CMC '08

That's Cambridge Memory Championship 2008. I don't think anyone's ever called it the CMC before, but I think we should start. Anyway, the day was fun. I got to Trinity College a bit before our optimistically scheduled starting time of 9:00, carrying two tons of memorisation and recall sheets, packs of cards and timers in my big rucksack, plus Adelaide's handmade "The MSO Is Nigh" sign to wave around at anyone who looked like they might be looking for the MSO. It even worked, luring in all our newcomers to the memory competition world (and there were four of them, too) while we waited outside for Imre to bring the keys to the room. We got into the room just fine, which is more than can be said for the go players in the Junior Parlour, since the stratego players yesterday hadn't returned the key. Everything was sorted out in the end, I gather.

Our room, on the other hand, was one of the Wolfson seminar rooms, nicely away from the street in the middle of the campus, and which I thought would be an ideal, quiet location. It nearly was, with just a few minor exceptions, the major one being the lift just outside the room which bleeps very noisily whenever it goes up or down. The room is basically an enormous glass cube - all windows, even half the floor is glass, allowing you to look down at the concrete two storeys below. Not a room for vertigo-sufferers. The room also didn't have an openable window or working air-conditioning system, so at first we decided to move over the corridor into the room allocated to the shogi players, planning to invoke the time-honoured law of first-come-first-served, but found that the electric sockets weren't working and I couldn't plug in my laptop. So we decamped back to the original room and put up with the hot, sweaty, airtight surroundings.

The seminar rooms are oddly positioned on the second floor of a building that otherwise serves as a hall of residence for Trinity students. There are rooms either side of the seminar rooms, kitchens, showers and toilets at the far ends, and people occasionally wandered back and forth during the day, able to look in through the entirely glass wall of the room as they passed by. The competitors didn't mind the goldfish-bowl feeling, except possibly when a young man wearing nothing but a towel strolled by in the middle of one event. There were only occasional noisy distractions, such as when another pair of students dragged a double bass and cello over to the lift and tried to work out how to fit them both inside, with all our competitors watching.

As for the competitors, we had, as I've said, four newcomers, which is excellent. We also had two Jameses and Gaby from Germany lending the beginners the benefit of their experience. Katie Kermode, however, clearly wasn't in need of much experience - she started off with an excellent 68 in the 5-minute words, and followed it up with a new world record in 5-minute names and faces, of a pretty staggering 82! That's about the score I normally get in 15-minute names and faces... Katie also has the honour of being the first British woman to take part in a memory competition since the early days of the world memory championships. Dagfinn from Norway has the honour of being the first Norwegian to come to the Cambridge championship, which I think is something to be proud of, whereas John and Dave have the honour of joining the very select group of British memory people, and I hope to see them all again soon!

I'd planned to go to the Mitre for lunch, but it turned out not to be open when we got there a bit before twelve (the schedule for Cambridge calls for an early lunch, working on the assumption that there will be major delays. Today, there weren't), so we went into the pub next door, which has a strange name like the Duke of Beef, or something along those lines, I can't really remember. The food was very nice, unless you ordered the Kentucky Burger like James Kemp did and expected a chicken burger like the menu promised. Due to a confusion in the kitchens, he got a fish burger with salsa and the usual chicken-accompaniments. He still ate it.

For the spoken numbers, we took drastic precautions - Jenny went and stood in the lift, holding the doors open, to stop it beeping in the middle of the recitation, and Phil and Rosie took up positions down the corridor to try to head off any noisy or nude students who might be heading our way. We just about managed an acceptable background noise level.

Gaby won in the end, with a just-over-one-minute speed cards to finish off with. I also had a go at the speed cards, joining in on the second trial, but got distracted by some noise right at the start, could only manage 34 seconds and got the recall mixed up. But Gaby's 3963 points bumps her up to 32nd on the rating list, knocking James Ponder down a place, which will serve him right for not being able to come today. James Paterson's third-place score, contrary to what he was saying this evening afterwards, does move him up a place or two too.

Thanks to Science House, our kind sponsor, there was prize money for Gaby and Katie, which is always nice for morale-boosting among competitors. I dutifully plugged the website to all the competitors, or at least I suggested that they check out "sciencehouse.com, or is it sciencehouse.org? Just type 'science house' into google and you'll probably find it". During the course of the day I also discovered that I am completely unable to say "seventh place" without it coming out as "seventh plathe".

After the competition we escaped the glass cube and fled back to the pub, where Gaby gave me a wonderful gift of a German Hagar the Horrible comic and Jenny introduced me to raspberry gin fizz, which is delicious and might become my regular drink of choice from now on. And now I'm back in my hotel and have to lug all my cards and timers, plus all the BOF's othello boards and clocks, back to Derby in preparation for the competitions there in the coming month. It keeps me fit, probably.

Yay for othello!

I ended up with an extremely respectable 4½ out of 7 today, which while admittedly not at the dizzy heights of last year's performance, is a definite step in the right direction. I might have left it a bit late to seriously challenge for the BGP (looks like being a close contest between David Beck and Iain Barrass this year), but I'm aiming to continue improving as time goes on.

Also, I've had too much to drink considering I need to be up early tomorrow morning to run a memory competition, and I probably should go to bed.

Cambridge could do with another Cam-bridge

This hotel would be slightly closer to the city centre if you didn't have to go a long way round to get over the river. Still, it does have wireless internet in my room, even though it isn't supposed to - the wi-fi is officially only in the conference rooms.

