Othello transcripts

This is a public apology for not typing up my transcripts from last Saturday yet, like I said I would. I seem to have spent the whole of the last three weeks or so not typing transcripts, and it's inexcusable. I'll do it tomorrow, if I can be bothered.

Hamburger Sammich & Sum French-Fried P'tatoes!

With Cambridge out of the way, I can start planning for the German championship in Hamburg! July 31st and August 1st! And if I'm going to do well in this, the second-most-important memory competition of the year, I'll need to spend the next few weekends getting back into the habit of 30-minute memorising. A half-hour cards, half-hour numbers and half-hour binaries, all in one day, really takes it out of you, but once I've done it a few times, my brain remembers the knack of keeping the concentration going for that length of time, and before you know it I'm all ready for the world championship and the hour-long disciplines.

I really want to do well in Hamburg - historically I always used to do badly at the German championship, but then I had a great one in 2007, couldn't afford to go last year, and I think it'd be nice to win it this time...

It's gone!

SAS Furniture, down the road! That shop's been there forever, and now it's turned into Bubble-It! I don't even know what Bubble-It sells! Maybe it... bubbles things. Anyway, it doesn't sell furniture, probably, and it's an outrage!

As I mentioned in a blog only a month or so ago, SAS Furniture has always been on the corner there. Whenever we used to drive into Beeston on the way to Grandma's house (being modern, and keen to avoid big bad wolves, we took the car via Beeston instead of skipping through the woods), we'd go past the place. What with that and Woolworth's, I'm getting extremely fed up with the modern age. When I work out exactly who's responsible for the entirety of the world's problems, I'm going to go around to his/her house/bungalow and shout at them. Loudly.

He hits ye and ye gang tae the hospital

One interesting thing you notice when you watch enough cartoons and read enough comics from the olden days is that plagiarism isn't as modern an invention as you might think. Even in the thirties, when it was still possible to think up a new gag that hadn't been done before, you'd still see examples galore of stealing a joke from a rival and hoping to get away with it.

Even so, it surprised and entertained me to find the original (or maybe just an earlier iteration) of an Oor Wullie strip in an earlier Popeye comic:

Thimble Theatre starring Popeye, December 18, 1932

Oor Wullie, January 30, 1938


Five years and the Atlantic Ocean between them - I wonder if there's a missing link here? I don't think Thimble Theatre had made it to British newspapers yet at that point, huge though it was in the USA, and I don't think that gag was ever used in the animated Popeye cartoons...

See, this is the kind of thing that really fascinates me, so I thought I'd share it with the world in general.

Further news from the weekend

I realised today that while I was trying to make the attendance at the CMC sound as international as possible, it didn't occur to me that one of the English competitors had an Indian name. And now I'm worried that people think I'm either some kind of racist, or some kind of excessively politically-correct berk, or both.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that although I didn't see fit to provide any prizes for this year's competition, I did get some extremely cool gifts from competitors - Dai gave me several cool and interesting coins to add to my collection (an old-style 5p to add to my 10p and 50p!) and Christopher presented me with a giant chocolate gold medal, by far the best and tastiest medal I've ever got from a memory competition!

I should also mention the fun with the window in the competition room - it had been recently broken and patched up with brown tape, and half way through the championship we found out why. It seems the window has trouble staying open and slides down closed of its own volition. Luckily, my screeches of "Catch it!" and James and Jenny's quick reactions saved it from shattering any more panes.

And just to save the best till last, I heard today that Marco proposed to Jane in the evening after the competition, and she said yes! So, you see, memory competitions lead to romance! Another reason for everybody to come along and take part!

Ahh, Cambridge

It makes all the tedious preparation work feel worthwhile when we have a fun and successful Cambridge Memory Championship at the end of it! I'm back home again now and looking forward to catching up with the various things I haven't been doing just lately, like not ignoring everybody unrelated to the Cambridge Memory Championship who's been wanting to talk to me.

Anyway, here's what I've been doing this weekend. It was othello on Saturday, and lots of people turned up again - 15 of them, plus a non-playing Adelaide and Aubrey, who was in the country for once and able to organise the whole Cambridge MSO. Which all seemed to be a roaring success, except that there were too few events on the Saturday (the stratego was cancelled) and too many on the Sunday (the draughts was extended to cover both days). This led Aubrey to greet me with ominous questions like "Do you actually need tables for the memory competition?" and "There's no real reason why it has to be indoors, right?"

The othello itself went reasonably well, all in all. I beat Geoff in the first round, which I seem to be making a habit of lately, then lost to Imre and David, who are both much, much better than me, but who I manage to beat once in a while and was hoping to this time as well. Still, I was on four wins out of six before the final round, and just needed to beat Jeremy to end up in joint third with Geoff (who beat Imre, who in turn beat David - if you're interested in the statistics that don't involve me, you should probably check out the British Othello website instead, I'm too self-centred) and keep my undeserved comfortable lead in the BGP. But I lost the decisive game 33-31, ended up a comparatively rubbish joint fifth with Ian (not that Ian is comparatively rubbish compared to Geoff, although I can see how you might draw that inference from my last two sentences), and am now only seven points clear of David. Still, maybe I'll win or be the only person who turns up to the last two tournaments.

After the othello, I decided it might be a good idea to check out the possibility of alternative venues for the memory the next day, to avoid sharing a room with backgammon players or sitting outside in the courtyard on those chairs with little wobbly mini-desk attachments. In the spirit of nothing-ventured-nothing-gained, I went into the Royal Cambridge Hotel at half past seven on Saturday evening to ask the receptionist if there was any chance of getting a cheap conference room for nine o'clock on Sunday morning. Funnily enough, they didn't seem to think there was anything at all unusual about this request, and provided us with a perfect venue - much more swanky than the usual location, and not at all expensive, especially since Aubrey chipped in with a part of the cost from the MSO funds.

