memorising cards by shuffling them between my hands (like I was doing on This Morning), rather than turning them over like I normally do. I'm pretty sure I could go faster if I do it that way, but it'll take me a while to get used to it. But there's just not so much motivation to practice when there isn't a competition for so long. Anyone out there want to organise one for me?

Someone pimp me!

Ever have one of those days when it feels like you've done nothing but talk to TV people? Well, I might be exaggerating things here, but I did talk to two different TV people today in a matter of minutes, and that's two more than I talk to in an average day. So I'm going to Ireland for September 30th, to be gently derided by comedians, and London on October 4th to test my memory against the best the non-human world can offer. Also, you can see my This Morning performance here. Enjoy! (It's not very exciting.)

Maybe I should get an agent. An agent could talk to these people for me and just give me the edited highlights. And an agent might be able to persuade some of these TV people to pay me actual money for these TV appearances. That'd be cool.

On the panel

I've heard on the grapevine that Irish TV show "The Panel" want me on. I don't know the show, but I can only assume they have a sort of guess-the-nonentity kind of sequence, a la Never Mind The Buzzcocks. You can watch an episode on the website, in which the panellists discuss the Irish elections in an entertaining way. I have secretly always wanted to be on Have I Got News For You, this could be a step in the right direction...

Incidentally, everyone who watched This Morning (a list which seems to consist of Grandma and Ian) says it was great. I'm a star!

This Morning, this afternoon and my pants

This Morning was great fun. They cut my bit shorter than planned to make way for some 'breaking news' about Madeleine McCann (I tell you, it's hard to be a minor celebrity right now), but I still got to chat with Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton, memorise a pack of cards and impress an audience of millions. Well, thousands, at least, I'm not sure what kind of viewing figures they get. I also got Phillip to give me an autograph for my grandma ("To Dorothy, lots of love"), which will make her day - she fancies him. Meeting him was rather groovy for me too, I grew up watching him presenting children's BBC and it's strange to realise that he's actually a real person.

This afternoon, I had to hurry back to Derby for my interview with DHL. However, I got a bus that I thought would take me there only to find that it had dropped me at a different DHL place miles away, with no way to get to the right place. So no new job there, but never mind. If I can't get there by public transport, it's not the job for me anyway.

Also, I'm confused about my pants. I have two pairs of green tartan boxer shorts that are seriously falling to pieces ('more holey than righteous', as Grandma says), so I don't wear them much. At least I think I don't, but I've noticed that every time I take a load of washing out of the machine, those old green pants are in there, without me remembering wearing them. It's very strange. Is someone breaking into my flat on a regular basis, wearing my pants and putting them in the wash?

It's in the bag

I've just packed my trusty rucksack to go down to London tonight. I'm worried that it might be reaching the end of its lifespan, though - at the othello at the weekend, the remaining zipper came off and I can't get it back on, so it's going to remain closed for all eternity now. This isn't an insurmountable problem, because of the big hole through which I normally put things in and take them out of the bag, but it makes it more difficult to fit oversized things inside.

It's a Reebok rucksack, black and what used to be a very garish pink before it faded over the decades to a gentle pastel hue, with still just about legible the motto "Pump It Up!" on the front. It's given me many years' service now, and before that it served my brother well as the bag he took his PE kit to school in. He hated PE, and probably transferred some of his dislike for the subject to his PE kit bag, so I think I did the bag a favour when I borrowed it in 1994 and never returned it. It's had a life of continued variety since then - it went to university with me, it's helped me move into my own rented room, followed by my first flat on my own, it's been to MSOs and othello tournaments, it's gone with me to the USA, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Malaysia, Bahrain and elsewhere, and it's still more or less in one piece. I think it's still good for a few years yet, before it becomes actually impossible to carry things around in it. Then maybe I'll have it framed and hang it up on the wall.

Zoomy Doubles For Darwin

Now this is the kind of thing that makes me really, really glad I'm a memory champion! Forwarded from the WMSC, an email from another TV producer:

Dear Secretary,

I am producing a series entitled Extraordinary Animals for Channel 5/BBC World, exploring animal behaviour and intelligence. Each 30 minute film will focus on an animal who has shown exceptional abilities and has furthered scientific understanding not only of its' species but also of our own.