So, othello tomorrow, memory on Sunday. I've got a big pile of brown envelopes containing more numbers, words, faces, dates and images than anyone could ever hope to memorise in the time allowed - enough for twenty competitors as long as precisely fifteen of them speak English, three speak German and two speak Norwegian. I'm not expecting more than twelve people to turn up, but it'd be nice to have more. Still time to come along, if you're in Cambridge this weekend!

With any luck, talking to people about memory will get me all fired up to practice for Derby, Germany, Bahrain and anywhere else I might get to test my memory later this year. I'm still looking for that elusive motivation.

As for othello, this was the one I did really well in last year. Can I do it again? Probably not. I've been playing better on the internet just lately, but I don't think I'm in what for me qualifies as good form. Still, I'm more optimistic than I have been going into the last couple of tournaments.

Oh, and in the field of real life, I've got another interview on Tuesday, this one in Tamworth, for another cool-sounding job. Wish me luck!

You wouldn't believe all the tedious stuff I've been doing today

Well, you would, but you'd be bored with it. So I'll spare you the tiresome details and just tell you I'm going to bed. And I'll see you (in a manner of speaking) either tomorrow, or when I get back from Cambridge on Monday, depending on internet access over the weekend.

Gah! Too much work!

I'd forgotten just how long it takes to create all the memorisation papers and associated paraphernalia for a memory competition. I thought I could just wrap everything up quickly today and be all ready to lug everything down to Cambridge on Friday, but instead I've been messing around with things all day, keeping on finding new things that needed to be done... it's hard work, I tells ya. Still, now at least there's no danger of getting to the day itself without something vitally important. I've made a checklist and everything.

See you there on Sunday, everyone! Or on Saturday if you're an othello player instead of a memoriser. Or not at all if you're neither. In which case shame on you!

Also, cats are fighting noisily outside. Someone do something about it.

I broke my glasses

But this did lead to an exciting voyage of discovery deep down to the bottom of my Big Box Of Miscellaneous Junk, looking for my spare pair. The following interesting things turned out to be in it:

Two old, broken pairs of glasses
An old, broken pair of prescription sunglasses
Three old Beanos from 2000
A broken bike lock
A Birmingham A-Z that I don't remember buying or ever using
Various medals and nametags from various MSOs
A few handwritten pages of The Adventures Of Jayce And Alex
A Simpsons jigsaw, still wrapped in cellophane, which must have been a birthday or Christmas present
A 2001 Simpsons calendar
My collection of old coins that some relative, possibly Auntie Cath, sent me out of the blue many years ago
A box of 3½" floppy disks, mostly blank, one containing my work and an assortment of computer games from when I was at Holland Training back in 1995/6
My spare pair of glasses

This last is particularly interesting, because a) I didn't expect to find them in the place where I knew I'd left them - my posessions are rarely so well organised - and b) because they were somehow right down at the bottom of the Big Box, underneath all that more ancient stuff, even though I only bought them less than three years ago. Still, I've found them now, and apart from a vague worry that they make me look somewhat nerdier than my other pair and a slight disorientation caused by the fact that my other pair were a little bent out of shape and these ones aren't, everything is good.

Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry

Now I come to look at it, that quote is much too long to use as a blog title. Oh well, never mind. I just wanted to observe that an election is coming and the Labour and Lib Dem candidates have been pestering everyone in the area with newsletters stressing why they're great or why the others are evil incarnate. Without wanting to get all political, I really would rather they didn't waste resources and money on this kind of thing. Judging by the newsletters, their policies are as identical as their surnames (the Labour candidate is Shiraz Khan, the Lib Dem is Farhatullah Khan. Possibly they're brothers.)

I think the Conservatives should take advantage of this similarity - they don't bother to campaign in this ward, as a rule, knowing a lost cause when they see one, but they should go out of their way to appeal to those who aren't necessarily in tune with what the other candidates are supporting. The Derby congestion charge, for instance - I think it would make a refreshing change to have a candidate who says "Yes, Derby residents WILL have to pay lots and lots of money!" That way, those of us without cars will be able to laugh at everyone else!

Hey, I like this idea. I might run for the council myself, and go out of my way to offend and horrify everyone! Bulldoze the Arboretum! Encourage crime and drugs! Turn off the streetlights!

I'm too lazy

Since I'm too lazy to write anything interesting or entertaining tonight, I think I'll just mention that I'm cheering for Stephen Hendry in the snooker. I used to routinely cheer for Steve Davis, but perhaps I'm getting more up-to-date nowadays.

It's still an ambition of mine to become a great snooker player some day. It's sort of on the back burner of my things-to-do list, because a prerequisite of the plan is to become a millionaire and own a house big enough to fit a snooker table in. But I'm sure it'll happen some day. After all, how hard can it be to knock a few balls around?

Lost In Übersetzung

It must be a leftover thing from my very brief university career as a student of foreign languages, but I'm always fascinated by the art of translation, especially when it comes to translating comedy. So I read with interest an article on the BBC News website about translating 'Allo 'Allo into German. Well, the article was maybe about how they've finally sold the series to Germany after twenty years or so, but the translation bit was what really interested me.

'Allo 'Allo is a particularly difficult sitcom to translate, because of the funny conventions it established - the series is set in France, with characters from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and basically when characters speak with a French accent, it means they're speaking French, whereas if they speak with an English accent, they're speaking English. And then there's Crabtree, who's English and speaks very bad French, which comes out as phrases like "Good moaning!" when he means "Good morning!" and "I have good nose" for "I have good news".