The international turnout of the memory competition was extremely impressive - two Swedes (one of whom has an Albanian name), four Germans (one of whom has a French name), an Italian (who lives in London and whose accent veers between Italian and cockney at random), one Welsh and even two English participants! We really need to get more British people involved in memory competitions.

We also had a huge and me-very-grateful-making turnout of helpers who ran the competition and marked papers promptly and accurately, ensuring everything worked out exactly the way it should, ran on time and suffered no major disasters and hardly any minor ones either (slight technical hitch or two with the spoken numbers, but nothing worse than usual) without me having to do much real work at all!

Star of the show was Dennis Müller, who's only been doing memory stuff for six months and is already confident enough to attempt a 20-second pack of cards and talk in terms of beating me next time we go head-to-head (Hamburg, end of July). It's a bit worrying, but on the other hand, really great. I look forward to seeing how well he does after a bit more training!

Dennis joins the illustrious list of Cambridge Memory Championships winners (Clemens Mayer, Ed Cooke and Gaby Kappus), while Mattias Ribbing joins the equally illustrious list of Best Beginners at the CMC (James Paterson, Fan Kai Yoon, Katie Kermode), who have all (except Fan Kai Yoon, who never came to any memory competition ever again) gone on to great things.

So, a good time was had by all! Now I'm going to go to bed, because it tires you out, organising events. Normality resumes tomorrow!

The loveliness of Leicester

Getting to Cambridge from Beeston tonight took less than three hours, which only happens on very rare occasions when you can change at Leicester without waiting more than a few minutes and get a direct train to Cambridge. But the 17:08 tonight was one of those times, and I managed to leave work early despite having to cover someone else's Friday-afternoon report that always takes ages to gather various different people's input.

So I was already in a good mood when I went in to the cafe at Leicester station for something to eat, and it only got better when it turned out that the till wasn't taking cards and I didn't have quite enough money to pay for my crisps, ham salad roll and bottle of coke, only for the man behind the till to cheerfully chip in 50p from his own pocket to make up the difference!

And then, if that wasn't enough to convince me that Leicester station is great, the announcer over the tannoy described the next train to arrive as "the chronologically disadvantaged 17:30 to London" and got a chuckle from the crowd of people waiting for it. Most big stations like Leicester have a robot announcing the trains, or else a low-paid, non-English-speaking temp. Hooray for the traditional British sense of humour and the traditional British sense of giving someone 50p to pay for a sandwich!

That's made me all cheerful and chirpy about the weekend ahead, and was just what I needed after lots of busy-ness at work and lots of running around frantically for the last few evenings getting everything sorted for Sunday (I still need to create the spoken numbers program on Powerpoint, but I can do that in the comfort of my hotel room. All the memorisation papers are printed out and safely stored in my small rucksack - which I was carrying on my front, like some kind of baby harness thing, because my big backpack was on my back. And in a way, these memorisation and recall papers are my babies. A strange way that only a certifiable lunatic would use, but a way nonetheless. I laboured over the things and printed them out, using the very last drop of ink my Lexmark cartridges would allow me. Wait a minute, I opened a set of brackets about 500 words ago, let's close them before we go any further). That's better.

On my journey down here tonight, I must have given people the impression that I'd recently come from Bahrain - I was wearing my souvenir Bahrain T-shirt, and my big rucksack has still got the little white band around it saying "Bahrain International Airport Security" from my trip there six months ago. People probably concluded that I'd been to the grand prix. Perhaps that's why the guy gave me that 50p - he must have assumed I'm a millionaire playboy and would reward him with gold bars and mansions!

Anyway, I'm rambling. I think I'll go to bed now. Othello tomorrow, memory on Sunday!

If you're a man and you want to be healthy

Then you could probably do worse than buying the latest issue of Men's Health magazine, available now for £3.95 from all good newsagents. Or just ask me if you can borrow the free copy they sent me. I'm on page 108, the fifth in the series of profiles on 'superhumans', incongruously sandwiched between Lance Armstrong and Sebastian Coe. "The Genius", they call me - I won't disillusion them if you don't.

You can also find that interivew I did with the Canadian news agency on the internet with a quick Google search, if you really want to. It covers essentially the same ground as the Men's Health article.

I'll leave you with a quote attributed to Tony Buzan in an email I got from some Australians:

Quite Simply...
"Good Food = Good Brain
Junk Food = Junk Brain”

Tony Buzan

And an alternative quote from someone whose brain is generally held to be not too shabby:

Junk food is great! What are you talking about, Tony?

Ben Pridmore (genius)

Cambridge? Yes, I probably should do something about that.

Haven't booked a hotel for the weekend yet. If I end up having to commute from Beeston and back every day, I'm really going to be worn out by Monday...

There just aren't enough puns in the world!

On BBC2 tonight, there was a trailer for a programme about Kew Gardens, followed by the snooker. And nobody made a "and now a different kind of cues..." quip! What is wrong with everybody nowadays? Don't they know there's some kind of depression happening, and the best cure for depression is jovial banter from BBC continuity announcers?

A thought occurs

Do you think that some fervently anti-Communist heraldist has ever reworked the old 'Better dead than red' slogan to make it 'Better ghouls than gules'? If not, do you think I could trademark it somehow? Because it really makes me giggle.

Anyway, tonight I'm going to do something productive for once - a bit of memory training, a bit of finishing off all that printing for Cambridge, maybe even a bit of typing up my othello transcripts from London, like I've been meaning to do for quite a while now. And a minimum of snooker-watching.