One of our films features AI, a remarkable female chimp living at the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University. Working with Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa and his team, she has mastered the ability to count to ten, memorise symbols for numbers (including Arabic), and words for colours. Both she, and her son Ayumu have shown remarkable ability in a memory test where numbers 1 to 9 appear on a screen randomly, are then covered up and the chimps remember their positions. They can do this at speed.

We have completed our filming in Japan with the professor and the chimps and it really is truly amazing to see them doing the test. However, to see just how skilled they are, I feel we need to see humans take the same test. It would be fascinating to see the result. As the chimps are extraordinary, I think it only fair to use extraordinary humans. It would be fantastic to find British memory champions/experts to take part – both adult and junior. Do you think you might be able to help or refer me elsewhere?

We plan to shoot the test in London in early October. Should you require any further information, please contact me.


Can the British memory champion out-memorise a chimpanzee? Wouldn't it be cool if the answer was no?

Was?

Why when I posted that blog entry did I get a screen saying

"Your blog post published successfully!
Blog anzeigen (in einem neuen Fenster)
Need to change it? Edit post | Create a new post"

I'm sure I haven't told Blogger to give me part of their status reports in German.

Nats

Not the annoying flying insects, the not at all annoying national othello championship. Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday, but Geoff and Michael were staying over and I still don't like blogging when someone's watching me. I don't know why, seeing as I'm aware that people are going read what I'm writing anyway. Still, I'm not sure I was a perfect host, as shown by the following conversation when Michael asked for black coffee:

Me: Oh, there isn't any. I normally keep some in the house for guests, but I took it down to the community centre so we'd have something to drink at the tournament, and it's still there. Ditto milk, sugar and tea.
Michael: What is there to drink, then?
Me: Water.
Michael: Fine. (going to the sink)
Me: Oh, also, the cold tap doesn't work.

Well, I never claimed this was the Ritz. Anyway, the competition all went fine - I had been worried that the venue, a cheap and somewhat shabby but extremely nice community centre not too far from the city centre, would have cancelled my booking, even though I called on Friday to confirm that it was still happening, or would otherwise take exception to us, but no, it was all okay. I must be a great organiser after all. We had the AGM before the championship started, which was as exciting as usual. Graham filled in as chairman while Aubrey's busy in America promoting his new book (just for a change - I think this is the fifth year in a row that we've called on Graham's services as official Acting Something-Or-Other).

By the time the competition was ready to start, we had a whopping 18 competitors. This forced me to cycle home and get another board, but we didn't start too late - luckily, really, since we only had the room till six before we had to make way for a live 'guitar vocalist'. Among the 18, just for maximum confusion value, were two Davids, two Jeremys, two Roberts and two Ians (well, one Ian and one Iain, but that's not a big help when you're reading out names). I think some othello players need to splash out on a name change to something more exotic and unique, like Imre or Aubrey.

I lost to Imre in round one, disappointingly enough - three wins in a row against him would have been something to really boast about - but made up for it with a really cool win against Michael in the third round. I've never done that before. Now I just need to work out how to beat Graham some time. Geoff's got the knack of that - he beat Graham in round two, while Iain beat Imre. That pretty much set the standard for the tournament as a whole - it really wasn't one of those championships where the highest-rated players beat everyone below them on the rating list, there were upsets and surprises all over the place. Iain drew with David Hand in round three, so at the end of the first day David Beck was on his own at the top of the table with three wins.

We went to a Thai restaurant in the evening, it being the first place we could find that wasn't full up. Actually, it was nearly empty when we all piled in. The food was good, though, but the service wasn't what you would call exceptional. A surprisingly extensive discussion about coca-cola led to Jeremy Dyer learning that they do in fact still make cans of cherry coke, and my revelation that in Bahrain, the coke cans still have old-fashioned ringpulls.

Today, I didn't manage to follow up that win over Michael with any more impressive results, unless you count winning on time against Ian when I was well and truly dead on the board. Graham also beat me 63-1, just to teach me not to get too cocky. Elsewhere, David Hand rather impressively made it two draws in a row with his first game of the day against David Beck, who then beat Graham but lost to Iain, who took the lead after five rounds but then lost to Imre and Graham, Geoff and Jeremy Das. Geoff was in contention for the lead all the way through, as were both Davids and Michael. It was anyone's guess who would end up in the final, but normality reasserted itself at the last, and it ended up being Graham versus Imre, for about the 73rd time. Imre won for the (genuinely) ninth time. Congratulations to him!

