What a waste

I haven't done anything useful this long weekend. I didn't even get my hair cut, because the barber's was closed today, for no adequately explained reason. Perhaps he's gone away on holiday. That only leaves me with the unisex salon or the barber with a stall on the market, neither of which I really trust to cut what remains of my beautiful locks in a way that still looks rugged and handsome. So I decided to just leave it. Save the money and go around with shaggy, unsightly hair for a while longer.

I did a little bit of memory training, but I'm still just not in the mood for the long disciplines - I can't get the concentration going. And I bumped into someone I used to work with in town today, and I took a heck of a long time to remember who on earth he is. I think my brain's gradually rotting away, and I feel like I really should do something about it.

I can't cut the mustard like I used to

Well, so, Saturday at twelve I met up with my brother for lunch in the Ropewalk pub, Nottingham, which is something we do from time to time. It's a really great place, if you ever happen to be in that part of the world, it gets five stars on the Zoomy guide for food, drink and atmosphere. We got in there out of the blizzard howling outside (did anyone dream of a white Easter? Because we certainly got one in this part of the world), had a drink, decided we didn't feel like lunch just yet, had an entertaining conversation about this, that and the other with particular emphasis on Thundercats, Max Fleischer cartoons and general setting-the-world-to-rights. This naturally leads into singing raucous songs for the entertainment of the Ropewalk staff and the handful of other customers, and before too long it was seven o'clock and I was feeling a little light-headed. The idea of food had entirely slipped from both of our minds.

We went into town to see what was happening at Chambers, where they do karaoke, only to be besieged by people wanting me to memorise things for them. Which was very nice, because I got a chance to say "Oh, woe, the life of a celebrity, constantly hounded by admirers when I just want a quiet drink and a sing-song!" Although by that point I wasn't in quite such eloquent mood. We quickly went on to Cast, where it's quieter, forgoing the karaoke (it's one of those activities that are sometimes less fun in a place where everybody knows your name) and finished an eight-hour binge-drinking session there.

What's worrying is that I was decidedly lagging behind on the drinking front by this point, and basically being led around mumbling incoherent drunken witticisms and songs. I know I don't exactly have a reputation for holding my booze, but there was a time when I could safely keep pace with my brother. I have a feeling I'm turning into an old man. This feeling was intensified when I got back to my brother's place, having decided that the journey home from Derby just wasn't worth the effort (he shares a house with Hungarians, so we avoid drunkenly hanging out there as a rule), had half a pizza, went to bed and then spent the night throwing up a great deal more than I can logically have had in my stomach. My brother was relatively unscathed by the day's excesses. I also skinned both my elbows somehow, somewhere along the line.

I made my way back home yesterday morning, but I can't really remember what I did all day, except that it was freezing cold and still occasionally snowing, so I stayed indoors. I posted that brief and unilluminating blog, went to bed, changed my mind, got up again and watched the football, went back to bed at eleven, woke up this morning at half past six, got up, decided after a couple of hours that I really had a bit more sleep I needed to catch up on, went back to bed and got up again a bit before midday.

And after a start like that, although I feel fine again now, it's hard to get cracking with the stuff you were planning to achieve over the long weekend. So, basically, I haven't done any of the memory training I was aiming for. This is annoying on multiple levels. I've never been a hardened drinker, but I'd like to think I can occasionally go out for a booze-up without it wasting three whole days of my life! I don't know, maybe if I want to be world memory champion, I'll have to avoid excessive intake of alcohol. Who'd'a thunk it?

Blaargh

Sorry for not blogging yesterday, too much alcohol, spent night at brother's, still feel unwell, going to bed, normal service resumed tomorrow. Blaargh.

Look, it's the Easter Bunny!

No, actually, it's just me, bouncing up and down with excitement at having four days off. As I've mentioned before, bank holidays are so much more cool when you're otherwise working for a living. So, since the situation clearly calls for making it less fun by planning out what I'm going to do, I will do some serious memory training over the next four days, I'll come to a definite decision about whether to write 'teach yourself How To Be Clever' (I ummed and ahhed over email to the publisher, but they'd probably prefer a real answer some time this century), and I'll get a haircut. That ought to keep me busy.

Hand in glove

I realised just as I was about to leave the house this morning that I'd lost one of my woolly gloves. Drat, I thought, but never mind, I'll wear my leather gloves that I don't like very much because they're slightly too small for me. So I went back upstairs, grabbed the leather gloves and left the house. On arriving at Long Eaton train station, I dug in my pockets and noticed that somewhere along the train journey I must have dropped one of the leather gloves too.

Drat, I thought, now I'll have to wear one blue woolly glove and one black leather glove on the cycle ride to work, and motorists will point and laugh at me. Oh well, they would probably have laughed at me anyway, because I really need a haircut. So I reached in my pocket for the woolly glove that I hadn't lost, only to find that I had now also lost that one.

Drat, I thought again. I've lost three gloves in the course of one morning. I wonder if that's a world record? There can't be many people who've lost three gloves in less than half an hour.

So, to make a long story slightly longer, I survived the cycle ride to and from work with only one glove, even though it was a bit cold, and when I got home I found one of the woolly gloves again. So now I have a pair, albeit a non-matching pair. Life is good.

Memories are made of this

It's a four-day Easter weekend coming up! Strangely enough, Saint-Gobain take their bank holidays on Monday and Tuesday, instead of Friday and Monday (have they no respect for the sanctity of Good Friday? I know I haven't, but employers should. And for the sanctity of the Monday after Easter too, because that's important). Still, that means that even after lunch with my brother on Saturday, and the inevitable heavy intake of alcohol that goes with it, I'll have three days to myself, which I rather think I should spend practicing the long disciplines of memory. 30-minute binary, hour cards (need to get my cards back from James, he borrowed twelve packs for the uni competitions that nobody came to) and hour numbers. And I'll post my results here, so if I don't, you'll all know I've been lazy, and can jeer at me. That's the way to get me motivated! Fear of derision!

Advertising

I sort of halfway persuaded someone to come to the Derby Memory Championship on the ten-minute train journey home today, even though he knew nothing about it beforehand, just because he asked me where I got the Blue Peter badge. I hadn't thought of the benefits the thing has for spreading the word about memory, but I can see how it could be a help. I just need to get in the habit of replying "Yes, I got it for doing an amazing memory feat, such as you yourself could do with a little practice, so why not come along to my competition in a couple of months", all in one breath, before the person has a chance to escape.

A "Zoomy Answers Your Questions" kind of thing

Welcome, one and all, to the kind of thing where I answer questions people have asked in comments to previous entries. Starting with the one that made me think it would be a good idea to answer them in a blog entry to themselves:

do you know if it [The Mentalists]'s going to be repeated, please, and if not, where might I obtain one of these DVDs?

As far as I know, there are no plans to repeat it. But then, they didn't tell me when it was on the first time until the last minute, so you never know. On the other hand, I have sent the DVDs of most of my recent TV appearances to Raggy, and when I overcome my laziness, catch up with him and find out whether he's been able to combine and copy them into multiple DVDs for anyone who wants one, I'll set about distributing them to anyone who wants. With any luck, within the next few days.

I wonder if you could give yourself extra financial motivation to prepare by placing a sufficiently large bet on yourself to win the next WMC? You could probably find one of the bookmakers who'd be willing to quote some odds

You know, that's not a bad idea. And it leads in nicely to something I've been meaning to blog about for some time now - my motivation still isn't up to the level it should be. It's not anywhere near, to be honest, and I don't know what the problem is. I can't stand the idea of not winning the WMC yet again this year, but that just isn't enough to get me practicing like I need to. I'm hoping that the competitions from May onwards will get me more in the mood, but with my very half-hearted training I've been doing for the last however many months, I'm not sure whether that might be too late to get back into it. It's worrying.

Have you ever investigated arcade emulation to play actual arcade ROMs on your PC?

Actually, I downloaded MAME last year, and I had to delete it, because I was doing nothing but playing Roadblasters and Track & Field all day and night. Horribly addictive thing. I didn't get the arcade version of Bubble Bobble, though, because it's the Master System version that I'm hooked on, and the subtle differences would be too annoying.

Come to think of it, can we interest you in trying out for the UK team for the World Puzzle Championship?

Sure, why not? I don't know why I've never looked into this one before, it's exactly my type of thing...

Is it too cheesy an analogy to compare the speed cards discipline to the hundred metres sprint, as being the one whose world record people are most likely to care about if they only care about one world record? (Then again, people used the analogy "four-minute mile" for "30-second pack of cards".)

Yes, this is another thing that deserves a blog-rant! Why did people keep calling it the four-minute-mile? The hundred metres is a much closer analogy, not just in that that's the record that people get most excited about, but because it's fast and furious, not a long grind like the mile or the hour numbers. Okay, for some reason breaking the 10-second barrier in the hundred metres didn't generate all the hoopla that breaking the 4-minute barrier for the mile did (useful How To Be Clever-style trivia - Jim Hines did the first accurately-recorded sub-ten-second 100m, on my birthday, October 14, in 1968).

Actually, having just looked him up to find out who did the first sub-ten-second hundred-metre-sprint, I'm appalled by the lack of websites praising Jim Hines. Put his name into Google and you get lots of pages about a guy who writes books about goblins. But the sprinter Jim Hines seems like a really nice guy. Someone make him more famous, please!

Have you ever considered turning your hand to seven-card stud, where the ability to memorise the upcards that have been folded would be of very great advantage?

Well, I did win a seven-card stud gold medal at the MSO one year. But that was just using my favourite strategy of not having a clue what I'm doing but being dealt really good hands every time. I prefer to play that way - somehow, using memory techniques in a poker game would make it feel like working, whereas using memory techniques in a memory competition feels like having fun. Don't ask me why.

When are you going to send me you book, man?!

I did send it to you! I'll send it again now...