I work for MI5

I spy on people, memorise what they say and do, and repeat it with roughly 85% accuracy. They hired me for my binary-digit-remembering skills, obviously, but we're still waiting for the first terrorist attack (or whatever it is that MI5 investigate, if indeed MI5 still exists and is still called that - I don't keep up with the news as much as I should) that somehow involves a need to memorise up to 4000 1s and 0s in 30 minutes. The bosses were thinking of letting me go, but then someone realised that I'm quite a bit cheaper and easier to secretly install in someone's house than a hidden microphone.

It's a printing-things-out weekend

I always forget how long it takes to print all the papers for even a tiny little memory competition like Cambridge. It does give me a much greater admiration for those wonderful people (ie Phil and maybe a couple of other helpers if he's lucky) who do all the preparation work for the world championships.

I also forget how much paper and expensive print cartridges it takes - I had thought I'd be able to use my Boots staff discount this year (it's got to be good for something - normally the only thing I buy at Boots is earplugs, which cost £1.99 for five pairs, so my discounts are pretty negligible), but I left it to the last second as usual, and the big Nottingham store had run out of the kind of cartridges I need, so I had to buy them for full price at Dixons.

As a tangent, why does every type of printer take differently-shaped print cartridges? Is there any reason why all Lexmark printers couldn't be made so that they use a universal kind of cartridge? It's all a big conspiracy, I tells you.

As another tangent, yes, I still call it Dixons. If they're too lazy to change their colour scheme along with their name, they've only got themselves to blame. The general public's collective brain just processes the colours and doesn't look at the words.

Crash! Shatter! Tinkle!

Some of the lights in this place have sort of strange frosted glass globe lampshades instead of normal ones. I was just sitting down to eat tonight when there was suddenly an almighty crash-shatter-tinkle kind of noise from the kitchen. The lampshade thing had spontaneously fallen to the floor and shattered into a zillion pieces! I was standing roughly directly underneath it not more than a couple of minutes beforehand, too! I could have been killed! Well, actually, the thing weighed practically nothing and seems to have been fairly fragile, but I might have got Bond-villain kind of scars on my bald shiny head. I'd sue the landlord if not for the fact that I changed the bulb a couple of weeks ago and clearly didn't put the stupid lampshade back properly.

Weight a minute

To celebrate the launch of a scary-sounding miracle weight loss pill in pharmacies, there were weighing machines at work today, inviting everyone to come along and see what they weigh. Just like the one that used to taunt me at Woolworth's before I engineered the closing down of the entire company just to shut it up. Only this Boots one was even nastier to me - it tells me that anyone with a Body Mass Index over 28 can benefit from a weight loss plan, and mine is 28.6.

I'm being forced to the conclusion that I need to start making an effort to eat properly. This last couple of years, I genuinely have got much too chubby. It's just that the very thought of trying to lose weight sends me scurrying to the Co-op for a bag of Tangfastics. The idea of dieting seems to be against all of my principles, somehow. Like wearing a cycle helmet or sunscreen. It's the kind of thing that a certain kind of person does, and I don't want to be that kind of person, however sensible it would be. It's hard to explain.

Character-building

Watching some snooker player trying to conceal his annoyance as he snappily answers questions like "What's your favourite colour" in the BBC's attempt to convey the personalities of players makes me think about the marketability of memory competitions.

It's a regular complaint nowadays that there used to be "characters" in snooker, whereas now the players are all interchangeable, boring young men. This complaint is generally made by old men who forget that the old players were also boring. But I think "The Mentalists" showed that we could do a big feature about all the top memory athletes, sum up each of their personalities and quirks in a soundbite and make the general public genuinely interested in us. You know, Gunther's the German mastermind, Ed's 'the upper-class chap' (as someone I met in the street a while ago repeatedly described him), and I'm the working-class hero. Or maybe the weird nerd with the beard and hat, take your pick.

I bet I could describe the whole top twenty in the world in their own unique phrase, if I put my mind to it. But I don't think I will - I'd only end up offending everyone by using some harmless phrase like "the big fat idiot who can't remember anything".

Lots of phone calls

Well, two of them, anyway, which is two more phone calls than I like to deal with of an evening. But hopefully they'll result in an article appearing in the Cambridge newspaper about the upcoming memory championship, and in Canadians coming to film the UK and World championships later in the year, so it's worth it.

Meanwhile, to make up for me not replying to Florian's email because I haven't got round to it yet, have I plugged memory-sports.com on my blog before? I don't think I have, but you should all go and look at it anyway.

The things I do for memory

A journalist from a local Cambridge newspaper said he'd call me at some point tonight for an article about the Cambridge Memory Championship, and I needed to go out to the supermarket, so, with great reluctance, I had to change the message on my answering machine.

It's not an actual answering machine, you understand, it's the normal 1571 service, but I've got an outdated vocabulary. Anyway, it used to say something like "Hi, I never check this thing, but leave me a message and if you're lucky I might hear it some time and call you back. Or you could just email me like a normal person." I don't like phones.

But so as not to offend this intrepid reporter, I changed it to a bland hello-I'm-Ben-I'm-not-here-right-now thing. And did he call? Did he heckers. That'll teach me to compromise my principles just for the sake of not being rude to people.

Pound for pound

As I think I've mentioned, I've been browsing around coin-related sites just lately, and in the process discovered something I didn't know - there's one different design of pound coin for every year from 1983 to 2008, but from now on they're sticking with the same shield design along with the new versions of all the other coins. So, naturally, this means I need to collect one of each, just for the sake of having a complete collection. 26 of them, you see - one for each location on one of my journeys, it's fate. The minor problem is that some years' pound coins weren't manufactured in bulk because there were already enough of them in circulation, so I'd have to buy one of those official Royal Mint collection sets from some official Royal Mint coin collector, and that seems like an excessive length to go to just to satisfy a 'hey, I should get hold of one of each kind of pound coin' urge. Maybe I'll just limit myself to what I'm doing at the moment, and putting aside a kind that I haven't got yet every time I get one in my change...