We had lunch in the Dunkirk Tavern down the road from the venue. Their food selection turned out to be rather less extensive than I'd assumed it would be from the sign outside promising inexpensive Sunday roasts - it didn't add "and no other kinds of food" - but it was very nice. All in all, the whole thing went really well, and a fun time was had by all! So I needn't have worried about it all going wrong and me getting the blame.

I'm gonna live forever

Okay, next Wednesday you all have to skive off work and/or come to Britain to see me on This Morning. They're even putting me up in a hotel in London on Tuesday night! And, in a shining example of effective time management, I've arranged a job interview at DHL at East Midlands Airport for late Wednesday afternoon. Although to be honest I'm not over-enthusiastic about the job.

But that's all for next Wednesday, and as the old saying goes, next Wednesday never comes. Tomorrow, on the other hand, we have the othello nationals! I would really like to do well in it, although as I've hardly played the game for months now, it's unlikely that I will. Still, it's my dream that one day my page on the othello wiki will mention something about my othello-playing ability.

TMWRNJ!

Okay, this is cool - This Morning want me on the show! I get to hang out on national TV with whoever hosts This Morning these days, possibly Phillip Schofield! Don't know what day yet, but I'll keep you informed. Also, I've just been talking to someone over the internet who didn't know my real name, and when I told him he said "You're Ben Pridmore? Wow!" I never meet people who've actually heard of me without being told! I'm really turning into a global celebrity! I'll have paparazzi going through my bins before you know it!

I also did that interview with the Rheinische Post today, so if you're a devoted reader, stay tuned. Alexei the UK correspondent says that he might be able to write the article some time soon if the paper stop insisting he write about Madeleine McCann and nothing else. So don't hold your breath.

It's that time of year again

It seems I'm probably going to have a big birthday party again this year. I always thought of myself as the type not to have a big bash, what with it being so depressing being as old and ancient as I am (I CAN'T be 31 next month, can I?), but after the last two years of having a get-together with all the gang, it's become one of those annual traditions. The plan is to try to find an apartment to rent for the weekend somewhere nice, like Manchester.

But 31? I don't know how that happened.

Holy Pillow Talk, Batman!

Ahh, bliss! BBC4 are repeating the sixties Batman series. Which, although I wasn't around in the sixties to watch, I have fond memories of thanks to the repeats on early-morning ITV in the eighties. Those were the days. And being on that channel and not bothering to turn the telly off led me to another interesting discovery - did you know Doris Day was still alive? It's news to me. I don't know why, but I'd just automatically assumed that she was dead. I'm going to have to look up all the other people I've been assuming were no longer with us now, just to make sure they're not going to be turning up unexpectedly on my doorstep. I'll start with Julius Caesar.

The documentary, which I turned off after five minutes despite being vaguely interested in Doris Day and her continued existence, was one of those horribly badly made ones with sort of semi-dramatisations of what the narrator is saying in the background, so that when it recounts how she was hit by a train at the age of thirteen we hear train sounds, clanging bells and a scream. Yuck. If the documentary about me contains anything even vaguely like that, I'm going to sue somebody. Or at least decry it in public as loudly as possible. The filming's finished now, I don't know if I mentioned that - Nick is now busy editing it into some kind of coherent whole (I don't envy him), and it'll be out either late this year or early next, I forget which. So mark your diaries.

It took me years to write, will you take a look?

Okay, I've decided I need to get on with writing this book of mine. I don't even care about getting it published, I'm just sick of "How To Be Clever" sitting there in absentia and mocking me with its non-written-ness. Enough of this talking to people about it, composing chapters in my head, vaguely assuming it'll get done one of these days. It's been a good four years now since I started "writing" it, it's just silly now. So from now on, I'm really, properly going to work at it. And everybody reading this has to constantly pester me about it and complain that it's not on the shelves of Waterstone's yet. Okay?

Hanjie!