Let's say you accepted a bet, and that bet was something to the effect that if you could drink all the water you wanted, but were limited to only one food to eat everyday, for an entire week, what would that one food be and why?

What am I betting here? It'd have to be something good. And when you say 'one food', do you mean the same meal, or the same general cuisine? Assuming you mean just one meal, let's say spaghetti bolognese. I like the stuff, I can eat an enormous plateful at one go, enough to last me a whole day, most likely, if there's plenty of water with it, so I wouldn't get too tired of the stuff after seven days. And it's probably good for you, contains vegetables and things, it's probably one of the healthiest things I regularly eat. As an alternative, I could live for a week on bacon double cheeseburger meals from BK. Mmmmmm... (drooling with a glazed expression)

If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power, would you?

No, because as I mentioned a while ago when talking about that book of Stephen Fry's, doing so invariably leads to someone much nastier taking his place, Germany winning the war and some hero having to set things right again.

But even assuming I could also, just to make sure, kill off Goebbels, Strasser, Schleicher, Bormann and all those kinds of people who might cause trouble without Hitler being around, I wouldn't. I think the war served an important purpose in the progression of human history - it put an end to big armed conflict between European countries, it established things like genocide as being entirely unacceptable, and all in all, I think averting the war would really not have a beneficial effect on the world of the early 21st century. There were tensions that needed to be burnt off, Hitler brought them to a head and it wasn't pleasant for anyone, but it's all receding into the history books now.

What's a Butfore?

For pooping, silly.

Are you afraid, you book could be a success?

Terrified. Secretly, I don't want anyone to read it, in case they laugh at me and say it's rubbish. But I'd still like to be paid for it, please.

I would like to know if I could enter just one or two events [at the Cambridge Memory Championship] and not all of them?

That wasn't a blog-comment question, it was an email from a competitor, but I thought it was worth mentioning here. Yes, you can come to the Cambridge Memory Championship (May 4th, Trinity College, Cambridge) and only compete in the disciplines of your choice, but it's a lot more fun if you take part in everything. There's nothing to be afraid of, a lot of beginners are coming and nobody's going to throw rotting vegetables at you if you get an unimpressive score!

You can also come to the Derby Memory Championship (May 24-25, Bramblebrook Community Centre, Derby), if you like. It's gonna be really great, lots of publicity, cashing in on my local celebrity status!

And that's the tooth

I've got toothache and I blame my toothpaste. For reasons that I can't remember now but that probably made perfect sense, last time my brother came to visit, he brought a tube of toothpaste with him and left it with me, since mine had nearly run out. However, it was Macleans Whitening toothpaste. I disapprove quite strongly of whitening toothpastes, although my brother wasn't to know that, since I don't think I've ever mentioned to anyone that I have this unusual opinion. However, I'm actually quite pleased to see that my irrational prejudices have been borne out in this case, because I've been using the stuff for a month or so, my teeth aren't any whiter and they hurt.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I'd like to announce that tomorrow's blog entry will be a "Zoomy Answers Your Questions" kind of thing. 'Your' in this case referring to Chris Dickson, who found my blog today and posted several comments that I think merit a full and public answer in a blog post, but while I'm doing that, I thought I should make it into a full reader-mail kind of blog. So if anyone wants to ask me anything, post a comment here, and I'll answer you!

Let's Do It

I like a bit of Victoria Wood from time to time. And UKTV Gold seems to like her quite a lot, since there's always one show or another of hers on there. And I happened to flick over to it tonight to see an As Seen On TV that I've somehow never seen before, with the song The Ballad Of Barry And Freda, which is the funniest one of hers I've ever heard (and she's written a whole lot of great songs in her time). So, rather than thinking of something to write about in my blog tonight (kurnik othello tournament starts in ten minutes, football on the telly, you know the usual Saturday night ritual), I thought I should share the song with you all, just in case some of my readers have missed out on this classic too. Enjoy!

Pi Day

A few years ago, I was talking with some people on March 14th, and someone mentioned that it's Pi Day, on account of it being 3/14. I said that it shouldn't count as Pi Day in Britain if we have to put the date the American way to make it work, and we should instead celebrate pi on April 31st, to be nice and British about it. Everybody nodded and agreed that that was more sensible, and it wasn't until late that night that it occurred to me that there isn't a 31st of April. I can't remember who I was talking to when I made the April 31st comment - possibly I've been avoiding them ever since, in case they also realised later on what a stupid thing I'd said.

In other memory-related news, I went out to the supermarket in the shopping centre tonight, and in the middle of the centre they had set up a stage with a catwalk where models were parading around and advertising something, presumably. By the time I'd done my shopping and was coming back, the models had been replaced by either hairdressers or makeup artists, who were sprucing up some volunteers from the audience while two guys gave a running commentary and kept the crowd entertained. As I walked past, one of them said, into the microphone, "Hey, I know that guy, he was on TV!" They then introduced me to the crowd gathered around, by name and knowing a frankly scary amount about my memory achievements. Without even mentioning the chimp. Everyone applauded. Am I actually a local celebrity now?

And while it's true, as they announced, that I don't need to make a list when I shop at Sainsbury's, that's largely because I don't decide what I'm going to eat for the next week or so until I get there. If I need to buy something specific, I do invariably forget it.

Dean's Hanger?

MK Doms

Rather than going to work tomorrow, I'm going to Milton Keynes, to watch Dominic O'Brien give a memory presentation to youths at a school, the idea being that I can do some of the same kind of thing in the future. I'm sure it'll be fun, and hopefully the audience will be fascinated by the whole thing and form a new generation of memory competitors to rival all those Germans.

Or perhaps they'll all be terrible yobs who think memory is 'uncool', in which case you can look forward to a blog tomorrow moaning about the youth of today and how in my day things were different and we respected our elders and betters-at-memory-stuff.

Postscript to tonight's entry

I feel bad about saying things about Simon Wootton that he might find offensive. I don't mean any of it seriously, if you're reading this, Simon. In fact, your book is great.

I also feel bad about not namechecking his co-author, who also offered brain advice in the Metro newspaper yesterday, but who I've never written anything bad or good about. His name's Terry Horne. And now I come to think of it, wasn't that the guy James was emailing who said he might come to one of our uni demos but didn't? I think it might be.

Rather than writing these things in my blog and sharing them with the world, I really should get in the habit of just talking to the people who might be able to answer that kind of question, shouldn't I?

Small world

Got a big bulky envelope in the post today from Hodder the publishers (that was the one I sent How To Be Clever to as an afterthought after the blog last week when I mentioned sending it to two others - sorry for not keeping you informed) and assumed it was my first rejection. It made me feel quite nostalgic for the days when everyone was rejecting The Adventures Of Jayce And Alex, actually. But it wasn't a rejection, or at least not a complete one - it was a letter from the person in charge of the 'teach yourself' imprint, saying that although they couldn't publish HTBC in its current format, they would like to do a 'teach yourself how to be clever' (the teach yourself books don't use capital letters in the titles, a thing that I loathe and detest about modern trendy books) if I wanted to rewrite it in their style. And they sent me a copy of their latest book, 'teach yourself training your brain', co-written by none other than Simon Wootton, on whom I poured scorn yesterday for his advice on remembering things by telling your mobile phone to remind you. Even though I give the same kind of advice (well, I say "Write it down", when I get asked the same stupid questions.

The first thing I notice on flicking through 'training your brain' is that it covers a heck of a lot of the same ground as 'How To Be Clever'. If I rewrote HTBC into the house style, it would basically be the same book as this one. Why would they want another one? Also, the tone is scholarly and adult, and I think my book would lose a lot of its appeal if it was written like that. It's not really aimed at people who are serious about self-improvement. And all the IQ puzzles are stolen from other people. I at least had the decency to make up my own, in the style of the ones you usually see. And there's even a chapter about creativity, dammit. I thought I was being original there.

No, all in all, I don't think I want to rewrite my magnum opus into a 'teach yourself' book. Not that I was expecting any publisher to say "yes, we'll publish your wonderful book exactly as you sent it to us, shoddily-made diagrams using MS Word shape-drawing tools and everything, so you won't ever need to think about it again until the royalty cheques start pouring in," but I don't want to have to change it to quite such an extent. I think I'll wait on another publisher who's more in tune with my brain. If there is such a thing.

Although I might change my mind later. I always have a rule that I sleep on decisions like this. The rule, come to think of it, really should also preclude writing at length in my blog about it for the publisher to see, but it seems to have failed to stop me tonight. I bet all the Hodder people are regular readers of mine. Or else maybe Simon Wootton will google himself, find yesterday's and today's blogs and snitch on me.

Speaking of googlers finding my blog, let's all say a big hello to Dave, who lives in Tumby Woodside, and found my old entry from last year when the TV people took me back there. Hello, Dave, and all the rest of you Tumby Woodsiders out there!

Brain experts advise: don't use your brain

According to a filler article in the Metro newspaper this morning, it's Brain Awareness Week, or something like that. Every week seems to be brain something week, probably because there are lots of people competing to promote their brain-enhancing books or systems these days. One of them, Simon Wootton, who co-wrote a book about Strategic Thinking, offered his advice on that much-loved subject of newspapers and magazines with a page to pad out, how to remember birthdays and where you put your car keys. He came out with the suggestion to "Use a diary or a mobile phone as an electronic prompt for birthdays or anniversaries."

So Brain Awareness Week (or whatever it is) is a time for us to not even try to use our brains to remember things, but just rely on our mobile phones to do our thinking for us? It's disgraceful! I was thinking of writing an outraged letter to the Metro about it, but I decided that my blog readers would be more likely to get the joke.

But I can offer you a meringue, if that's any use

Can I use the great advertising power of my blog to urge people to go out and buy the second issue of Black Meringue, the alternative wedding magazine? Yes, even if you're not getting married, because there's a very entertaining article by my brother in it. I should really have made a similar advertisement when the previous issue came out, since he also wrote stuff for that, but I didn't, and now it's much too late. But go and read it and see that insanity does indeed run in families.