An interesting side-effect of paying attention to pound coins is that I can now spot a forgery if need be. You know how there are stories in the news every now and then saying that 10% of pound coins in circulation are forgeries, or something like that. I got one in my change today - it's quite obvious, if you're paying attention; the writing on the edge is wobbly and not deep enough, the heads and tails sides aren't lined up with each other right and it's slightly the wrong colour. I'm not sure whether to start a collection of fake pound coins alongside the collection of real ones or just to buy something with it next time I'm in a shop. I think it's probably illegal to knowingly spend fake money, but I think that's a monstrously unfair rule, punishing you for being clever enough to know a forgery when you see it. Fair laws should punish stupid people and give extra money to clever people. That's how things would work if I ruled the world, anyway. Also, cleverness would be legally defined in some way that includes me and excludes anyone I don't like.

I'd make a really great evil dictator, wouldn't I? Maybe that should be my next career move. Anyone want to be my henchman? I'll pay you a pound!

Capital fun

When the weekend brings such lovely, warm, sunny spring weather, what better way to spend the day than sitting in a room above a pub in London, playing othello with thirteen other enthusiasts?

Othello returned to its regular London home of the Bath House, just off Oxford Street, and we had a very big turnout for a regional - just about all the regulars and semi-regulars, including the likes of Steve MacGuire and Jeremy Dyer (whose rhyming names make me want to turn this blog entry into a poem), who haven't been to a tournament for quite some time. And a brand-new player (new to real-life othello, anyway, but not to playing on the internet) by the name of Stephen Spencer, too! I've mentioned it on other forums before, but the point is worth mentioning - Stephen Rowe was also at the Bath House today, and I went to primary school with a boy originally called Stephen Roe who changed his name (for some reason I don't recall) to Stephen Spencer. As you all know, I have a history of getting othello players' names mixed up, and this kind of thing really doesn't help me!

Still, the tournament went surprisingly well for me - I lost to David Beck, but he squished everyone he played today, and I also lost to Ian Turner (I did beat Kali in my first game, which was a relief), but Ian then lost to Geoff Hubbard and I finished the day by beating Geoff, so the three of us ended up jointly in second place!

Since David, Geoff and Ian all didn't come to the first regional of the year, and since Iain Barrass, who came second in Oadby, had a bad day today and ended up joint eighth, this gives me a big impressive lead in the British Grand Prix standings! It probably won't last, of course, with three regionals to go and there being so many people who are better than me, and me probably not going to the last one since it's down in Farnborough and getting there is a hassle and it's my brother's birthday the next day, but still, yay for me!

And although it's true that the BGP has a tendency to be a prize for the player who turns up to the most tournaments, the winner does get to play in the World Championship! (If it doesn't clash with the memory one, of course - it's normally in November, and the WMC is currently scheduled for that kind of time...) And there's even a trophy now! It made its debut today, all gleaming and shiny, the George Greaves Memorial Plate, and was presented to last year's BGP winner Iain.

It would be extremely groovy to see my name engraved on it (I've never had my name engraved on a trophy before - the WMC used to have a trophy like that, but hasn't for years now, it's a long story) and who knows, if I get another couple of flukey wins or second places, it's possible...

Also, since I dissed the local Labour/Lib Dem council in my blog recently, I feel I should record that I got a leaflet through the door today from the Conservatives that spells 'sincerely' wrong. Bunch of illiterates, I'm not voting for them...

Simpsons

I do watch the Simpsons quite a lot. It's just that it's always on in the evenings when I'm sitting around and feeling lazy. But somehow, even though season one seems to be repeated over and over again and they never show season 2 or 3, I don't seem to have seen "Homer's Odyssey" for years and years, until tonight. And it's quite good, actually! Maybe I'll get the DVDs and watch all five million episodes in one sitting...

I realise I should probably be spending my evenings memorising numbers instead of watching the Simpsons. But, you see, I just can't be bothered. It's Friday.

Oh Canada

I was feeling really productive and fired-up at work today for some reason, and considering staying late even though I didn't need to, just to get lots of stuff done. This isn't the kind of mood I'm often in - I do do a good job as an analyst, but I don't generally get so into it that I want to be in the office all night when there's football on telly - so it's probably a good thing that I snapped out of it with remembering that I'd agreed to do a phone interview with a Canadian journalist tonight.

If you're Canadian, and read newspapers (I don't know which ones - any or all of the publications printed by Sun Media), make sure to check it out, sometime in the next couple of months, probably. It's not going to contain anything I haven't said in dozens of other interviews before, but I'll be saying them in a different order, probably, so you'll want to read it anyway.

In other news, I notice that there's a programme on BBC1 tonight called "The Narnia Code" in which, according to the Radio Times, a Dr Michael Ward claims to have discovered a "profound subtext" to "the books' ostensibly fairy-tale events". Um, is that really a new and shocking idea? Perhaps poor Dr Ward is the only person in the world who's never noticed the subtext before, and thought it was just a story about a magic land with a talking lion?

Things I don't own but which people seem to think I should own

A mobile phone
Hammers, nails, screwdrivers, electric drills, basically anything you can buy from B&Q
A microwave
Nail-clippers
A car
A frying pan
A razor
More than one pair of shoes
A DVD player that isn't my laptop
Paper tissues
An ipod, or for that matter a CD player that isn't my laptop
Basic cooking ingredients like eggs, flour, spices etc
A wig.