The French translation, I noticed, cheated, and had him say "Au revoir" for "good morning", rather than doing the mispronunciation thing, so I was pleased to hear that the German version has him saying "Guten Magen", which is much more in keeping with the original. But I do wonder what they're going to do with his mispronunciations when the joke involves something happening on screen. Like when a tank crashes into the pissoir while he's using it and he observes "It seems there is no piss for the wicked..."

This is why I admire people like the great Anthea Bell, who practically nobody else has heard of. She translated the Asterix books into English, and those have no end of untranslatable plays-on-words. So she has to come up with new jokes herself that keep the general feel of the ones in the original - and does a really brilliant job of it, too. I'd love to do something like that, as I think I've mentioned before, with Joscha Sauer's "Nichtlustig" comics. A lot of the jokes are simple to translate, some would involve a real stretch of the imagination. Tomorrow, if nothing more exciting happens to me in the meantime, I'll scan and post some examples...

Public Service Announcement

There's just one week to go until the Cambridge Memory Championship!
The competition takes place on Sunday May 4th, at Trinity College,
Cambridge, as part of the Cambridge Mind Sports Olympiad 2008.
Details can be found here: http://msocambridge.org.uk/ as well as
here: http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/

The venue is in the city centre, and easy to find. The only slightly
confusing bit is that the rooms for the competition are in the part
of Trinity College not accessed by the main entrance, but by
Whewell's Court, the entrance on the opposite side of the street.
There will, hopefully, be signposts and people (including me) to
point you in the right direction on the day!

The prize money for Cambridge will be £50 for the winner, £25 for
second place and £10 for the best beginner. Our prizes are made
possible by the kind sponsorship of Science House:
http://sciencehouse.com/

It's not too late to take part, it's possible to just turn up on the
day, but it would be more helpful if you let me know in advance, so
that we know how many people to expect. Friends and family are
welcome to come along, especially if they're willing to lend a hand
with invigilating and marking recall papers!



The Derby Memory Championship is just one month away! It takes place
at the Bramblebrook Community Centre, Stockbrook Street, Derby on
Saturday and Sunday May 24-25. Details can be found here:
http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/derby_index.shtml and free
accommodation on my living room floor is still available for anyone
who wants it (bring a sleeping bag!)

Prizes for Derby are £100 for the winner, £50 for the runner-up and
£25 for the best beginner. People who take part at Cambridge as
beginners will still be classed as 'beginners' at Derby! Again,
prizes are thanks to the generosity of Science House -
http://sciencehouse.com/

I can promise and guarantee a fun day and weekend of memorising for
everyone who comes along to either competition, and I'm looking
forward to seeing you there!

Ben

People will see me and die

Have I been on telly again recently without me knowing it? The number of people hailing me in the street as the memory man had died down a bit, but I've been getting lots of recognition just this last week. Tonight a gang of youngish teenagers in the shopping centre all recognised me, and the following conversation ensued:

Dan: You're that memory guy?
Me: Yep, that's me.
Dan: Ooh, go on then, do me!
Me: Umm... "do you"?
Dan: You know, do a memory thing to amaze me!

I really need to have a performance ready for moments like this. What I should have done, with hindsight, is tell them all what day of the week they were born on - that always goes down well. Or else I should start carrying a pack of cards or a list of FA Cup final results around with me. Actually, that's a really good idea. I will do that.

Stafford ho!

Either thetrainline.com knows something that the rest of the internet doesn't, or it doesn't know something that the rest of the internet does, but it tells me there are very few trains from Derby to Stafford and back tomorrow. Enough that getting there at the right time for the interview and home again isn't a problem, but I'm still suspicious about the whole affair. Last year I noticed that thetrainline seems to have a blind spot when it comes to Mansfield, maybe it's suffering from the same problem with Stafford. You can't trust anything you read on the internet.

Except this blog, of course. You can trust me. There's no need to question anything I write on here, just obey me with blind faith and you won't go far wrong. Oh, and wish me luck for tomorrow, please - I'd really like to get this job.

Bumcivilian

It's just been brought to my attention that the entire series of "Look Around You" is available on YouTube for the world to see. Both series, in fact - the original ten-minute episodes and (although I haven't watched them yet) I think all of the half-hour second series are on there too. Which pleases me no end! Look Around You is possibly the single funniest thing that's been on television for the last decade or so, and it's quite criminal that it isn't better known. It's the kind of comedy that I aspire to write myself and wildly envy when other people do it so well.

But don't take my word for it. Take an hour or so out of your busy schedule and watch the whole bally lot of the things. And when you've finished watching them, notice that the 'related videos' box for the final episode (The Brain) gives you seventeen other Look Around You videos, two random brain-related things and "Maximise the Power of Your Brain - Tony Buzan MIND MAPPING". He really is everywhere!

Go on, check them out. If you like my occasional ventures into mad surrealistic comedy, you'll love these. If you hate my occasional ventures into mad surrealistic comedy, you'll still love these because they do it so much better than I do.

A cry for help

I'm concerned that I'm not going to have enough arbiters for the Derby Memory Championship. I'm also concerned that I'm not going to have enough competitors, but that's a minor problem. The arbiter thing, on the other hand, could be serious. I need to find a couple of helpful people who are willing to spend a weekend handing out, collecting in and marking memorisation and recall papers, generally keeping an eye on competitors in case anyone's cheating, and being quiet for long periods of time. In return, these happy helpers get free accommodation on the floor of my living room, free meals and drinks, my undying gratitude and a favour that can be called in at any time in the future.