I seem to have got addicted to hanjie puzzles - those Japanese ones with the grid where you colour in squares according to the numbers at the sides. I've been doing them for years, since they first started appearing in Tough Puzzles magazine (called 'Tsunami' in those days, until they changed the name after the big real tsunami), but to pass the time on the way to Bahrain I bought a book of puzzles that had lots of hanjies in, and now I can't get enough of the things. I suppose there are worse things I could be addicted to. Like sudoku. That would just be weird.

They really are getting earlier every year!

The great thing about writing a trivial and pointless blog entry every night is that you can check back on the dates when I noticed the 2008 comic annuals were in the shops in the previous two years - September 10th in 2005, September 23rd last year (although they might have been out for a couple of weeks before that without me noticing) and September 8th this year! I really need to write about something more, well, pointful. But I think it's funny that as with the last revamp of the Dandy, the annual hasn't kept pace with developments. Do they really make these changes at the last minute? Or write the annuals so far in advance that changes to the lineup and style of strips in the weekly (or now fortnightly) comic don't get reflected in the annuals for another year? The Beano book has a rather good Billy-the-Cat-fights-General-Jumbo story that almost makes it worth buying, but not quite. And the latest nostalgia book gives a deserved namecheck to the artist who did those wonderful Baby-Face Finlayson strips in the eighties (although I didn't buy the book and now I can't remember his name, so I'll have to flick through it again in another shop. Or buy it, but we don't want to go mad here).

I did my flicking-through-annuals in Stoke-on-Trent today. I decided to spend the day browsing shops in a town I've never been to before, as an alternative to all the hustle and bustle of the previous couple of months (or as a way to stop myself doing nothing but play on the internet all day, as has been my habit much too much of late), so I went to the train station and picked the nearest town that was a shortish and cheapish train journey away. That turned out to be Doncaster, but then although the train arrived on time, it was announced that it would be staying in Derby for the foreseeable future because of signal problems, so I got off again, found the nearest and cheapest place in the other direction that I hadn't been to before, and splashed out on another £6.60 to go to Stoke. It's an unexceptional place, with a city centre even farther away from the train station than Cambridge. But at least now I can say I've been there!

The 8:15 From Manchester

Somewhere between the hour cards in Bahrain and getting back home, I've lost two of my good packs of cards. Numbers 8 and 15, to be precise (the boxes have numbers on, but I don't memorise them in fixed order outside memory competitions. That would be slightly more obsessive than I normally am). So I'll need to get some more if I want to attempt 36 packs again (and who knows, next year, if I've done enough practice, I might). I might get them from Manchester, to justify using the title of a Saturday morning children's show that few of my readers will remember, as my subject line tonight. But I'll probably get them from Derby instead, it's a lot more convenient.

Ooh, but I'll tell you what I have bought from Derby - a new black hat! From a market stall that was absolutely crawling with black hats! Why have I never noticed it before? Possibly it didn't exist before, but I have a feeling it did, and I just didn't pay attention to it. Still, this is a cool one. There's a feather in the hatband.

All the cool people read the Rheinische Post and Rapport

Hmm. Since coming second in the world memory championship, the only publications to ask me for an interview are the foreign correspondent of the Rheinische Post in Düsseldorf and Rapport magazine, a high-production glossy A4 that goes out to all UK Peugeot owners. I suppose that's the best I can hope for.

Anyway, there's been too much memory stuff taking over my life lately. I need to get on with the other things I waste time with - the othello nationals the weekend after next, for example. I've hardly played for the last two months, I really need to get some practice in. Not to mention do my treasurer's report for the AGM (not that anyone really cares about it, of course...)

Aorta

I had a quick interview on Radio Derby again this morning, and in the waiting room there was a copy of the latest newsletter of AORTA - the Allenton, Alvaston and Osmaston Residents Together Association. This is, I'm fairly certain, the worst acronym ever invented. Firstly, it should be AAORTA or even AAAORTA, depending on whether you count the 'and'. Secondly, "Residents Together Association" sounds like a horribly contrived way to make a word out of the initials. Thirdly, why in the name of sanity would you want a residents' association to be called Aorta? Okay, they were always going to be struggling for a name when they decided to form an association spanning three districts of Derby that all start with a vowel, but there's no law saying you HAVE to make an acronym out of the association's name.