Big city othello

London regional this weekend, and I've been playing online a bit to see if practice helps me or hinders me. I can't quite understand my othello-playing ability. Some days I have a run of great games where I spot all the clever little moves and plan ingenious strategies far in advance, other times (and against the same opponents in the same positions) I find that I have no idea what's going on and I just make really stupid moves. Possibly there's some kind of loose connection in my brain. I need some kind of brain scan. Actually, there is some kind of neurologist or something who wants to talk to me, maybe I'll get round to emailing him back and have him check my wiring...

Holidays

Well, it's back to work tomorrow after four days off, and naturally this puts me in the mood to plan not going to work again at some point in the near future. It's a new financial year, you see, I've got 25 days between now and the end of March next year, and I'd quite like to plan it out properly for once, instead of taking them all whenever I feel like it and ending up with no holidays left for the second half of the year. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd sit down and work out how much time I'd need for each memory competition, including recovery time afterwards, then plan a couple of other little breaks at appropriate times in between them. I'm not going to, but it's definitely a step in the right direction for me to acknowledge that it's a good idea to do it.

Breakout!

I've got worryingly addicted to playing Arkanoid since I discovered it online yesterday. It's a very compelling game that I haven't played since the BBC Micro version when I was still at school. Although I have got the extremely similar Breakout on the Master System, and had a good long game on that tonight, too, in an attempt to get it out of my system. In fact, I'm pretty sure I got further than I ever have before, in the whole history of me playing video games - perhaps it's all the memory training and discipline that I've instilled in myself since the days when I was regularly playing it!

Tomorrow, I'll finish creating the memorisation papers for Cambridge (just need to write all those historic dates...) and send that long-overdue email to all the definite and possible competitors.

Why do these things always involve horses?

Flat 7, Gordonstoun Court, Suffolk Street, Oulton Broad, Suffolk is the subject of an interesting law, enacted in 1537 by Henry VIII and still in effect today. The law requires two living horses to be within the flat at all times, failure to adhere to this law carrying a minimum twenty-year prison sentence for the owner, occupants and any visitors to the property in the previous seven weeks. The last time anyone was prosecuted under this law was in 1987, when building works forced the then resident Humphrey Dalmas to briefly move one of the horses out into the corridor in order to access a leaking gas pipe. The team of twelve police officers who constantly monitor the flat sprang quickly into action and had Dalmas taken into immediate custody.

The current owner, hippopotamus breeder Hugo Bugeleisen, has made sure to keep at least four horses in the flat, so as to avoid prosecution should one or two of them spontaneously drop dead, and describes himself as "happy" with the situation, "although not as happy as those whose flats contain no horses at all, obviously."

The law was introduced at the request of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, whose cousin, Derek Tunstall, lived in Pakefield and kept a mistress in Camps Heath. Oulton Broad being roughly half way between the two locations, the law enabled Derek to ride as quickly as possible to his mistress's house every Saturday afternoon, changing his tired horse for a fresh one at Oulton, steal a quick kiss and return home again before his wife had finished her weekly bath. The law originally applied to a large country house with attached stables; this was destroyed in the war and a block of flats built in its place in the early fifties, when it was ruled that for the purposes of the Living Horse Law, Flat 7 should be considered the successor of the original property. A small, one-bedroom, three-kitchen flat, the presence of two or more horses leaves no room to swing a cat, let alone breed a hippopotamus.

The law serves no practical purpose today - Derek Tunstall lived to a surprisingly ripe old age but was eventually executed in 1667 on the posthumous orders of Oliver Cromwell for treason and unlicensed dispensing of rat poison - but an attempt to pass a bill through parliament invalidating the law was unanimously defeated in 1992, with even the MP who introduced the motion deciding to vote against it.

Fun fun fun

I feel bad about devoting a whole blog to a TV review, because I like to be a bit more unconventional than that. But I feel that I should mention the comeback of Red Dwarf that was on tonight, seeing as I loved the original series (with the obvious exception of the last couple of seasons). It was fun, better than most resurrections of sitcoms that passed their best long ago, but nothing too special. What really surprised me is that while the cast haven't physically aged too much, Rimmer's voice in particular has put on a few years. And Chris Barrie's a voice actor, I would expect him to be pitch-perfect (Frank Welker still nails the voice of Freddy on Scooby-Doo, and he's ancient now...)

See, now I've got that out of my system I won't be able to devote tomorrow to talking about Doctor Who, and I'll be able to go back to my usual inane witterings...

Maundy Thursday is here at last!

Ahh, a four-day weekend. Exactly what I need to do all that Cambridge Memory Championship preparation I was meaning to do last weekend! It really was very clever of me to arrange the championship for a few weeks after Easter, wasn't it? I take full credit for that decision, even though it was nothing to do with me.

Meanwhile, if you want some fun, type my name into Google blog search and sort it by date. It seems there are fake blogs out there that take popular news stories or posts from genuine blogs, run the words through a thesaurus to make it look at first glance like a different post and use the resulting text to lure unsuspecting searchers into their site, for nefarious purposes of their own (probably involving selling stuff, but maybe spreading viruses or other mischief - either way, clicking on the link is likely to be a bad thing, so don't.)

This procedure has turned that BBC article into phrases like "It attacks less than 30 approves for the reigning World Remembrance Protector to recall the sequence of a pack of hovering cards." and "I ignore the unscathed shebang" and "I prowl into a abide and ignore what I am doing there, arguable the fridge and theorize why I am looking in there."

From now on, please call me the World Remembrance Protector! And remember that I'm splendidly putrescent at remembering people's names.

An important footnote to tonight's post

There's an advert on TV that sings the line "Don't be afraid to be young and free", which I misheard as "Don't be afraid to be onion-free", and wondered whether there were onion-fans out there who would ostracise those who chose not to have onions with their hamburgers. Because I prefer not to have onions, and it does make people look at me strangely, sometimes.