If I don't manage to recruit any little helpers, I might have to drop out of the competition myself in order to run it, which would annoy me enormously, because one of my main reasons for organising the championship in the first place is to give me a practice event for the German and World Championships later in the year. So, anyone who's reading this who thinks memory-competition-assistant-arbiter could be a great career move, please get in touch. Undying gratitude, people! You can't put a price on that!

Although if you wanted to put a price on it and demand a tenner or so for your services, I could do that too.

Stafford - like buses

I've got an interview in Stafford on Friday for a really cool job that, for obvious reasons, I'm not going to say any more about. But don't worry, loyal readers, I never learn my lesson permanently, and I'm sure I'll soon be back to the charmingly naive Zoomy you know and love, who imprudently posts his opinions about everyone and everything on the internet for the world to see and cares nothing for the inevitable consequences.

Anyway, shortly after agreeing to this interview (the job's not in Stafford, by the way, it's just down the road in Burton), I had an email from a different agency about a different job in Stafford.

I've never been to Stafford before, nor ever considered any jobs or interviews there. And now all of a sudden the town (or possibly city, I should look into that before I go there) is full of people who might possibly think about employing me! It's a nearly-St-George's-Day miracle!

That's the problem with a to-do list

I did update my CV today and sent it to all the recruitment agencies in the area who haven't got it already, so never let it be said that I've entirely wasted the day in pointless endeavours. However, after doing that, the thought occurred to me that I really need to learn to read Japanese hiragana. It's something I've vaguely intended to do for years and years, after all. So I bumped that up to the top of my things-to-do list, ahead of trivial things like finishing the Cambridge championship preparations, cleaning the flat up, ironing some shirts so I have something to wear for job interviews and don't have to turn up naked, typing up my othello transcripts from London, keeping in touch with various people I'm in danger of losing touch with altogether, confirming the details of the upcoming memory championship sponsorship (there will be prize money, people, I'm just waiting to announce it when the sponsor's website is up and running!), training for memory competitions so I don't make a colossal fool of myself again, writing that book proposal, all that kind of thing.

It's not even as if I made any great strides in the field of learning to read Japanese hiragana. I spent most of my time toying with developing the quickest and most efficient system for memorising them, rather than actually learning them. I have a feeling that I lack self-discipline.

I'm some kind of psychic

I did win two games, as I prophesied (prophesised? prophetted?) yesterday. Lost four, but I think I was playing a lot better than I have been lately, so I choose to see it as being on the road to remembering how to play the stupid game.

Other things worth mentioning - I entertained everyone with my hard-luck stories involving making a ninny of myself on Blue Peter and the like. Some day, I need to acquire some interesting stories about me doing cool and impressive stuff...

Although my former employers didn't appreciate the publicity my blog afforded them, I'm told that Office365.co.uk would really be delighted with anything, good or bad, I might say about them. There's no such thing as bad publicity, so from now on, whenever I want to say anything about my work, I'll pretend I'm working for Office365! This is an arrangement that will work out well for everyone, I'm sure.

The Bath House pub was being run single-handedly by one woman today, and she kept up a cheerful mood throughout. She deserves some kind of prize, except that othello tournaments don't generally have prizes.

David won, and I think Geoff came second, and I didn't come last. I can't remember what happened in any more detail than that. Check out the website when it's updated, if you really want to know.

David also had a fantastic drawn game against someone, I forget who, in which he ended up with no edge discs at all. I've always wanted to see a no-edge win, and this is as close as I've come so far.

Kali is the only person in the history of the Bath House's conference room to know how to work the dumb waiter.

There's a kurnik tournament starting in eight minutes, and I think I'll play in it, even though it's probably a bad idea because my brain's burnt out from all the othelloing today.

London calling

Early start tomorrow to go down to London for the othello. Must remember to bring my clock this time, just in case some disaster means we're short of them again. I'm slightly more confident of winning a game, maybe even two games, this time, I've been playing half-decently on kurnik for the last couple of days.

And once I'm back, really got to get on with the job-hunting! I'll admit I haven't been as pro-active on that front as I really should have been, this past week. I have arranged a guest-speaker gig at a company conference which, in light of recent developments, I'm not going to say another word about, just in case, but that's not a full-time, bill-paying kind of job. And when I say 'arranged' I mean they called me and I said okay, of course. But on Sunday, I'll start pestering all the local companies who are looking for accountants. Won't that be fun?

Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons

I discovered something extremely cool tonight while randomly channel-hopping - Transformers is being shown on the obscure cable channel POP! And not the rubbish recent version of the Transformers cartoon either, the original classic "future" series from 1986! I flicked over just in time for the second half of "Call Of The Primitives" tonight (a good one - unusually wonderful artwork more than making up for slightly incoherent story).

This is absolutely brilliant news for the youth of today. Young people who watch this channel, and there must be someone watching it because they read out a letter afterwards from someone who said Transformers was his favourite, will get to see what giant-robot cartoons should be like, rather than the awful CGI drivel we get in the 21st century! And, since the old series was set in the far-flung future world of 2006, they might not even realise it's old, and think it's something new and exciting! A whole new generation of 'real' Transformers fans is born! Yay!

Othelloing

The London regional is on Saturday, so I'm playing in the late-night tournament on kurnik (which is now called PlayOK, which I think is a much less cool name). And due to ineffective time-management on my part, I'm blogging in between rounds.