The brains in Bahrain fail mainly on the cards-based disciplines

"Names" would have worked better in the subject line, but I did okay in that one this time round. I did miss not doing daily blogged updates of the world championships like last year, but there wasn't internet access from the hotel. So that leaves me having to sum up the whole of the last week in one entry tonight before moving onto whatever I feel like writing tomorrow. Or maybe I'll spread it over a few days. There's a lot to write, anyway.

I got into the Bahrain International Airport at about 8:30pm local time - night falls there earlier than it does here, and it was already fully dark by the time I was leaving the airport. But even so, stepping outside I was knocked off my feet by the staggering heat - it was well over thirty degrees celsius and humid with it, so that you're soaked in sweat almost instantly. But the hotel was pleasantly air-conditioned (a bit too much so at times, in fact - on the first day the competition room was freezing, and thereafter it varied from too cold to too hot as people tried to grapple with the air con controls) and very swanky-looking. Most of the other competitors and organisers were staying there too, except the ones who couldn't afford it and had to make do with one of the cheaper ones down the road, and Tony Buzan and Ray Keene who were staying in a posher place, which gave the whole event a more social, friendly kind of feel. The hotel had a seafood restaurant where I ate the first night with an assortment of other memorisers (from memory I think it was Boris, Simon, Hannes, Ed, Lukas and somebody else who has slipped out of my brain right at this moment. Idriz. Sorry.)

Which reminds me that I shared my shuttle-bus to the hotel from the airport with a retired Swedish-American couple who were touring the middle east and were thrilled to learn that the World Memory Championship was happening in their hotel. They were only there for the first day, but they came along to see what it was like in the morning, even though I'd told them it wasn't much fun for spectators.

Anyway, the hotel also had a Harvesters pub which served excellent food, and we had lunches provided during the competition, so there was no shortage of decent grub. Which maybe explains why we didn't all lose weight like the Sunday Times promised we would. I only had the one day for sightseeing, and I had Nick following me around with the camera, but I did my best to see some interesting sights around Manama. Going outside in the daytime was practically lethal - the temperature got up to about forty degrees and it was a case of having to scamper between patches of shade and try not to look too much like a tourist (kind of a wasted effort, seeing as we were conspicuously white, sweating like the Halal equivalent of pigs and carrying a big TV camera). The coolest bit was seeing the multiple giant billboards advertising the WMC and the "Festival of the Mind" that accompanied it. This isn't something that's ever happened before, as far as I know. There was plenty of media coverage too - we got full-page spreads in the local newspapers every day ("Mind Wizard Pridmore In Race For Title") was my favourite headline.

We only managed 32 competitors, which is rather a step down from the last couple of years, but only to be expected because of the exotic location. And there were plenty of good ones among that lot, including a gang from China, competing in the WMC for the first time. The competition itself started off with some entertaining bickering over the rules - Gunther had asked for an extra page of abstract images, Ed took exception, and they first decided not to allow it, then changed their minds back again in the end. And then the abstract images sheets turned out to have been very badly photocopied (the printer the organisers had arranged turned out not to come with toner), making them much harder to memorise and making the extra page unnecessary after all. It's all part of the fun of the championships.

I got a passable score in that, then broke my world record in the binary digits again, with 4140. Woo! I got an entirely acceptable score in hour numbers too, the second-best after Wu Tiansheng, and was about neck-and-neck with Gunther after the first day, even though day one has his three best disciplines.

Day two was less successful - I honestly don't think I was really up to match fitness, not having practised as much as I should, and by the end of the day (we ran three or four hours behind schedule every day, as is traditional), I was tired and not concentrating properly. But I got a reasonable score in names and faces, a pretty cool 365 in speed numbers, and an 86 in historic dates. But in this one Hannes stole the show, with the only other world record of this year's WMC - 99, beating my old record of 96 that I thought was safe as houses. And then in the hour cards I had a total disaster. Like I said, I wasn't concentrating properly, but I nonetheless decided to go for 33, and my recall was horrific. I filled in 22 complete packs on the recall papers, but a lot of them involved educated and uneducated guesses, so I wasn't at all surprised to see a score of 10.5 packs (you get a half if there's one card wrong in the recall - seems I wrote the king of diamonds down twice without noticing) the next morning.