Doctor Whooooooooo!

Yay, it's been too long since the last time the Doctor was on our screens, so I'm looking forward to the Easter special on Saturday. Despite the interview with Russell T Davies in the Radio Times in which he promises "a bunch of ordinary commuters stranded on an alien world". Because the concept of an isolated bunch of ordinary humans facing an alien menace just hasn't been done enough in modern Doctor Who, has it? I think there was one episode in the first season that DIDN'T feature a bunch of ordinary people under siege by weird aliens! Gosh, maybe this latest episode will feature some kind of everyday item turning against humanity and the whole world's population being attacked by monsters that the Doctor is able to defeat by pressing the right button in Cardiff!

But still, I'm just being mean for no reason. I'm sure it's really going to be great!

I'm better now

Thanks to everyone for the messages of sympathy, and sorry for not even mustering a word of bloggery last night, but I decided to just go to bed early instead. Still, I'm well on the road to recovery now, and as if to celebrate the fact, that long-ago BBC website interview has finally made it online!

Sheesh, I'm typing this while watching Man Utd's should-be-easy game against Porto, and they've just gone a goal down after three and a half minutes! Probably because they've got a player called Hulk.

Anyway, back to the subject of memory, and I was at one point at number 8 on the most-read-right-now list, and number THREE on the most-watched/listened-right-now! Right after Kim Jong-Il and an extremely small puppy. To be fair, the puppy's quite a lot cuter than me, so I'd recommend that you watch it instead. For that matter, Kim Jong-Il's probably cuter than me, too. And with less of a silly voice. But still, why should he get all the attention? I've been ill too, and nobody's speculating whether or not I'm still alive. These blogs could be being ghostwritten by my minions, you know, and there's no way to independently verify the date of the footage of me on the BBC. Someone start a conspiracy theory, or I'll have to do it myself!

Well, must go and watch how the football turns out. I might turn down the commentary if they make one more Hulk-joke, though. I can't cope with another hour-and-a-half of "Don't make him angry". Still, it's impressively nerdy of a football commentator to admit that he knows "Lou Ferrigno played Dr David Banner in the TV series", even if he's not entirely right about that...

Cough, hack, snort, sniffle

I'll resume regular blog output when I'm feeling better. For now, I'm going to bed. Get-well-soons would be gratefully received.

Ohhh, my head...

Sorry about last night's unusually brief post. I wasn't planning to go out drinking - for one thing I'm suffering from a terrible cold at the moment - but my brother phoned me and invited me to come out and buy him drinks, and how could I refuse? But I blame the cold virus for the fact that I've had the worst hangover of my life today. I didn't even drink all that much, but I still feel pretty terrible even now, and I'm sure it can't be that I just can't cut the mustard like I used to.

Still, to look on the bright side, while we were loudly singing and carousing and breaking things, a passer-by glared at us and said "Bloody students..." Obviously I still look youthful for a 32-year-old, bald accountant!

Sorry, no blog tonight.

Drunk. Brother. Singing was involved. Need bed.

Cambridge! Roll up, roll up!

Okay, this coming weekend is my official emailing-everyone-about-the-Cambridge-Memory-Championship weekend, so here's a little advance warning, just in case anybody wants to email me first and tell me they're definitely coming. Because the 'definites' list consist of a Norwegian, two Swedes, two Germans and an Italian from Tunbridge Wells, so it would be nice to also have a confirmation from some of the British people who've said they're probably coming along.

Maybe I should lose weight

Or perhaps it's just the ancient dining chairs this flat came with. Either way, while memorising cards this evening, I tilted my chair back on two legs as I always do, only for it to fall to pieces and drop me comically on the floor. Oliver Hardy couldn't have done it better, I just wish I'd had a camera filming me at the time.

I should get some more chairs this weekend. I've been meaning to get some new furnishings to fill out this semi-furnished flat of mine, perhaps I'll go to SAS Furniture (the strangely military-sounding shop down the road that I've been driven past on the way to Grandma's house for my entire life, but have never gone inside) and splurge on some tacky and tasteless items!

Just how much of a celeb am I?

Let's just look a bit more closely at last night's "clever celebrities" lineup on Watchdog, and bear in mind that they invited me to be on it only for me to turn them down because of the Welsh Memory Championship. The team consisted of Keith Chegwin, Konnie Huq and Iain Lee. Those are all Real Celebrities! Okay, I'm sure even they would agree that they're not exactly A-list superstars, but they're all unquestionably people who the man on the street would describe as celebrities, rather than people who've been on the telly once or twice. Except possibly Iain Lee, who I had to look up on the internet, but he's got his own radio show, so he must be cool.

And they wanted me on the team too! I'm really chuffed by this. That means I must be a genuine famous person! I'm quite serious, by the way - I realise that there are people in the world who wouldn't consider it a high point in their career to be listed alongside Cheggers and her off Blue Peter, but I really do! This really is fantastic stuff, and I'm all delighted! I wish I'd blown off the memory competition and done Watchdog now...

Other things I've learned recently

Bristol Parkway train station hasn't got a platform 1. Just 2, 3 and 4. Which is groovy, because it reminds me of good old Skegness station, which has six surviving platforms numbered 2 to 7, although only one of them ever gets used. Cardiff Central makes up for this by having a platform 0.

Slightly more interestingly, I had something of a revelation while on my way down to Wales on Friday night. I just thought to myself "You know, actually, the reason I have an aptitude for memory stuff is probably that I've had a lifelong obsession with cartoons, comics and any and all forms of visual storytelling. And the basic principle of memory techniques is to use mental visual storytelling to remember things. Hey, I've never thought of it like that before!" Dai's response when I told him was, I suspect, pretty much what everybody else will be thinking too - "Well, yeah, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?" - but this is a whole new outlook for me. The fundamental interconnectedness of all things amazes me!