Meanwhile, the FA Cup this year seems determined to call on all the trivia I know about the competition. As you'll recall, I memorised the results of all the finals for our university demos, and also lots of little snippets of interesting information so that I can make recalling them more entertaining for everyone. And now everyone's getting in on the act, looking up all the when-was-the-last-time-this-happened statistics that the mad semi-final lineup this year demands.

So before they're in all the newspapers tomorrow, let me impress you with the facts that Barnsley, Cardiff and Portsmouth have each won the cup only once in the competition's long history - in 1912, 1927 and 1939 respectively. And they had all been runners-up before that, in Barnsley's and Cardiff's cases two years before winning the trophy, whereas Portsmouth were beaten finalists in 1929 and 1934. And having won the Cup for the first and only time, none of them ever reached the final again. West Brom, unfortunately, refuse to conform to this interesting statistic, since they were a major force in the early days of professional football and have won the cup lots of times. The last one was in 1968, though.

Furthermore, the last time the Cup was not won by one of the Big Four was in 1995 (Everton 1, Man Utd 0). The last time none of the Big Four made it to the final was in 1991 (Spurs 2, Nottingham Forest 1). The last time none of the Big Four made it to the semi-finals was in 1987 (Coventry, Spurs, Watford and Leeds - not as weird a lineup then as it would be today, because all but Leeds were top-division teams back then).

The last team from outside the top division to win the Cup was West Ham in 1980. There has never yet been a final between two non-top-flight teams. The last time three non-top-flight teams made the semis was exactly a hundred years ago, in 1908. When Barnsley won the Cup in 1912, they were in the second level of league football, and the club they beat in the final was West Brom. All these things I knew before it was cool to know them.

Every second counts

You know, there was a time, I can remember it well, when I knew how to play othello. Those days are gone.

I got up this morning at a reasonable time, knowing the tournament was just down the road in Leicester, so there was no need to rush around. I actually relaxed rather too much, and ended up having to hurry down to the train station after all, but I caught it in time. I realised along the way that I'd forgotten to bring my clock, but didn't think it would really matter, seeing as David was bringing the BOF supply of clocks, and we'd only be short if there was a huge number of competitors. I decided to take my bike, as I said yesterday, which may have been a mistake - I managed to get lost navigating the single, long, straight road between Leicester station and the venue.

Nonetheless, when I got there twenty minutes late, it was to find Steve, Iain and Jeremy standing around aimlessly in the church foyer, traditional venue for the tournament, with boards but no clocks. A little internet research turned up an apology from David for having overslept and being still in Colchester. With the clocks. Steve and Iain had also thought about bringing their own clocks, but neglected to do so. I suggested that we improvise an ingenious timing system using my stopwatch, Jeremy's digital watch and the clock on the wall - it would have worked just fine, but the others were sceptical. We ended up playing without clocks at all, and with plenty of discussion as to whether the tournament would count for the BGP. It probably will.

Still, my performance deserves rotten vegetables throwing at me - I lost five and drew the other, and that was a completely undeserved draw too, because Steve had a win at move 58 but somehow didn't see it. I have no idea why I'm so rubbish all of a sudden. It's depressing.

But still, in other news, I got home in time to see Barnsley demolish Chelsea in the Cup! It's slightly annoying in that I used to be the only person who knew that Barnsley won the Cup in 1912, and that there's a line in How To Be Clever about how that was the most boring F A Cup in history - now everyone will think I only picked up this knowledge because there's all this hoopla about them beating two of the big four, instead of having known it since I first started memorising cup final results last December.

But isn't it cool that the big guns are all out before the semi-finals? Just somebody knock Bristol Rovers out, please, so as not to confuse me (as explained in a previous blog). I'm not sure whether to cheer for Barnsley (who were actually the better team today and really deserve the trophy after all their giant-killing) or Portsmouth (who I generally cheer for because the last couple of years they've been playing so much better than they have any right to). On the other hand, I dislike Harry Redknapp, so I think I'll buy a Barnsley scarf. Or turn Welsh like James and support Cardiff.

Cuddly

I've been cycling all week, but I suspect I'm still a bit fatter than I should be. Maybe I should have liposuction. It'd have to be the do-it-yourself sort involving a vacuum cleaner, because I've still got no money, but the alternative is stopping eating so much, and I'm fairly certain that's not going to happen.

I might take my bike on the train to Leicester tomorrow and cycle out to Oadby. Partly because of the health benefits, and partly because the alternative is taking the bus, and that requires me to remember what the venue looks like, spot it from the bus window and stop the bus in time to walk back to it. Which is complicated and I worry that I'd end up in Bognor Regis, or wherever the local bus that passes through Oadby ends up.

The other alternative is taking a taxi, but you all know how I feel about taxis.

Nearly the weekend!

I've really missed being able to make a distinction between the weekend and the rest of the week. It makes you appreciate Saturday and Sunday so much more if you're spending the previous five days in an office (even if it is an office all to yourself). And woo, in a couple of weeks' time, it's Easter! A four-day weekend! Woohoo! I would have hated to be not working around that!

This weekend, incidentally, it's the first othello regional of the season, in Oadby. I wrote quite lengthy blogs about each of the tournaments last year, if memory serves. Perhaps that means I shouldn't do it again, in case I get repetitive, and should write about something else entirely. We'll see.

Competition time

It was the first of our university competitions today, up at Preston, and I didn't get to go and oversee things, seeing as the second day in a new job is generally considered a bit early to take a day off. Still, I'm sure it all went fine - I handed over my speed cards timers to James at the train station on my way to work this morning, even the one I would otherwise have used this evening to practice with. See the sacrifices I make? I had to do my practice the old-fashioned way, with my stopwatch, and so that's my excuse for not doing very well at it.

Having a job does get in the way of these extracurricular activities, though. I mean, having money and being able to buy food and things is always an advantage, but it would be nice if I could split myself into two like the guy in a book I read once, and do both.

I can't remember what that book's called, but the central character was called Gordon, he called his duplicate of himself George and they developed a great juggling act. Anybody know it? Because that's going to bug me now. Why didn't I just say 'split myself into two like the superhero the Multiple Man'? I know all about him.

The Office Boy

You know, there's nothing like having a job for inspiring me to do more with my leisure time. I've been memory-training and doing things around the house and emailing and all kinds of stuff this evening. Whereas when I'm at home all day, I sit around doing nothing.

Also cool about my new job is that it's quite fun to do, and I get my own office. I've never had an office all to myself before - it's rather frowned-upon in these modern days of open-plan office spaces, but the building I'm working in now is ancient and harks back to the days when people got their own little room if they were suitably important. And the toilets are really amazingly 19th-century in decor, they have to be seen to be believed.

My job is very boring, I'm an office clerk

The second interview at Gardner went pretty well, I thought. They'll be making a decision by the end of the week, and I'm quite hopeful. Which makes me feel guilty about the job at Saint-Gobain I'm starting tomorrow, because it's a bit rude to quit a job after only working there for a week or so. But maybe I'll be super-efficient and get all those payments reconciled within a day or two - I am really great, after all.

In order to get there, I've decided to take my bike on the train to Long Eaton and cycle the nearly five miles there. It'll give me lots of healthy fresh air and exercise, and perhaps after this month-long contract is over (being pessimistic now and assuming the Gardner job doesn't work out) I'll be able to look that Woolworth's weighing machine in the electronic eye.

Anyway, I'm back in the routine of the working man - I've ironed a pile of shirts, I just need to make some sandwiches for tomorrow and I'll be all set.

Meanwhile, I have made an effort to bring my book to the attention of publishers - only a couple of them, so as not to have a flood of rejection letters all at once, and with Carlton Books I accidentally sent them the same covering letter I'd sent to the other publisher, the appropriate-sounding How To Books, so they'll just sneer at the complimentary references to their rival publisher and put me on their enemies list. So really, I've only properly submitted my book to one publisher. When they tell me to get stuffed, I'll try someone else.

I respectfully disagree

The film of The Green Mile is on ITV tonight, and I see that the Radio Times only gives it three stars, and feels that it's 'overlong' and 'sentimental'. And they give four stars to all kinds of rubbish. I saw the film in the cinema when it first came out for some reason (I practically never go to the cinema, so why I went to see this one when I normally avoid adaptations of books I like, I can't imagine) and thought it was really pretty good.

I should be the Radio Times movie critic. I'd be a good one, except that I wouldn't want to give any film a bad review in case the director read it and got upset.

And yes, I know I promised a long and interesting blog tonight, but I can't really think of anything to write. Tomorrow's entry will be three times as long as usual, and so fascinating, your head will explode. Twice.

Dear me

This is twice in the last couple of weeks I've nearly forgotten to write my blog last thing at night. You'd think it would be a matter of routine by now. So I'm forced to dash something off while playing othello and watching football. Tell you what, I'll just write this measly little paragraph tonight, and do a really big and interesting blog entry tomorrow, okay?

I'm a writer!

Woohoo! You all thought I'd never do it, but yes, I've finished the rough draft of How To Be Clever that was going to take me a week or so to put together when I first started talking about it back in 2003 or thereabouts! Wow, what am I going to do with all the time every day that I previously spent not writing my book?

Well, for starters, there's another Online Memory Challenge tomorrow. Please do come along and have fun!

Yesterday and today

Other things worth mentioning about yesterday - the uni provided biscuits and crisps at the demo. That's a first. And they also put up posters all over the place promising a presentation by "James Paterson, a memory champion". Also, they gave us a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates and a thank-you card. I took the chocolates.