Thus far I've lost three and won one, and that one was only because my opponent obligingly threw away a fairly obvious win a couple of moves after I'd thrown the game away with a similar blunder. This doesn't bode well for the weekend, but possibly it will put my brain in othello mode when I go to bed after the tournament, and I'll dream up some new amazing unbeatable winning strategies. That's my master-plan, anyway - leave it to my brilliant subconscious mind, because the conscious part hasn't got a clue.

Gotta go back, back, back to school again

Wow, lots of people I went to school with are on Facebook, it turns out! It makes me all nostalgic. I was tempted to write a blog reminiscing about my youthful exploits, but I decided that nobody would be interested in it, and besides, these would unavoidably involve talking about various people who might be reading the blog and take offence, and I'm being careful about that at the moment, so I'll give it a miss.

What would be cool, though, is getting the school to invite me back to give an assembly talking about my amazing achievements in the field of memorising useless data slightly more quickly than anyone else - I'll be able to claim that it's a direct result of slacking off and never doing any homework, and undermine everything the teachers are trying to impress on the new generation of QEGSers!

(See, now I've ruined any chance of getting invited there, too. When will I learn to keep my big metaphorical mouth shut?)

How To Be Topp

Hey, look what I found! Someone started up a Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School group on Facebook, and it motivated me to dig up this old class photo from 1992, when I was in the fifth year. That's 15-year-old me at the bottom right, looking down at the floor (and not at the boobies of the girl next to me, despite what everyone says when they see the picture). Yes, I had hair once. No, I never had a good hairstyle, unless you count my brief flirtation with spiky hair in the late eighties. But we do need to resurrect the nickname "Priddy the Hedgehog", don't you think?

Also, could someone please give me some money? Enough to go to Niebüll for the weekend and hang out with memory people at the North German Championship? I've been trying to justify to myself spending the money on the trip, but without a job it's hard to convince myself that it's a good idea. Maybe I'll rob a bank.

Leisure time

Well, since I haven't got any plans for tomorrow, I'll use the day productively - find a new job, finish all those memorisation papers for Cambridge, write a book-proposal or two, maybe even clean up my flat. That's the plan, anyway, or at least that's the justification for having done nothing productive all day today. I can do it tomorrow, you see!

Cartoon Classics

I found a video in a charity shop yesterday, one of those wonderful late-eighties "find four random old cartoons, stick them on a tape, put it in a cheap cardboard cover, sell it to kids" collections. I don't imagine this one went down all that well with whoever bought it in the first place, and I'm quite pleased I bought this before some well-meaning person bought it for a small child who would doubtless be a bit perplexed by some of the contents.

It starts with "The Little Dutch Mill", a Max Fleischer Color Classic, which is nice enough and quite watchable, although as usual for the Color Classics, very bland compared to what the Fleischers could do when they weren't being forced to copy whatever Disney were doing that year. But after that we have "Hollywood Steps Out", a cartoon which I'm sure was very popular in the cinemas in 1941, but since it consists of nothing but cartoon depictions of notable American movie and radio stars of the day, it's pretty much incomprehensible in 2008 to all but the most dedicated film buffs. And that's followed by "Jungle Jitters". How any children's video company, even a cheap and uncaring one, could think that "Jungle Jitters" is a good thing to put on a cartoon collection is beyond me - again, I expect it went down well in 1938, but seventy years later the portrayal of jungle natives in it isn't really the kind of thing Warner Bros Cartoons like to acknowledge that they once made. The collection finishes with "It's A Greek Life", which isn't outdated or offensive, but, like a lot of what the Van Beuren studios churned out in the thirties, just isn't much good.

So, all in all, this video is an interesting snapshot of cartoon history, as well as a fascinating relic of the days when videos were new and cool and people could sell any old rubbish to young folk starved of good, official cartoon releases. It's always fun to find one!

Too Much Information

Well, that just takes the biscuit

Okay, go and read this story on the BBC News site, and then (if you're a taxman or otherwise in a position to know) come back and tell me whether I've been labouring for years under a serious misapprehension about VAT on cakes and biscuits.

I could have sworn that jaffa cakes are subject to VAT. Weren't they the focus of the big legal case, many years ago, that established the whole chocolate-biscuits-are-vatable thing? I thought the definitive ruling of that was that VAT should indeed be paid on jaffa cakes, and have told people that many times over the years, whenever anyone asked me for an anecdote concerning both accountancy and cake.

I've never worked for a company that makes biscuits and/or cakes, and so have never had a reason to know this, but even so, I'm feeling like everything I know is a lie.

Eddy Grant?

Eddy Grant sent me a friend request on Facebook today. Either the actual singer Eddy Grant, or someone using his photo and birthday and things on their Facebook account. I'm quite flattered that he wants to be my friend - I do quite like several of his songs, and assuming he's not dead (I have a vague feeling that he might be), it would definitely be cool to meet up with him some time. However, I never accept friend requests from people I don't know who don't send me any kind of message explaining why they want to be friends with me, so I had to turn him down.

I do have other cool people writing to me, though. Someone asked me for a signed photo the other day - and not just any someone, but a real grown-up who's a successful American lawyer!

In other news, I'd just like to record here that I really like russet apples. I bought a bag of them from the market at the weekend, and although they're over-ripe, they still reminded me how much I like the things. I hadn't had one for years, and I really want some more now. Sadly, I'm pretty sure they're out of season, so I'll have to wait till later in the year. By which time I will have forgotten about it again.