STOP PRESS: About five seconds after typing Dai's name there, blow me down if I didn't get an email from him, reminding me that Watchdog was on tonight, and guess who they got for the pub-quiz segment after I turned them down? Keith Chegwin! Wow, I'm cooler than Cheggers! When do I get my own series of Zoomy Plays Pop?

Cymraeg Chof Chydymgais / Welsh Memory Championship

'm hovercraft ydy llonaid chan llyswennod. I have returned from the land of bilingual traffic signs and train station announcements after a very fun weekend! Ai Ddeudais caech a 'n arddun chorff , afaelech 'i rhago? Wales is certainly an interesting place to visit, and it's funny that I've never found a reason to do it before now. Dwi na 'n bellach heintiedig. The first-ever Welsh memory championship was a big success, even attracting three Welsh competitors (as many UK competitors who turned up for the first UK championship) as well as six outsiders. 'm ddidennau chwala ag ddifyrra! And I did rather better than I'd expected to do, which is reassuring!

It's great to be officially back in the memory-competition season! Ringland Community Centre, near Newport, welcomed a posse of new and old memorisers - a Welsh Team made up of old hand James Paterson, newbie Carl Griffin and new-to-competitions-but-not-to-memorising-cards John Burrows; an English Team of me, Katie Kermode and Ameel Hoque; and a Foreigners Team of Dagfinn Hammar (Norway), Idriz Zogaj (Albanio-Sweden) and Conor Muldoon (Ireland). Plus an all-important organising and arbiting team of Dai, Dai's dad and neighbour Sian, Phil, Warren and (Ameel's girlfriend who mentioned during one conversation that nobody ever spells her name right but who for some reason I didn't ask to tell me the correct spelling, so if this is right I'll be very surprised) Dionne.

I haven't got the final results to hand, so can only rely on my memory, but we started off with a new world record in the 5-minute words, from Katie of course, with 109 (or something close to it). I think that was the only world record of the day, I certainly wasn't up to speed enough to set one, unless there was one in the names and faces right at the end (we did that discipline last, unusually, for technical reasons - the papers needed to be printed out during the competition). I got an 82 in the words, which I was entirely happy with. I moved into the lead after discipline two, 5-minute binary, with a pretty impressive 840, and I think held on to it all the way through from then on. Throughout the competition, I was some distance away from my best, but not as far off as I'd thought I would be - my brain was running slower than it does when I've been training, and I was completely burnt out by the end of the day, but I posted quite acceptable scores in nearly everything.

Katie was a fairly comfortable second place - she's the top contender for next-new-British-World-Champion at the moment, unless she forgets everything during the general excitement of having a baby in August - and Ameel and James were fighting it out all the way through for third, with Ameel ending up on top. Hooray for Team England!

Dai provided floor-space (and even bed-space for me! I'm privileged, on account of I'm the world champion, you see), food, drink and fun for everyone, and organised a cracking weekend. Book your tickets for the next one, this time next year!

Ponty-Prid

Well, tomorrow I'm attempting to find my way to Risca & Pontymister train station, deep in the wilds of Wales, somewhere. I've never actually been to Wales before, even though some people dubiously claim that the name Pridmore originates there, so it'll be weird and different and unusual. But probably also fun!

Of course, if not for the Welsh Memory Championship, I could be furthering my TV career - I had a last-minute invitation this evening to be on Watchdog! They're filming a thing on Saturday for a piece about phone directory services, funnily enough (see my post of a couple of days ago), which made me think it's fate and almost made me consider ditching the memory championship in order to do it. But then I remembered that I'm unlikely to keep getting this kind of TV invitation anyway if I don't win the World Memory Championship this year, and I'm unlikely to win the WMC if I don't go to any memory championships. So it's a good celebrity-career move not to be on telly next Monday. Be sure to tune in and see who they managed to recruit at even shorter notice!

Healthy, wealthy and wise

I had a photo shoot this afternoon with Men's Health magazine. And a surprisingly painless one, too - the guy is a proper professional photographer who was under instructions to produce 'a strong portrait of Ben Pridmore' (quite a challenge), and my experience of such things is that getting one photo tends to involve at least three or four hours of rearranging/accidentally breaking all my furnishings, setting up huge camera/lighting apparatus, taking pictures from all angles and finally using the one that makes me look fat. However, this shoot took less than an hour from start to finish, nothing got broken, set on fire or eaten, and although I don't know which shot they're eventually going to choose, I seemed to come out looking positively slender!

In fact, here's the link to the photographer's website, which I mentioned but didn't link to in a previous post. Give him a call if you're looking for a photographer for your wedding! He probably doesn't do weddings, but he might know someone who does. He made me look just as glamorous as Kate Winslet in that picture.

Planning

How many packs of cards to go for in the 10-min cards on Saturday? I could probably do six and not make a mess of it, even out of practice as I am, but I don't like to attempt something that's worse than the world record. It bugs me. This is why I'm not a serious, dedicated professional, of course - I always end up going for something I know perfectly well is beyond my capabilities when I'm out of practice, for no good reason.

I'll also probably go for a 20-something seconds pack of speed cards and get it all wrong. I can just see that happening.

Blood, blood and more blood

When giving blood today, the nurse made a mess of getting the needle into my left arm, and they ended up draining a bag of B-positive from my right arm instead. Which doesn't bother me unduly, except that I've thereby ended up with sticking plasters on each of my inner elbows. And I've got surprisingly hairy arms for a nerd, so getting plasters off my arms is always painful and unpleasant.