As for today, I found out that I've got a second interview, on Monday, for that job that I really liked the sound of at Gardner Aerospace, so everyone has to cross their fingers for me. But not particularly tightly or fervently, because I've also got a temp job at Saint Gobain Piping out in the wilds near Ilkeston, starting on Tuesday - just for a month, and it's just making sense of badly-recorded payments to customers, but it'll keep me off the streets. And who knows, it might even be fun - it'll be a lot of playing with Excel and reconciling numbers, and I do love that kind of thing. I'd still prefer the Gardner job to work out, though. The 'interview' for this temp job today consisted of me sitting in the boss's office while he told me anecdotes about people he's worked with and then offered me the job. I hardly said two words. Some short-term jobs don't bother with an interview at all, but perhaps he just wanted to know what I look like before he hired me.

Tomorrow, book finished. Weekend, book sent to anyone who wants to read and criticise it for me. Also I might look in to getting it published, but then again I might not. I'm not sure I can really be bothered with that, all I care about at this point is finally doing this thing I've been vaguely meaning to do for so long.

Earthquaaaaaake!

I was late going to bed last night, as I always am when I know I need to be up early in the morning, so I was just dozing off at just before one o'clock in the morning, when I was woken up again by the bed shaking. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was really weird - I've never felt an earthquake before. So that's another thing I can add to my list of life experiences.

If there hadn't been an earthquake last night, this blog would have been called "Green Egs And Ham", because we went to Royal Holloway University in Egham today for another memo demo. This one went really well - sixty people rather than six, and they all seemed to have a good time. And I won the journey-home Tetris tournament 43-23.

And tomorrow it's another middle-of-nowhere interview, for a temp job this time. It's a hectic life, considering I'm unemployed. But progress is still being made with the book. Friday, definitely, final deadline, all finished. Probably.

Well, I think it's a silly name

Breedon-on-the-Hill is sort of on a hill, I suppose. It's higher up than the villages around it, anyway. But the thing is, there's another, larger hill right behind it. So if you stand in Breedon and look north, it looks like you're actually down at the bottom of a hill. When I go to a village that has 'on-the-Hill' as part of its name, I expect to be able to look downwards from all directions!

Apart from that, it's a very nice place - one of those old-fashioned, impossibly picturesque places that looks too timeless to be real. I had lunch in a pub where even a five-foot-eight man like me has to duck low roof beams all over the place. Even the aggregates-and-building-materials company I was being interviewed at has its head office in the old manor house, Breedon Hall. It's all very pretty.

The job doesn't impress me so much now I know more about it, though. To be honest, I'd rather not get this one.

Brum

Today's trip to Birmingham University got off to a cracking start. I realised when I got to the train station that I'd left my hat at home. This is, obviously, preferable to leaving it on the train, but it was still annoying, especially since Emma from ITV was coming to film the memo demo, as a taster for the genius documentary. I get very few opportunities to wear my poor hat on TV without people complaining that it shadows my face because of the bright studio lights. Still, I managed to meet up with James and catch our train without any real difficulty, and we spent the short trip up to Birmingham discussing various memory-related topics.

As we were getting off the train at New Street, the man who'd been sitting opposite us and listening in on our conversation said "Excuse me, isn't that your bag?" I'd very nearly left my trusty rucksack, containing my laptop, on the overhead rack. "And you're the memory man!" added the observant gentleman. He obviously thought we'd just been having him on about the whole memory thing. I don't know which would have been more devastating, the loss of my expensive laptop or the loss of my beloved falling-to-pieces rucksack.

Waiting for Emma in the pub at New Street station, we had a go on a quiz machine. One of the questions it posed us was "Who won the men's Wimbledon championship in 1975?"

I grinned at James, who has memorised all the post-war Wimbledon winners for the purposes of our university demos, and said "Hah, great question!" He replied "Um..."

He did get it, just in the time limit, so we both avoided a lot of memory-related embarrassment before the demonstration started. We met up with Emma, got down to the university, prepared our powerpoint demonstrations, had lunch, met up with Other James, found the room and were all ready to begin with plenty of time to spare, for a change. Also for a change, nobody from the university staff came to talk to us. James had been dealing with a Jo, and he did speak to him/her/it on the phone once, briefly, but otherwise we were left to our own devices entirely.

It then turned out that the university hadn't advertised the memory performance at all, and they'd scheduled it to start two hours after lectures finished for the day, so nearly everybody had gone home. We got a whopping six people in the audience, two of whom had to leave early for a seminar. So, all in all, not the best of our demonstrations to have Emma filming. Nonetheless, it all went well. We educated and astounded, as usual, and of the brave six who knew the event was happening and hung around to watch it, at least a couple were very enthusiastic about memory, keen to take part in the upcoming university championship, and happy to spread the good word. So I'd still say the day was a success. Who knows, we might have a future world champion there!

And no long train journeys or overnight stays, either. All universities should be so close to Derby. Tomorrow, I've got this interview in Breedon-on-the-Hill, the most isolated and difficult-to-get-to place in the world. Still, beggars and unemployed accountants who need the money can't be choosers, and it's a good job with good pay. Maybe I could relocate to somewhere closer. Or learn how to teleport instantly from place to place.

Enormous throbbing pens

Another reason why I need a job is because I need to be able to steal pens from the office. I get through biros at a terrible rate - they either disappear or mysteriously break in half when I experiment with them to see how far they'll bend before they break. I bought a couple recently, and now I can't find the things. This is all the more annoying, because there are only two places I ever put pens - on my desk where I memorise things, or on the kitchen counter where I leave whatever I empty out of my pockets. Or occasionally here on the settee if I have occasion to write anything when I'm watching telly or talking on the phone. And yet the things disappear. Perhaps they're running away before I accidentally break them in half.

And no, the book isn't finished. But it is very, very nearly finished and I've done a lot of work on it today and it'll be finished very, very soon! Now I must go, the football's on telly.

A New Dial

Somehow, in the course of a very brief chat on Radio Derby this morning, I announced to the world that I want an old-fashioned telephone with a dial rather than buttons. This is true, and it's been on my mind since I found to my delight that there is one, and a working one at that, at Dundee university. So when Sally Pepper mentioned them in the interview, naturally I felt it necessary to expand at length on how cool they are.

You see 'retro-style' phones for sale in gimmick shops, but those are very tacky things with buttons arranged in the style of a dial. Very phoney and tasteless, and I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

I just said 'phoney' in a blog about telephones, and didn't realise that there was a pun there.

Anyway, my current phone isn't tacky at all - it's a very stylish transparent plastic one with coloured LEDs that light up when it rings. But I would cheerfully dump it for one with a real dial if I found one lying around.

I won't go looking for one just yet, though. If I stay at home and don't do anything else all day, I could finish my book tomorrow. That's the plan, anyway.

Has it really been that long?

I've been doing this blog, every night except those nights when I didn't, for over two and a half years now! The time has just flown by, hasn't it?

Anyway, the interview today went pretty well, I think. I'm hopeful of getting a second interview at least for it, and Ilkeston seems like a nice place to work - I've never been there before, but it's populated by at least one person who recognised me from the telly, and another who admires people who wear Blue Peter badges. I'm sure the town would embrace me with open arms. And try to steal my badge, possibly.

Anyway, the weekend beckons, and things need to be done. Especially the book, I'm running out of excuses to justify to myself not having finished it yet. Especially since I stressed in the interview today how good I am at getting things done to tight deadlines. Funnily enough, in my accountant persona I really am very good at that, it's just normal-Zoomy who can't get his book-writing act together.

Busy day

Right, things I've arranged today - interview at Gardner Aerospace in Ilkeston tomorrow (roughly seven month thing covering maternity leave), interview of another kind on Radio Derby on Saturday (so, mister memory, just how can we remember those important anniversaries and names? Exactly the kind of thing I normally turn down, but a bit of self-publicity is important if we're going to get people to give us money for demonstrations/competitions in the near future), ITV coming to film us doing a uni demonstration at Birmingham on Monday, interview of the first kind in the middle of nowhere on Tuesday.

Also, I think I might have developed the ability to do a 'safe' speed cards run in under 30 seconds. Or maybe it just went extraordinarily well today with the three packs I attempted. We'll see - this was the first practice I've done for much too long, so I need to get back into things.

Interesting statistic

The train journey from Dunbar to Derby is precisely long enough to play 76 head-to-head games of DS Tetris. I would record for posterity which of me and James won the epic championship 40-36, but it wasn't me, so I won't.

One of these days, I'll find the time to write in detail about a uni demo, because today's was a lot of fun. However, today isn't one of these days, because it's late and I've only just got home. Tomorrow might be one of these days, though.

The Labour Party hates me

Let's have a lunchtime blog, just for a change, since this afternoon I'm off to Dundee, home of D C Thomson's comic publishing empire and probably other things too, although I don't know of any. It's a long old train journey just to display my memory to a bunch of students, but at least it keeps me off the streets.

There is an airport at Dundee, but apparently you can only fly there from London, and then only if you pay three hundred pounds for the privilege. The uni are paying for our travel, but I think they'd frown on that kind of extravagance. Although lastminute.com did offer me a wonderful route plan when I looked into flying from Birmingham - changing at Edinburgh and London. In that order. Birmingham-Edinburgh-London-Dundee. I was tempted to take it just for the sheer silliness of it.

Anyway, in the post today I got a little leaflet from Labour, very nicely printed, mail merge with my name and everything, they've wasted a very impressive amount of taxpayers' money on it, saying that they're 'on the side of hard-working families in Hartington Street.' There's not a lot of writing on the thing, just a couple of brief paragraphs, but it refers to hard-working families five times.

What have they got against single people? I'm not the only bachelor in the street, there are lots of single people here! Hard-working single people, too! In fact, although I haven't analysed the demographics, most of the street's old Victorian houses are divided up into small flats, so I'd be prepared to bet that the majority of residents around here aren't in fact families.