Wörter des Tages (Words of the Day)

I've spent a good part of the evening creating the random words papers for the Cambridge competition. 200 words, randomly picked out and translated into German. Well randomly-according-to-strict-rules, anyway - I decided to make sure there was the right kind of split between concrete nouns, abstract nouns, verbs and adjectives (60%, 20%, 10% and 10% respectively is what I decided, although since they're randomly mixed together and nobody is going to get beyond 120 or so in the five minutes, they won't necessarily get that exact mix). So what I did was sort my random-word list into a random order and go down the list eliminating all the words that were too long and obscure or which become much easier or much more difficult to memorise once they're Germanised, making sure to ignore all the verbs after I'd filled the quota, and then sort the resulting 200-word list into a random order again.

Words I was sadly forced to reject include the wonderful 'eisteddfodd' and 'tatterdemalion'. If I was doing a single-language random words test I would have included them with pleasure, but I don't think there's a German equivalent...

I really must work 'tatterdemalion' into everyday conversation more often, though.

And incidentally, to all the Germans reading this who haven't yet decided whether to come to Cambridge, please do! It will be fun, there will be an announcement about prize money very soon (I hope), and the translations will be guaranteed checked by a real German-speaker and not just done by me, so there's nothing to worry about!

Let's be geeky...

...and talk about the new series of Doctor Who! So take this as your warning if you're foreign or otherwise haven't watched it yet, and skip this blog entry. I won't say anything else of consequence, I promise.

It's always great to see the Doctor back in action, and this is a very promising start for series four. It was a fun romp in what I think by now qualifies as the traditional style, boosted by a really excellent performance by Sarah Lancashire as the baddie. She should play villains more often, she was perfect. See, everyone, you CAN play the villain straight and make it work! (I still haven't really forgiven them for the John Simm Master).

Catherine Tate, on the other hand, was inconsistent - understandably, they've obviously decided to play Donna a bit more seriously now she's a regular, but she delivered some supposed-to-be-serious lines in a very over-dramatic way that didn't work at all. I'm a big fan of hers, though, and I'm sure she'll settle into the role over the course of the series. Also, I hope we're not going to be seeing Donna's mum again (or not until the end of the final episode, maybe) - I don't really get Russell T Davies's belief that the Doctor's companion's mother has to play an important part in the adventures. It'd be nice to have the Doctor not tied down to a family on Earth, just for a change of pace. Hopefully, with returns for Rose and Martha in the offing (the Rose cameo was very nicely done, by the way), they'll make a real effort to make Donna into a different kind of companion with a different kind of relationship with the Doctor. And I think it'll work really well if they do.

A few more little nitpicks, because nitpicking is fun - the effects of Donna dangling from the rope were horribly unrealistic-looking in the close-ups. She looked like she was just standing casually and holding a bit of metal on a string - she didn't even have her arms outstretched, for crying out loud! And the ropes tying the reporter to the chair would quite clearly have slid off it if she'd just stood up. And we could have done with a line of dialogue making it clear that the two security guards who the Doctor apparently floored with a million volts of electricity weren't killed.

And the big one, which isn't really a nitpick as such but is worth mentioning - had the Doctor not interfered, the masterplan of the 'villain' would have succeeded in helping a lot of humans lose unwanted body fat, while saving the population of another planet. A line to that effect in the dialogue would have been nice.

Apart from that, this episode had a lot going for it - the Adipose are adorable, and the special effects were brilliant. I still don't like entirely computer-generated monsters, but these ones worked well, and the interaction with reality was a lot more convincing than it has been before. There was tension and excitement and funny bits, a plot that made sense pretty much all the way through, and some nice setup for the future. Really looking forward to the rest!

Also, it's been snowing here all day.

Bless me

Yep, I've got a really rotten cold. Achoo! I'm all sneezy and snotty and sicky and it's no fun at all.

Still, I've got another long weekend to get over it - finished at Saint-Gobain on Friday. Granted, it's an unpaid holiday, and it would probably be better to be earning, but yay. Unless I sneeze myself to death at some point.

Celebrity news

All the many fans of The Mentalists might like to know that it's my grandma's birthday on Sunday. She's 88, and it's surprising how difficult it is to find a birthday card with two fat ladies on it. She's also suffering with bronchitis at the moment, so I'm sure she'd appreciate any get-well-soon comments you might like to leave on the blog.

I've also got a rotten cold today, and could do with some get-well-soons. So, I suppose, could Prince Philip, since he's in hospital with a chest infection. Grandma is pleased to be sharing an ailment with the Duke of Edinburgh (who's a year or so younger than her) although she isn't a big fan of his, being of the opinion that he was a lovely, handsome man until around the age of thirty, when he became a miserable old fart. She feels it's the Queen's fault.

I decided!

It's noisy out there

The light has just about completely faded away (yay for British Summer Time!) and I've had my window open, on account of having filled the room with smoke while cooking tea, and the birds outside are making a heck of a racket! It's times like this that I wished I'd paid attention to my dad's occasional lectures on the subject of birds and what they do, so that I could identify which species is making that screeching noise, and which is doing that sort of beeping. That's the kind of thing it's hard to learn without spending your life sitting in hides wearing a hat with twigs sticking out of it, peering through binoculars at tits and boobies.


As for the book-writing, I think I probably am going to at least put together a proposal for the "How To Improve Your Memory" book that that publisher wanted. In fact, I've already got one I wrote waaaay back in 2003, the first time someone asked me to write a book for them, before I decided to turn them down for various reasons that made sense at the time. Maybe I'll dig that up and see how bad it looks.