That put me fractionally in the lead after day two, but then I'm always in the lead after day two. I think I have been in every WMC since 2003, oh, except 2005 when I was leading after historic dates but then fell behind. But I generally find a way to mess things up on the final day. I ended up with 159 on words, with several annoying mistakes when I was convinced I had it nearly perfect. Spoken numbers was again entertaining - the playback stuttered at a couple of points and ran some numbers together instead of playing them at one per second. Lots of people protested that we should do the third trial again, Ed again complained loudly that we shouldn't, largely on the grounds that he had the highest score as things should. I also said that we shouldn't, mainly because I thought Gunther would get a better score if we did it again, and we were still neck-and-neck as it was. Then I changed my mind, realising that that wasn't much of a reason, and Ed also backed down, having been convinced by Lukas that he could improve his own score still further and break the world record.

And in the end, the only one to improve his score was me, with a new personal best 129. Which was cool, and put me once again, fractionally in the lead going into the speed cards.

Remembering last year, when I tried two fast times and failed them both, I decided to be sensible and go for a slow and safe one first time round so as to make sure Simon couldn't steal second place from me. Well, there was a lot of money in it this time, not just pride. I was thrilled to see that the timer I was randomly given (one of the 35 they had there - my ten and the 25 that the WMSC had bought) was the one I used for the world record in Highley in July - it hadn't been used since, and the time came up on the screen when I turned it on. What a good omen, I thought!

I did my safe time of 57.8 seconds, and the recall was perfect. Not a single card I had to think about, it reeled out of my brain flawlessly. I should have gone for a fast one, I thought, irritated. Gunther did 57.1 seconds. That left him needing 50 seconds or so on the second trial to beat me, if I didn't improve at all.

Now, I should clarify something here about the way I memorise cards. I can NOT do a pack in 45 seconds and make it safe. I can go through the pack once (thirty seconds or so) and make it risky, or twice (one minute or so) and make it safe. If I try to go through once, slowly, it makes no difference at all. It's still risky. It's even more risky, in fact, because my brain isn't used to the change in tempo, and my mind starts wandering. I did take my time, knowing Gunther can't do below 40 seconds, and recorded a time of 32 or thereabouts, but in the recall I switched a couple of images around and got it wrong. Gunther got his pack right in a just-fast-enough 47, and won the championship. Drattles.

Still, never mind, eh? Next year. Yes, I'm seriously annoyed with myself. I really, really wanted to win this one. But it really is great that Gunther's finally got a world title under his belt, after all those second and third places over the years and all the work he's done in making 'memory sports' the thing it is today. He gave a great speech at the prizegiving ceremony, praising me in a very flattering kind of way. The prizegiving was a little excessively long, as usual, with the top three in each discipline coming up onto the stage one at a time to get their medals and cheques and rounds of applause, and that was only after the same had been done for all the sponsors and arbiters and helpers (all of whom very much deserve applause and rewards, of course!). Then we had the announcements of the team results, in which the scores were wrong again - they were probably using the same software as last year without having noticed - but the positions were right. Germany won, naturally, and they announced the top three Germans as Gunther, Simon and Hannes, instead of Gunther, Simon and Boris, meaning that Boris had to stay down in the audience taking pictures and Hannes had to limp over to the stage and be helped up the stairs one more time than was strictly necessary. Then we all came up one last time for the prizes for the top ten - I'm now the proud owner of another rather nice glass trophy, not as stylish as the UK championship one but still a lot better than a tin cup, and cheques totalling $6,050, which I'll have to pay into the bank as soon as I can find my chequebook.

My business cards ("Ben Pridmore, idiot") caused quite a stir this year - everybody wanted one, and I soon gave away the ten or so I had left. I'll have to get more printed on the machine at the train station. And I'm not going to say anything about the allegations of cheating against one competitor in the speed cards event (no, not Gunther), without knowing every side of the story. I'm sure I'll think of more important reminiscences about the long weekend over the course of the next few days, and I'll be sure to share them with you.

I'm back!

Wow, it's a while since I've been away from the internet for practically a whole week, there's a lot to catch up on when you come back. Plus I'm worn out by the mental exertions of the last few days (although my swanky hotel room came complete with weighing scales, so I can confirm that I didn't lose between four and nine pounds a day. What a swizz). I'll do a proper blog tomorrow about everything that's happened (and thus keep those of you who weren't following the results on the internet in suspense a bit longer, or else leave you confidently believing that I won...)