Well, squish to you, councillor Shiraz Khan and your vague pledges to 'continue improving Arboretum Park', 'start upgrading street lighting' and 'demand more Police Community Support Officers'. I shall jolly well vote for someone who isn't prejudiced against the unmarried!

Employment

At least one, possibly two job interviews tomorrow, depending on whether one agency gets back to me tomorrow morning before I leave for the interview arranged by another agency at another company. Both jobs are in horribly out-of-the-way places that would need me to relocate or cycle long distances if I got them, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

On the other hand, employment in another sense looks like it might be possible at some point in the future - branching out from our university demos into demos for businesses, charging money this time and justifying it by using this money to subsidise schools demonstrations and competitions. Sounds like it could be fun, although it's a lot of work.

Anyway, going up to Dundee tomorrow night for another uni demonstration, after all the excitement of the interviews. I'll be worn out. Luckily, I've spent all day today reading Harry Potter fan fiction on the internet, just to conserve energy for the rigours ahead.

It's not the winning...

... it's the comforting knowledge that you avoided coming dead last by the narrowest of tie-break margins. So, yes, in terms of othello achievement this weekend wasn't the greatest, but, you know, it really is about the taking part. For the record, I won three and lost eight, and the ones I lost were often quite horrible thrashings generally brought about by stupid mistakes on my part. Still, I found out that I've been featured in Dutch news reports quite a lot recently, and not just for chimp-related reasons, either. And I had a strange dream last night in which Phil Chambers refused to let me audition for his pantomime production of Aladdin, on the grounds that my memory achievements make me too well known - this was apparently the kind of panto that avoids casting celebrities and insists on unknown actors in order to make it more believable. I'm not sure if this is my subconscious reacting badly to my recent fame, or reminding me of my lifelong desire to be a panto actor. Probably both. Aubrey also featured in the dream, now I come to think of it, but I can't remember how. He'd make a good Widow Twankey.

Anyway, I'm feeling all motivated and dynamic go-ahead achieveresque at the moment. There'll be books written, new jobs found, othello transcripts typed up and sent to Geoff, memory training sessions done, all kinds of things. A weekend away does you good. Except from a bank-balance point of view. Really need to do that new-job-finding thing quite soon.

Fame

Would anyone be interested in a Best Of Zoomy DVD? I got a copy of my Richard and Judy appearance in the post today, which I can add to my collection along with The Mentalists, The Memory Chimp and my starring turn on Blue Peter. As soon as I get round to finding an envelope, I'm going to send them to Raggs, who said he'll make copies for anyone who wants one. I know I could do it myself, or make them into torrents and upload them to the internet, if I was a) technically competent and b) not lazy, but this is the only way it's going to get done, believe me.

Anyway, I've done nothing today, no book-writing or anything, so go ahead and shun me. Going down to Cambridge tomorrow, and I think the book's going to still be not-quite-finished by then, but never mind. Who cares about deadlines, eh?

Conundrum

Great episode of Torchwood tonight. The basic plot was basically stolen wholesale from an old Star Trek episode, but the way it was done was very clever and different.

And speaking of remaking classic TV, I did have a friendly chat with the ITV people about documentarising me again, in a subtly different kind of way to The Mentalists. I must be mad. It was annoying enough the first time round.

I'm very disappointed with myself

I had plans for this blog entry tonight. It was going to be titled "Procrastinate? Me?", and then it was going to say "I drew a funny comic, look:", followed by a funny comic. And then I was going to say "Don't worry, I also wrote lots and lots of my book, too. It's nearly finished now."

But what I've actually done all day is non-stop book writing. I didn't have time to draw any silly pictures or anything. It's terrible, it's like I'm a real writer or something. I'm sure it won't last. Especially since it really is nearly finished now.

Well, I've got ITV people coming round tomorrow to talk about another TV show - something about genius, and whether it can be taught. They quite like my approach of saying 'anyone who calls me a genius is obviously a very stupid person' while still bigging up all the genius-like things I do. That always plays well, for some reason. I must have a real genius for coming across as a nice guy.

Spring has sprung!

What a lovely day! All sunny and warm and springy! So, since I woke up with a rotten cold and a headache, I thought a good long cycle ride would help me feel better. I toured all the local villages for a couple of hours, ending up at Elvaston Castle and generally enjoying the charms of nature. Didn't make me feel any better though - now I've got a rotten cold, a headache and stiff knees. I think I'll just go back to bed.

Deadlines! Really this time!

Okay, so last week, when I thought I didn't have any plans, it turned out I had lots of plans that took up practically all of my time. But THIS week, I really don't have any urgent appointments, and so I am really, definitely going to finish my book. Before Friday, when I go down to Cambridge for the weekend's othello tournament. And if I don't, well, then you should refrain from talking to me until I do finish the thing. Send me to Coventry, unless you're one of my friends who live in Coventry, in which case send me somewhere else of your choice.

Or, if you're one of my friends whom I don't like, talk to me more than you usually do, to punish me for my laziness.

Hartlepool Romance

"Lady Hortensia," said the man in the chip shop, "always a pleasure to see you here. I was terribly sorry to hear about your husband. To be sucked into the workings of a street-cleaning machine and torn to ribbons alongside an assortment of damp crisp packets and fallen leaves is probably the worst way a man can die."

"Indeed," said Lady Hortensia. "My husband, of course, was shot dead by a bank robber during a bungled heist, and didn't die in the way you describe at all."

"Yes, I was trying to comfort you with the knowledge that it could have been very much worse," said the man. "Three white pudding suppers as usual?"

"I hardly think it would be appropriate," said Lady Hortensia, icily. "What with my husband dying and that escaped zebra not yet having been recaptured."

"Oh, hadn't you heard? They caught the zebra yesterday. It's back in the box now," said the man in the chip shop's civil partner from the back room.

"Oh," said Lady Hortensia. "I hadn't heard. My husband was always the one who kept track of the status of escaped animals. Dear me, I never considered how inconvenient it would be to be a widow. Will you marry me?"

"No," said the man in the chip shop. "Here are your pudden suppers, perhaps if you take them to Hartlepool and eat them, a passing man will feel sorry for you and propose marriage."

"It's worth a try, I suppose," said Lady Hortensia. She took the newspaper-wrapped revolting suet-based concotions and greasy chips and jumped on board a passing stagecoach bound for Hartlepool.

"Get the bleeding heck off my bleeding stagecoach!" the driver screamed, letting go of the reins and allowing the wildebeest to veer off into a cornfield. "There's no food and drink allowed on my bleeding stagecoach! The vermin! The vermin will overwhelm me, lusting for the fallen morsels you drop in your greedy consumption of your bleeding food! Didn't they teach you about bleeding vermin in school? Get off my bleeding stagecoach this minute!"

"Oh, I do apologise," said Lady Hortensia as the stagecoach careered out of control across the fields, mangling corn, scarecrows and hedges alike under its copper wheels, the wildebeest, free from the tyrannical reins that daily compelled them to follow tedious cobbled streets and asphalted motorways, chasing with gay abandon every blackbird, vulture and pine marten they saw, heedless of any obstacles in their path as they dragged the coach ever further away from its destination and ever closer to Scunthorpe. "I only wanted to visit Hartlepool in an attempt to find a husband. I don't suppose you would like to marry me?" she added as an afterthought.

"Okay then," said the driver, picking up the reins and attempting to return to the Hartlepool road. "I'm free next Saturday. Big church wedding, St Paul's Cathedral, eleven o'clock? Cost you a fiver, but buy a ticket to Hartlepool and you get to marry the driver for half price. Special offer."

"Splendid," said Lady Hortensia. "White pudding?"

"Don't mind if I do," said the driver. And thus they departed along the damp and narrow streets. Lo, Hartlepool! Slumbering city of romance and dreams, do you know, as you awaken this damp and gloomy morning that another stagecoach of love wends its way ever nearer to your towering and broken-glass-studded walls? That the magic of love inspired by your founder, Alan Hartlepool, so many years ago still permeates every mention of the fair city's name? Or have you, in your dank streets and crumbling overcrowded tenements, become so accustomed to the happy endings of your every inhabitant and visitor that you no longer register each miraculous romance as a thing of note, but merely an everyday happenstance? Lo, wildebeest, snorting in the stagecoach reins, your momentary freedom forgotten amid the excitement and smells of this familiar town! Lo, Dennis Boggis, sitting unmentioned in the chip shop throughout the duration of this story! Perhaps you yourself will one day visit Hartlepool and realise that your true destiny lies in street-sweeping rather than chartered accountancy when you get your first glance of the filth-ridden streets of the city of love!

Wonderland, wonderland...

I've never been to Sunderland before, although I did write a story involving the place (being blown to atoms) in a previous blog entry. It was nothing personal. The memory demonstration today went really well - just me and James Paterson at this one, but we enthralled and illuminated the audience very nicely, I think.

The guy in charge of this one didn't have a silly name or a connection with obscure comics, but he did come from the Cardiff area, and knows Penarth, where James comes from, very well. Which you wouldn't really expect from a uni up in Sunderland, but then even more funnily, it turned out that another guy there is from Lincolnshire, and even had relatives living in Clinton Park, where I went to primary school! Small world.

Also, getting there was no end of fun. All the trains were cancelled, for no adequately explained reason, and we had to go by a very circuitous route. But never mind, that gave us plenty of time for epic Tetris contests on James's DSs. I'm almost tempted to get one of the things myself...

Bloody idle

I was supposed to clean up my flat today - my brother's coming round on Friday night and unless I clear some floor space, he'll have to sleep on the roof, and I'm going to Sunderland for a memo demo tomorrow and Ascot on Thursday for a meeting with the movers and shakers in the organising-a-schools-memory-competition world - but I didn't. I decided that sitting around on my considerable backside was a more reasonable way to spend the time. But I did give blood today, so that means I'm exempt from any and all criticism about what else I've done. I even multi-tasked - while all my vital fluids were being drained away, I was memorising Sunderland FC's results for the season so far, so as I can impress people with them tomorrow.