In the meantime, I've picked out another publisher to try to tempt with How To Be Clever - this will be number 5, and the scores so far are one outright rejection, one no reply (the one I sent the wrong covering letter to), one 'we'll print a book by you with a similar title if you rewrite it completely' and one 'we're not printing that, but we'll print a memory book by you'.

A poem in which dinner, interrupted by an elephant, illustrates a moral lesson

Young Modestine and Pamela and Fortitude and John
Were dining at the table on a meal of roasted swan
When from without there came a crash that caused the walls to shake
And plaster from the ceiling fell and spoiled the simnel-cake.

"Great heavens!" bellowed Fortitude, and ripped off all his clothes,
"God's genitals! By Christopher!" and other suchlike oaths,
"It seems to me the very world is being torn to bits!
Be quick and make your peace with God or suffer Hell's foul pits!"

"Don't talk such rot," said Pamela, an atheistic lass,
"Like many earthquakes have before, this one will swiftly pass."
But then again from outside echoed such a frightful clang
That Fortitude with panicked loudness rang for Jones, his man.

"The tiger-trap," the butler said, "was baited with a plant,
And not with meat, and so, of course, ensnared an elephant.
The gentle herbivore passed by and stopped to take a bite -
The trap was sprung, down came the cage and now behold its plight!"

"That will be all," said Fortitude. "Wait! Go and fetch my gun!
For now we have the beast caged up, let's have a bit of fun!"
"By cracky, yes!" cried Pamela, "Go, fetch my gun as well!
And though the place does not exist, let's blow the brute to Hell!"

Said Modestine "I don't approve of harming living things
(Except those horrid, nasty swans that hit one with their wings).
I think that what we should do is just let the poor brute free,
For do not all the beasts of Earth deserve such rights as we?"

"By no means does an elephant deserve the rights of man!"
Screamed Fortitude, who took his gun, "For God's almighty plan
Was ever that the man should kill all creatures great and small,
In payment of the debt they've owed since Noah saved them all!"

"I must concur," said Pamela, "though talk of God is daft,
For all religions great or small do naught but make me laugh,
Yet we whom evolution made the lords of all the Earth
Have every right to kill or maim a beast of lesser worth."

But Modestine was adamant and, taking up an axe,
She vowed to free the elephant from both her friends' attacks.
She cleaved in twain the tiger-trap, and out the monster flew -
But tragically it flew straight at the rifle-toting two.

And neither fervent prayers nor screams availed them in the least
As Fortitude and Pamela were crushed beneath the beast.
And as it fled into the hills sans backward glance or halt,
Poor Modestine could only say "I fear this is my fault."

"Indeed," said John, who seldom spoke, "though now we'll have some peace,
With jumbo gone and those two dead, their squabbling will cease.
But had you kept your big mouth shut and let them have their will,
The Christian and godless both would now be living still."

And so the moral of this tale is clearly to be seen:
When choosing guests for dinner, never ask a Modestine.
A difference of religion comes to nothing in the end,
But one who won't shoot elephants should never be your friend.

So many offers...

Why is it that nobody wants to publish How To Be Clever, but everybody wants to publish a different book by me? I had the 'teach yourself' people wanting it completely rewritten in their style (basically changing everything except the title), and I've had another email today saying no, we don't want HTBC, but we'd love a 'How To Improve Your Memory' book from you. The world is full of Improve Your Memory books, for flip's sake! The point of HTBC was that it's something a bit different from the books already on the shelves! Does nobody want that kind of thing except me?

Sigh... I might just write both those unsatisfactory things, rather than keep pestering people to print the good book. It's too much hassle.

As for the day job, I'll be finishing this month-long temp job I'm doing at the moment in a week or so, but the company have another job to offer me, more number-crunching of a fairly basic kind, but it'd be something to do. Different building on the same site, though, so I'd probably have to vacate my little office and share one in the more modern building.

Like the books thing, neither of these jobs are really the kind of thing I'm looking for. The research thing is a more junior kind of position than I've had before, and they're both a lengthy cycle ride from anywhere I might be able to cycle from.

Would someone out there please offer me a good job, and publish my book in the way I want it to be published? Is that too much to ask?

Galactic memory update

Heed my words, puny earthlings! I have travelled many light years to find you -- and to bring you a message from Kurrgo, Master of Planet X!

No, sorry, got confused there, because I've been reading old Fantastic Four comics. I meant to say Heed my words, puny earthlings! I just wanted to spell out for the benefit of those who read my blog but not the memory newsgroup, and yet are still interested in memory competitions, what is happening over the next few months:

Sunday 4 May - Cambridge Memory Championship, Trinity College Cambridge, national standard competition - 5 min words, 5 min binary, 5 min names, 15 min numbers, 10 min cards, 5 min numbers, abstract images, historic dates, spoken numbers (100 & 200), speed cards. This is going to be a bigger event than the last two Cambridge championships, judging by the number of entries and interested people so far - and the location is much, much better too! Entry fee £5, beginners free. http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/ and http://www.msocambridge.org.uk/

Saturday/Sunday May 24/25 - Derby Memory Championship, Derby, international standard - 30 min numbers, 30 min cards, 30 min binary, historic dates, spoken numbers (100, 200, 300), abstract images, 15 min names & faces, 5 min numbers, 15 min words, speed cards. I'm competing in this one myself now, just to keep you informed - thanks to James Paterson for creating the memorisation papers, and Phil
Chambers and other volunteers for running the show on the day. Entry fee £10, beginners free. http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/derby_index.shtml