I'll just have to clean up on Friday morning. And finish my book - that deadline's looking very unrealistic, since it turned out I'm doing lots and lots of things this week after all. Perhaps I'll beg my imaginary editor for another week's extension.

That's strange...

This morning, while doing a bit of research to fill out the trivia section of How To Be Clever, I established that the second poet to be buried in Poets' Corner (thus turning it into Poets' Corner rather than The Place Where Geoffrey Chaucer Happened To Be Buried Alongside Lots Of Non-Poets) was Edmund Spenser. It struck me that I should really have heard of Edmund Spenser before, but I couldn't remember ever coming across the name. Still, it was nice to add to my general knowledge.

Then, this afternoon, idly browsing an internet forum rather than working on How To Be Clever, I saw someone making a passing reference to Edmund Spenser in an entirely non-poetic discussion. I'm sure I haven't seen that kind of mention before. I suspect he never existed before today, and it's all a big internet conspiracy.

Deadlines

It's about time I set myself some. Or one, anyway. I don't have any plans for next week. Yes, I need to look into getting some kind of job, but that's not an all-day-every-day kind of thing. And if I really knuckle down, I could get How To Be Clever finished in the next week. Making an effort to do that would be so much better than dawdling and not finishing it for years. So that's the plan, and anyone who sees me has to pretend to be my editor and ask me why I haven't finished the book yet.

But don't pretend to be Mr Edwards or any of the other teachers who had the unfortunate job of asking me where my coursework was during my schooldays. I never paid any attention to them. Really, if I do finish this book, it might be the first project I've ever actually finished, winning the World Memory Championship aside. I'm just not much of a finisher.

2003 all over again

I woke up an impressive six minutes before today's online memory challenge was due to start - nobody can really be expected to perform at 8:00 am, can they? So I lost my unbeaten record there. Other than that, very little of interest has happened to me today. I feel like this week I've either been too busy doing stuff to blog about about it, or too inactive to have anything to blog about. Well, that'll change next week. I'll make an effort to do things, but not particularly time-consuming things, and then tell you all about them in detail every evening. Won't that be nice?

Santa Drives A Reliant Robin

Ah, the joys of a day off. It's great not to have to get up early to catch a train to London or Preston. I should do it more often.

Anyway, I've just noticed that tonight on ITV at 10:50 there's a new series called "The Law Of The Playground", in which celebrities reminisce about their schooldays, and that Robert Webb is among the celebrities on this first episode. I don't expect he'll mention me, seeing as he didn't (and still doesn't) know I exist, but it would be fun to see him mention some of the teachers and things from QEGS, such as the school show with the title in the subject header above. I'd watch it, but I don't think I can really be bothered. Lately I've formed the opinion that the only things on telly worth watching are the ones that are about me. Or chimps who are better than me.

Blood and sand

The whole Canadian thing went pretty well today - we filmed it at the Canadian embassy, which was a whole new experience. Does that technically mean that I can add Canada to the list of countries I've visited now?

One thing I haven't mentioned about this busy week is that I postponed an appointment to give blood in order to accommodate Tuesday's madness. So if anyone dies for want of a transfusion of B-positive blood between now and next Tuesday, I really do apologise. My bad. Fame and fortune bring nothing but ill.

But to look on the bright side, I watched EastEnders tonight for the first time in yonks, having heard that it was a 30-minute monologue delivered by Dot, and it was absolutely brilliant! Fantastic work by Tony Jordan, the writer. Everyone who didn't watch it tonight, watch the omnibus on Sunday. Even if you're in a different country. I bet it's on the internet somewhere.

North End

The Preston presentation went pretty well, all in all. All the students (and staff) were hugely in awe of my Blue Peter badge, several of them had seen me on Richard and Judy, none of them were Preston North End fans but they were nonetheless impressed by my ability to remember all their results for the season. A huge audience, few of whom left before the end, and you never know, one or two of them might want to take up memory as a hobby, inspired by how cool we are.

But the coolest thing of all? Well, remember how the last one was organised by Professor Perfect (giggle), who sounds like a character from a comic? This one was ACTUALLY organised by a character from a comic! She's a friend of Bryan Talbot and was the model for a prostitute Helen encounters in "The Tale Of One Bad Rat"! AND she knows Leo Baxendale! I was going to say her real name here, but then it occurred to me that some student of hers might google her some time and spread it all around the university.

I've never met anyone who's actually a character from a comic before! Oh, wait, except that I think Carlos Pacheco drew Kurt Busiek into the background in Avengers Forever, but that doesn't really count. This is the coolest thing ever!

Okay, London again tomorrow, I still need to memorise the 52 greatest Canadians, I'm sure it'll be fun. And after that, I stop doing all this mad memory-related publicity and start being normal again. It'll be a relief.

I got a thank-you card from Richard and Judy

Signed by the joint managing director of their television company.



They also gave me some posh bath salts. I don't own a bath, but I appreciate it.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone! I'm tired and have to be up early tomorrow to go to Preston, so I'll keep this short, but Ace, you're right, I desperately need a haircut and beard trim, but yesterday was so hectic, I couldn't fit it into my busy schedule!

And what's with all the Richard-hate? I think he's a nice guy. Did you know he left school at 16 to pursue a career in journalism?

A triple bill of Zoomy

Stay glued to the telly all day tomorrow, fans. Five News at 11am on channel 5, Richard and Judy at 5pm on channel 4, Extraordinary Animals at 7:30pm back on channel 5 again.

It's been a busy day. I've spent the whole day emailing and phoning about TV shows (not just the ones listed above but also the Canadians I'm seeing on Thursday), memory competitions (Cambridge May 4, Derby May 24-25, let me know if you're interested - entry is free for first-timers, it's a fun day out and there might be prizes) and memory demonstrations (Preston on Wednesday, sandwiched between day trips to London). I'm worn out, and I've got three busy days to come.

One thing I've memorised for these uni demonstrations is all the FA Cup final results in history, and I'm crossing my fingers in hope that Bristol Rovers don't make it to the final this year. The other fifteen clubs still in the competition have all reached the final before, you see, so I won't have to associate new images with them for this year's final. Whereas if Bristol Rovers get to the final, I'll get them all mixed up with Bristol City (who, as any historian or memory expert knows, were runners-up in 1909) and/or Blackburn Rovers (who've been in more finals than I've had hot dinners today).

I use the one of my 2704 regular images that sounds most like each club, you see, so Bristol City are the pop group Bis, and Blackburn Rovers are 'bro', my brother (because Blackpool are the 'back' image, naturally), so I have no idea what image I would use for Bristol Rovers if I had to. Luckily, their chances of reaching the final are basically zero, but it still worries me.

Just enough to give your kids a treat

Did you know that Fry's Turkish Delight has significantly less fat than other chocolate bars? I might have heard it once, but I'd forgotten it when I bought one tonight, and only just remembered. So now I feel good about my low-fat lifestyle. Or I would, if I hadn't also bought a bag of Tangfastics.

The magic of the FA Cup and the internet

I watched Havant & Waterlooville play Liverpool today, thanks to the miracle of streaming video from ESPN's far east broadcasts. If the BBC had had the sense to show the game, I wouldn't have had to, but still, it pleases me to know that there really is no limit to what you can get on the internet if you look hard enough.

It was a great game too - a real who-says-the-magic-is-gone-from-the-F-A-Cup game. Actually, have you ever noticed that nobody ever actually says the magic has gone from the F A Cup, but everybody always makes a point of denying it? It's strange.

And why do I always want to refer to Havant as "Havant & Westfield"? I know the shopping centre in Derby is called the Westfield centre, but I'm sure I know of something with an "and Westfield" suffix, because it just sounds so familiar...

In other news, I'm informed that "Chimp Beats Memory Champion" has made the radio news in Toronto, Canada. It's nice to know that media coverage of all my achievements in the field of memory put together is going to fall far short of all the press I'll get for this thing. I can just tell that "lost to a monkey" is going to become even more widespread than that old chestnut "forgot to set his alarm clock".

And also, while I'm vaguely complaining about things, I've just watched the Friends episode with the following dialogue:

Joey - Why do you call him Gandalf?
Chandler - You know, Gandalf the Wizard!
Joey looks blank.
Chandler - Didn't you read Lord Of The Rings in high school?
Joey - I had sex in high school.

Last time I saw the episode, it was on E4's 5:00pm showing, and they cut out Joey's final line. I've just watched it again at 8:00pm, and that line was still edited out! You can't say 'sex' at 8pm? What is the world coming to?

And if you're going to cut out the punchline, why on earth would you leave the extensive setup intact?

The Book of Heroic Failures

Yes, as several of my readers have noticed, the Daily Mail finally picked up on the man versus monkey memory marvel and ran an article about it today. Channel 5 were supposed to be calling me to get a couple of soundbites to give to them, but either they didn't bother in the end or they didn't manage to catch up with me, so they just used snippets from next Tuesday's documentary. And the Sun ran a similar story by copying what the Mail had written, changing it slightly and passing it off as an original scoop. This is exactly the same thing that they did with an article about me and the world championships last year - I suspect that the Sun no longer employs any actual journalists.

Anyway, this has in turn piqued the interest of Richard and Judy, one of whose minions phoned me this afternoon to say they're thinking of previewing the documentary on next Tuesday's show, and might want me to come on and talk about it. This is interesting, because years ago, when I won the world memory championship, Richard and Judy made noises about wanting to talk to me and then eventually decided against it (possibly bumping me in favour of Aubrey, who was on the show around that time). If they do decide to put me on the show this time round, it will clearly show that losing a rigged contest of short-term memory against a chimpanzee is a much more impressive feat than winning a gruelling three-day memory competition against the rest of the world.

The funny thing is that I find myself making excuses about how I could have done as well as or better than Ayumu in the memory test if I hadn't been doing it for the first time in my life, and if we hadn't been using a flawed program where my hand obscured the numbers because the start button was in the middle of the screen, but when I'm thinking or saying all this, I completely forget that the opponent I'm talking about isn't even human. It's like, say, Daniel Tammet performing some memory feat and claiming that makes him the best in the world - my instinctive reaction is to acknowledge that Ayumu has done something impressive, but assert that I could do the same thing with a bit of work. I'm seeing him as a rival rather than an educated ape, and that really is pretty darn cool.

I look forward to the day when the world memory championship is contested by representatives of multiple species.

Memorable training

I'm really back in the groove of memory practice now - I've been doing lots of speed practice this week, I've created a few new journeys so I don't have to reuse them so often, and I'm going to take a break tomorrow so as to be fresh for some heavy long-discipline practice at the weekend.

This is the kind of routine I can follow when I get a job. Or if I get a job - there's an amazing scarcity of decent jobs in this area right now. Does nobody want a management accountant who's been on the telly? Or at least anybody who doesn't specify extensive experience of standard costing in their job spec? Seriously, who uses standard costing? I thought it was something that only exists in accounting exams! I didn't think it was something you could actually apply to a real company...

My Week In Media

I've been "tagged" by "Sam" and ordered to talk about what I've experienced in every possible medium over the last seven days. He suggested I could also tell us which media I've been watched/listened to/read in, but to my great shame, you've caught me in a slow week between starring in my own documentary and making a cameo in one about a chimp. Not so much as a newspaper article in the last seven days, to the best of my knowledge, although I have been being pestered at length by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, who are coming to film me next week.

Actually, I told them I wouldn't do one of the two things they wanted to film me doing, because they were starting to annoy me. I regret it now, because I've just remembered I've got a couple of friends in Canada who'd no doubt enjoy watching it.

But anyway, here's everything I can remember doing for the last week:

What I read

Probably within the last week, I finished re-reading The Green Mile, by Stephen King, which is one of his best, and always worth another look every couple of years once I've had time to forget all the little details. Then I moved on to Treasure Island, which I hadn't read since I was in school but had been meaning to buy and read again ever since I saw that they're performing it at the Derby Playhouse at the moment. It really is a fantastic book. Since finishing it, my bedtime reading has been selected bits of the complete works of Chaucer (the textual notes as much as the poetry - I love the intricate process of establishing a definitive text from all the widely varying manuscript readings. You just don't get that fun from writers who did their writing after the invention of moveable type).

In comics, last week's selection was The Umbrella Academy #5, probably the best new comic around at the moment, brilliantly written by Gerard Way and heartily recommended to anyone; Iron Man/Power Pack #3, latest in Marc Sumerak's wonderful kid-friendly superhero adventure in the classic style backed up by Chris Giarusso's hilarious Mini-Marvels strips (no Elephant Steve in this one, sadly), heartily recommended to anyone whose first superhero comic was the Power Pack backup strip in Star Wars weekly; and Penance: Relentless #4, which is frankly almost unreadable drivel and my only excuse for buying it is a sort of Thunderbolts completist syndrome that I really need to break myself of. I also bought this week's Beano today, since it was in a plastic bag and I couldn't flick through it in the shop like I normally do - it isn't much good. There's normally one or two entertaining bits in each issue, but the only strip of note this week is "Bash Street Zombies" by Kev Sutherland. His Bash Street Kids stories generally somehow fail to be as funny as they should be, but this one has a genuinely gigglesome bit with Cuthbert's comic rejuvenating machine that has an unfortunate side-effect of turning people into zombies.

What I watched

I haven't been watching much telly lately, actually. I watch the repeats of Friends on E4 every night (yes I do, Crispy - "lowbrow" indeed...) followed by repeats of The Simpsons on channel 4 and that's about it. Until it finished on Sunday I was watching quite a bit of the snooker - Stephen Lee (enormously fat) lost to Mark Selby (slim), which just makes my resolve to lose weight even firmer. I don't want to be the only 'sport' champion who's obese. Even darts players are positively skinny these days. And I watch the football highlights every Saturday and Sunday evening.

As for cartoons, it's a bit of a slow time for quality animated entertainment these days. It's a while since the American studios churned out a good, watchable adventure or comedy series for kids. In the field of very-small-children's entertainment, I have been enjoying "Timothy Goes To School" just lately. It's a by-the-numbers kind of semi-educational series, but they do make an effort with characterisation and humour above and beyond the call of duty for a show like that, which I do appreciate.

I also watched the first couple of minutes of Ski Sunday, just to see if the 'new direction' for the series really is as bad as it sounded. Yes, it is. If anything it's even worse. They decided to change it from a programme about ski competitions into Top Gear without the cars. Why they thought that would be a good idea is beyond me - see rubbish skier Graham Bell looking at mountains! Woo! And, despite the continuity announcer's assurance before the programme, the wonderful theme tune has been very badly remixed and mostly drowned out by helicopter noises and swooshing sound effects.

What I listened to

Again, not all that much. I've got out of the habit of listening to an album in an evening. Except for tonight - the best of REM is playing right now. It's "Orange Crush" at this exact moment, if you really need to know. I've maybe had another couple playing in the background this past week - Definitely Maybe by Oasis, and This Is The Life by Amy McDonald. I've also had Virgin Radio on from time to time. I'll listen to anything except The Geoff Show and the Saturday afternoon show where they interrupt the songs every time a goal is scored in any football match in the country.

What I surfed

Bits and pieces, here and there - Sam's aforementioned blog is one of the couple I check daily, Jemfy's is the other. I keep forgetting to read Samt's every day, but I've kept up with it when my brain permits.

Webcomics I read either daily or whenever they update: Newshounds, Something Happens, Ozy and Millie, Count Your Sheep, Achewood and Order Of The Stick.

I read the BBC News website, the forums for memory and othello competitions and anything else that springs to mind. I always like to read the comments people leave on this blog, of course - thanks in particular to those who suggested ways I could lose weight, but I don't think I'll be getting a pedometer (they click over if you shake them - I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation) or the fitness plan that comes with a disclaimer that some people say it could be harmful, tempting as that is.

What I’ve played

As I'm sure you know, I'm hugely disdainful of modern video game systems. In the past week, I've been playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my Mega Drive - the original game, Sonic 3 and the bonus game you get when you plug Sonic 1 into Sonic And Knuckles. Great stuff.

Online, I've been occasionally playing othello - I always play in the Saturday night tournament on kurnik while I'm watching Match Of The Day, and I've been doing quite well by my standards just lately. I've also been playing a bit of xiangqi/Chinese chess, and finding that I'm much worse at it now than I was a few years ago when I was playing semi-regularly. And I was always pretty terrible.

Well, I think that's enough details of my everyday life to be going on with. REM have moved on to Electrolite, so I've had five full songs play since I did the listened-to bit. It's a good thing I've got nothing else to be doing with my life, isn't it?

Speed cards

I've been practicing, but I don't think I've been practicing in the most intelligent way. What I should be doing is practicing taking the pack a bit slower, linking each location together, and seeing if I can get my time doing that down to around thirty seconds or so. If I could do a safe thirty-something seconds in competition, that would be enough to squish my opponents. But I prefer to practice doing it as fast as possible, leaving the individual locations isolated, which is riskier but significantly under 25 seconds most of the time.

I'm not a very professional kind of competitor. I can't stand doing slower-but-safer when I know I could be doing fast-and-probably-make-a-mess-of-things. Which is strange, because I was always good at egg-and-spoon races at school.

Lard Lad

This is, Blogger tells me, my 850th blog post. Which is a really huuuuuge number, and deserves a really huuuuuge topic, like how really huuuuuge I am. The weighing machine in Woolworth's is working again, and I weighed myself yesterday to find that I'm 12 stone 11.6 pounds now. This is just getting silly. It seems that ever since I decided to weigh myself three months ago, I've been getting fatter at a staggering rate.

Well, no more! Proper dieting, exercising, not stuffing my face, here we come! Thin Zoomy, they'll call me in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll even get one of those have-a-flat-stomach-in-one-day videos I occasionally see advertised. I'm not sure I'd like a flat stomach, but this weighing machine is annoying me. Either I'll lose weight or take a hammer to it, we'll see.

Appreciate me!

I've only just found out, but it seems that January 16th was Appreciate A Dragon Day. No, really, it was. Look it up on the internet. You can buy e-cards and everything. Why does nobody ever tell me about these things?

Well, it seems that tomorrow is National Hugging Day, and that 'national' here means 'applying to any and all nations', so I'm going to expect hugs.

Found on the internet

Yes, yes, I know I'm always scathing and rude about unimaginative people whose blogs consist of links to more interesting places on the web, but it's a slow news day, so I thought I'd share a couple of things that have caught my eye.

Did you know there's a campaign to erect a statue of Long John Silver in Bristol? I must say, I wholeheartedly approve. And not just because it would give lots of people a much-needed opportunity to dress up like pirates and say "Aharr, Jim lad" - it's high time one of the greatest literary characters in history got some recognition. As the Trust's website points out, he's an almost unique example in Victorian fiction of a positive role model for the disabled, and also a brilliantly complex character with a wonderful amorality that I think we all admire, and possibly the only example in 19th-century children's stories of a bad guy who not only gets away scot-free but is amply rewarded for his evil ways. I've always thought that Silver and his wife (an almost unique example in Victorian fiction of a strong, black, female character) were just crying out to be included in a flashback in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Perhaps they still will, some day.

And while we're browsing the internet, might I direct your attention to this article? If there's one group of people who are always, without exception, wildly misrepresented in the press and the public consciousness, it's furries, and this piece is heartily recommended for anyone who thought "What, you mean people who dress up like animals and have sex?" when they read that word.