Friday/Saturday July 25/26 - German Memory Championship, Tuttlingen, international standard - 30 min numbers, 30 min cards, 30 min binary, historic dates, spoken numbers (100, 200, 300), abstract images, 15 min names & faces, 5 min numbers, 15 min words, speed cards. Same great location as last year, I'm sure it'll be a fantastic competition! Entry fee not on the website yet, it's normally around €30, which includes lunch and an evening memory performance event. http://memomasters.de/

Saturday/Sunday August 16/17 - UK Memory Championship, Simpsons-in- the-Strand, London, national standard - 5 min words, 5 min binary, 5 min names, 15 min numbers, 10 min cards, 5 min numbers, abstract images, historic dates, spoken numbers (100 & 200), speed cards. A national standard, but over two mornings rather than a whole day like usual. So plenty of time for sightseeing in London! Entry fee £20, or
£40 including a gala dinner. http://worldmemorychampionship.com/competition_calendar.asp

And I hope to see lots of you there! The Derby championship will be filmed by ITV as part of the latest documentary on the subject, so this is your chance to star in my next TV appearance!

"Ironman" Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road

This morning, I did a half-hour cards practice (attempting 18 packs, got 15 right, the others were silly little memorising mistakes that I'm not too worried about), went to the supermarket and got my hair cut. The problem I have with memory is keeping the mental state going for a whole day, or a whole three-day period like you have to do at the world championships. Because my mind was seriously wandering by the end of the recall period, and I couldn't get into any other practice I tried to do this afternoon.

So instead, I spent my time playing "Ironman" Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road. This was an extremely cool arcade game, back in the good old days when arcade games were fun to play. It was one of those games in a cabinet with a pedal and a steering wheel - three pedals and three steering wheels, in fact, so you could race against two friends. They don't make games like it any more - the whole of the racetrack fills the screen and you drive a tiny little car, viewed from above, around the track. Those were cool. The first cool one was Super Sprint, and Super Off Road was basically just a clone of that, only with cooler tracks with bumps and puddles, and with "Ironman" Ivan Stewart's endorsement.

"Ironman" was apparently a real person, an off-road racing driver, and the title screen lists all the races he'd won. There weren't all that many of them, actually, and they were in the seventies for the most part, so why they thought kids might be attracted to the game by the name Ivan Stewart, I can't imagine. Possibly he was cooler in America, where people might have heard of him. "Ironman" drove the computer-controlled white car in the game, and when the red, yellow and blue cars weren't being controlled by players, they were driven by "Madman" Sam Powell, "Hurricane" Earl Stratton and "Jammin'" John Morgan. I don't know if these were real people too - if they were, I can't imagine they were too happy with the way that Ivan Stewart's car always won the races. Jammin' John generally came second, and a fun alternative way to play the game is not to try to win, but to try to hold up "Ironman"'s car so that someone else wins. I like to think that would teach him a lesson for being so full of himself. Assuming that he was in any way full of himself - I know nothing about the man at all.

Also cool about the game was the way you could enter your country of origin at the start of the game (as long as you were from the USA, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy or Australia) and get your own national anthem played when you won a race. Admittedly the anthem that plays for Britain only bears a slight resemblance to God Save The Queen, but still, it was very, very unusual for an American game of that generation to consider the possibility that non-Americans might play it. Especially an American game based on the appeal of a strictly American minor celebrity.

You can play the NES version of the game on your computer here, at the wonderful Virtual NES site, where you can also play lots and lots of other classic games, one or two of which are some good (the Master System was so much better, apart from the absence of Super Mario Bros). Or if like me the NES version just makes you long for the better graphics of the arcade version, the MAME roms are out there too. Now I just have to get an original cabinet with steering wheels and everything.

When I'm a millionaire, I'm going to own an arcade filled to busting with all the classic games of the good old days, and everyone will be welcome to come along and have fun. And they'll cost 10p a play.

What, already?

Wow, weekends come around fast when it's a three-day week. Right, so, this weekend I'm going to do all those things I was going to do last weekend, and probably some other things too. I'm going to be industrious and hard-working.

Speaking of hard-working, my boss said today that he's very happy with the work I've been doing this last month. That makes one of us, at least, because personally I don't think I've been all that much use. Still, it's his opinion that counts. And it is nice to be appreciated - a lot of bosses don't bother to say anything unless they think you're rubbish.

Ow ow ow!

Remember I said that I skinned my elbows? At some point during Saturday's unhealthiness? Well, now I've got scabs on them, just where I lean my elbows on tables, and it hurts. I can only assume that while I was drinking I was leaning with my elbows too excessively, or something. Or else I took a cheese grater to them, thinking it would be funny. But seriously, ow. I need someone to kiss my elbows better. It's not possible to kiss your own elbow, you know. This is proof of God's non-existence.

Joyce Grenfell met Elvis Presley, you know

See, I was going to do some memory training or something tonight, but my boiler's broken and the landlord came round this evening to poke at it and by the time he'd gone, there was only time to sit around watching an hour-long documentary about Joyce Grenfell that I might possibly have seen before but I can't quite remember.

And I'd had a very productive and successful day at work too, and felt all motivated to keep the hard work going in the evening, especially after an email from a local freemason offering to help out at the Derby Memory Championship. Perhaps I can get the brotherhood on my side and have them funny-handshake 'memory sports' into a government-funded mega-million-pound enterprise!

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.