Something else

I seem to have done nothing but write about memory lately, so instead of lamenting about how I can't get back under 25 seconds in speed cards after not practicing for a while, I'll talk about something else for a change.

Um...

I suppose I could poke fun at the way the TV commentator (possibly Willie Thorne, I can't quite tell from the voice) didn't see a problem with using the phrase "it's a Chinese snooker" just now in his commentary on the match between Marco Fu and Ding Junhui. Isn't that actually an offensive term? It means a situation where there's nothing between the cue ball and object ball, but another ball immediately behind the cue ball, hampering cueing, and it became known as a Chinese snooker not because it happened in China once, but because it's 'backwards' from a normal snooker and thus stems from the perception that the Chinese do things in a stupid foreign way, not like us sensible English types. I'll complain to the BBC.

Or I could complain to Viz - an article in the latest issue has Richard Griffiths complaining that he's always typecast as a fat sixty-year-old man. '"I never seem to be considered to play any other sort of part, such as 20-year-old circus contortionists, jockeys or little girls," he added, before being removed from the stage by several burly firemen using a block and tackle.'

A while ago, I wrote a silly film review noting that one of the leading actors, a large, bearded man cast against type as a five-year-old girl, put in an impressive performance. If I'd put that one in my blog rather than scribbling it on the back of an envelope on a letter to my brother, I'd be complaining that Viz stole my joke, and possibly trying to sue them for millions of pounds.

The film had other problems, as I recall, caused by three of the four leading actors dying of natural causes the night before filming the final scene, forcing them to be replaced by life-size marionettes operated by the director hanging from the ceiling.

Or I could write about Wednesday's Torchwood, which I thought was entertaining enough, if pretty unexceptional. It was fun to see James Marsters snogging John Barrowman, though - I haven't checked up on this, but I bet there are a heck of a lot of fan fictions on the internet featuring that kind of scene.

Or possibly I could talk about the way the weighing machine in Woolworth's is broken, so I can't see whether I've lost weight this month. If I'd weighed myself this morning, I possibly would have done, but I've stuffed myself to ridiculous levels this afternoon for no good reason, so if the machine's fixed by tomorrow, I'll probably be heavier than ever.

Actually, whether the machine's fixed or not, I'll probably be heavier than ever. But if it's still broken, at least I won't know for sure.

Ooh, or I could talk about how I found a Nessie the Dragon cuddly toy in Woolworth's, for £7! Well, I had to buy the thing, didn't I? She sings when you squeeze her tummy! And there was just the one of them on the shelf, in a battered old box, that must have been lying at the back of the stockroom since Nessie's brief moment of popularity.

Or perhaps I could talk about the comic strip I'm drawing when I get a free moment (which is surprisingly rarely just lately) - another exciting adventure for the superhero fox kids you may recall from some time last year. It'll take me a while to get the thing finished, but I hope that when people see it, they'll say "Wow, your artistic skills really have improved! Way to go!"

Note that when I say "I hope", I actually mean "I insist, whether you really believe that or not." My ego is fragile, and needs gently massaging.

Or I could talk cartoons. I haven't done that in this blog for ages, and it's not because I don't like cartoons any more, it's just that I always felt I was adopting a show-offy kind of tone somehow, because I felt like I needed to explain a bit more about what I'm talking about than I do for memory or othello or things like that, when I know I have at least some readers who know what I'm talking about. But I still vaguely intend to write at ridiculous length about Thundercats some time, and just maybe I'll get round to it.

Or I could lament about the shortage of jobs around here at the moment, even the scummy short-term jobs that I might resort to just to get back in the office for a while. But it's hard to write very much about the fact that something doesn't exist, so maybe I'll wait till a temporary management accountant job comes along and I start debating whether to take it or not.

Nah, it's no good, I can't think of anything to write about apart from memory stuff. I'm planning to do more long-discipline practice this weekend when I can in good conscience unplug the phone without cutting off job offers and things, although I'm in two minds as to whether it might be better to work on speed instead, since I know I'm not as fast as I should be. We'll see what I feel like.

Also, Online Memory Challenge on Sunday! Not too late to sign up! Go on, it'll be a laugh!

Professor Perfect

Well, as I briefly said last night, yesterday's jaunt down to Plymouth was pretty successful, all in all. This demonstration was hosted by the uni's psychology society, with help from the head of school, Professor Tim Perfect, whose name I'm sure I will eventually stop giggling at. Professor Perfect (heehee), in fact, wants the three of us memory men to be subjects of some kind of psychology experiment in the future, investigating what makes us tick, which might be entertaining.

But as for what we were actually there for, the demo had a small audience of ten people, making it a perfect warmup for Preston, where there will be a couple of hundred, and we all did our various memory tricks without any real problems. I thought we came across as rather awkward and mumbly at the start, but we'd warmed up into professional-sounding performers/lecturers in memory techniques by the end of the hour. None of the students had seen The Mentalists, or my Blue Peter "performance", but they were all hugely impressed by my badge. Which promptly broke, and had to be wedged into my hatband for most of the demonstration. But it's fixed again now, thanks to superglue.

Everybody seemed to enjoy it - Professor Perfect (titter) and his less interestingly-named colleague had to leave half-way through for a meeting, but the students all stayed to the end without looking bored, commented enthusiastically on what they'd seen and all showed interest in the upcoming university memory competition. So it looks like we'll be able to carry through our plans of a competition in each university we visit, followed by a bigger final championship to decide the best student memoriser in the country. James Paterson and I spent the lengthy train journey home planning the impressive memory competition society we'll form when we win the lottery, and that'll be a really great thing, I assure you, but what's actually going to happen seems pretty groovy too. We're sure to bolster the ranks of memory competitors, and people who've heard of memory competitions, in this country by a huge amount.

Also, yet another person recognised me in Derby today. I had no idea so many people watched channel 5!

Memo demo

It all went pretty well, really. I'd go into more detail, but I was up early and it's late now, and I'm going to bed when Torchwood's finished. I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

Plymouth ho!

We're going to Plymouth tomorrow, to do a memory demonstration at the uni, as I think I've mentioned before. It'll involve me trying that menu memory performance for the first time ever, so the students can look forward to a Blue Peter-style shambles. I bet they all saw Blue Peter, actually, and will jeer and throw things at me as soon as they see me. Maybe I'll wear the Brazilian Mystery Cloak and keep the hood over my head.

Still, another guy stopped me in the street to talk Mentalists with me today! And also, Alexei the German journalist let me know that his article about me appeared in the Badische Neueste Nachrichten and Weser-Kurier last week. So not quite the neueste Nachrichten, but I have pdf files I can send to anyone who wants them and isn't in a position to get last week's local German papers.

Scuse me, mate, weren't you on TV?

Yes, it's doubleplusofficial now, I'm a celebrity! A complete stranger recognised me on the street and congratulated me on having a great memory! His name's Kasim, and I'd like to thank him if he's reading this (which in all fairness he probably isn't, he didn't say The Mentalists was his favourite programme ever and it's made him want to know everything about me, or anything like that).

It was actually quite scary - the rest of the time I was in town I was going around thinking "There are people out there who know me even though I don't know them. If I pick my nose or rob a bank or something, even if nobody I know is around, it might be headline news in the Derby Evening Telegraph - Local Memory Man Picks Nose, Robs Bank". It's frightening, and I don't think I can deal with the intense public scrutiny. I know now how David Beckham feels.

As one book is lost, another is written

Well, I had the time but not the inclination to do an hour numbers practice today - feeling a bit burnt out, so I decided to rest my brain. But I'm still optimistic about being able to keep up with some pretty heavy training and getting back to world championship fitness, mentally speaking.

Apart from that, I started re-reading The Green Mile by Stephen King, which I've got in the original six mini-books it first came out as, only to realise half way through book 2 that I can't find the sixth one. This is really annoying, because I've got a bookcase now, and while it holds somewhat less than half of my books, the others are all stacked up very nicely on top of my cupboard, so losing books should be a thing of the past. It's probably under my bed, which means lugging the heavy thing around to find it (not to mention risking angering the monsters down there).

Still, on the other hand, How To Be Clever is only needing four more chapters and an introduction before it's finished off! Admittedly those four chapters are the ones that are barely started or in one case not-at-all started, so it'll take some more work, but there really is light at the end of the tunnel now. Actually, just getting this 'first draft' finished will be such an achievement, I might not even bother with the hassle of sending it to publishers or agents. That would all be a bit of an anticlimax, don't you think?

Follow the Sour Bee

An extra early-morning blog post today, just because I feel the need to chronicle the cool dream I had last night. Actually, this was just a segment of a longer and more involved epic kind of dream, but basically I was in my bedroom with a number of other people (who I think were my brother and two embodiments of different aspects of my brother's personality) and an archaic video game system. Which malfunctioned, and sucked us into a magical other world.

There, in a scene that was overplayed as if it was an episode of a sitcom, we were summoned to the throne room of a king, who informed us that he had two brothers, one of them a twelve-foot-tall giant and the other a six-inch-tall Tom Thumb type, and that he required us to go on a quest to kill his brother and save the kingdom. I asked him to clarify which of his brothers he wanted us to kill, noting that I wasn't willing to go on a quest with such easily misinterpreted instructions for a king who clearly had people killed at the drop of a hat, and he responded "Follow the Sour Bee, and it will guide you to the one of my brothers whom I want you to kill."

From somewhere behind the throne emerged an ordinary bumblebee, except that it was green and black instead of yellow and black, which buzzed around us. However, then the giant brother came along and squished the king on his throne with one lazy swipe of his giant club. He then sat down on top of his splatted brother and looked at us, whereupon we all swore eternal loyalty to him.

The thing that really tickles me about this dream for some reason is the Sour Bee. I'm delighted with my subconscious for dreaming this thing up, and I need to include it in all future stories that I write, just so that it can fulfil its true potential.