Still, I was cheered up completely when I came home to find that 118 247 have launched an ad campaign based on Magical Trevor (and Trev himself even makes a cameo appearance in the brilliant advert)! Could this be the end of 118 118's advert-campaign-fuelled domination of the directory enquiries market? I'm certainly going to call 247 next time I want to know a number, anyway. Everyone loves Magical Trevor...

Britains Space!

Talking with my brother today reminded me how cool these things were! A series of spaceship/spacemen/alien toys, that could be taken apart, to a certain extent, and combined in exciting ways! We had just about all of the toys shown on that page - they were cheap, really cool and on sale in Perkins newsagent in Horncastle in the early eighties. We've still, indeed, got some of them, under my bed in what remains of our toy collection. That website is quite right about the robots' soft plastic bits going sticky and unpleasant after twenty-something years, but they're still awesomely cool. Long live Britains!

Pseudo-preparation

Well, I did a tiny bit of memory training today. By which I mean a words practice, a binary practice and a names and faces practice, five minutes for each. Which isn't exactly a busy day full of training, but never mind. I'm sort of relying on the competition next week (and the accompanying chats with fellow competitors) to kick-start my interest in memory sports again. There's no denying it, it really is hard to stay motivated when you're the world champion.

I'm not going to do any practice tomorrow, either, because I'm going to spend the day watching cartoons with my brother. This kind of activity was described as 'preparation' in The Mentalists, so who am I to argue?

Hands!

That's weird. I've just found an old 50p coin on the floor of my living room - one of the reasonably-rare 1973 coins with the ring of hands instead of Britannia on the reverse, that look like this. It must have come from the carrier bag of copper coins, miscellaneous old motorbike keys and similarly-sized objects, which has been lying on the floor since I moved in (really need to find a cupboard or maybe a bank to put it in) and has recently been accidentally ripped open by my sofa and spread its contents all over the floor. But I wasn't aware there was a 50p in there. I must have saved it, years ago, when the old-style 50ps were being phased out, but I don't remember doing it.

I like surprises! I must make a point of concealing other little trinkets among my old junk, so my future self can find them! What with the old 10p I got from Roel last month, I'm indulging in pleasant memories of the halcyon days when money was quite a bit bigger than it is now. Ahh, wasn't life great then?

Wow!

Have you seen the 'Street View' feature on Google Maps? You can see right in my living room window! What if I'd been dancing naked when they took the picture? Actually, you can't really see anything past the reflection of the glass, and anyway the picture must have been taken before I moved in, because there's no curtains, but even so! This is a wonderful piece of technology, and I'm all in favour!

A letter to the council

I have a rule that I don't talk politics in this blog, but since my post today consisted of a glossy leaflet from my MP (who, despite being acquainted with Chris, isn't someone I've formed a good impression of during my time in his constituency) and a council tax bill, and since I can't think of anything else to talk about, let's poke fun at the stupidness of the booklet that comes with it.

Council tax around here ("around here" meaning I'm pointing fingers at Nottinghamshire County Council and Broxtowe Borough Council, specifically, just so everybody knows who I'm deriding. Wouldn't want to offend any neighbouring councils) is extremely high, so it's fun to see how they try to justify it. The best part is a section called "Setting the record straight", a summary of the complaints that a 'Citizens Panel' came up with, and the Council's answer to them.

The consultation exercise gave rise to a number of comments, we would like everyone to know the real situation:

"Our roads are in a poor state"

Compared to other counties, the condition of our major roads is amongst the best in the country and our minor roads are above average condition.

"You have too many people on high salaries."

75% of our non-school staff are paid less than the national average. A few years ago we reviewed our senior management structures and saved £1 million.

It goes on in this vein. I just love that kind of "if you don't like it, go and live in Russia" response! It is of course true that the roads around here are awful and the top-pay-grade council staff are vastly overpaid, and I suppose it's nice that they're not denying it, but are they really implying that because the situation is arguably worse elsewhere, they don't need to do anything about it?

Really, it's this kind of hypocrisy that someone ought to do something about. Come the revolution, brothers, they'll be the first against the wall. Meanwhile, I'll just go back to not reading these stupid council pamphlets and watching cartoons instead.

Traditionally built

I was meaning to write about the BBC adaptation of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which started a six-episode series on Sunday. I'm quite a fan of the books, but I didn't see the one-off special a while ago. I normally avoid TV and film versions of good books, because they invariably ruin them (I might still go and see Watchmen if I get a chance, though - I've heard vaguely encouraging things). But this one was actually really good! Particularly the casting - all the characters look exactly like they should (with the possible exception of Mr J L B Matekoni, who I thought would be taller and thinner), and the conversion from book to screen is done very nicely. I approve! It's nice to have something to watch on the telly of a Sunday evening for once.

Throw those curtains wide!

We're officially at the point where, even if I'm starting early or finishing late, I'm going to and from work in broad daylight. Words can't describe how great this is. Quite apart from the savings I make on batteries for my bike lights, there's nothing more depressing than spending every daylight hour in the office.

Well, it's also quite depressing to have to be in the office while it's so lovely and warm and sunny. Ideally, in non-depressive terms, it's best not to go to the office at all. Well, maybe when it rains. Really heavily.

I don't remember

It's the Welsh Memory Championship the weekend after next, and I've done no training for it. I'm probably going to do really really badly, like in France last year. But at least that competition put me more in the memory-training mood, and I went on to win some other competitions (as far as I can recall).

I should spend next weekend practicing for it, but then I should have spent this weekend doing that too, and I didn't. I'm still really struggling with the motivation.

Ode to Oadby

Yay! I won an othello tournament! I was going to leave that revelation until the end of the blog post, but I'm too excited. Admittedly it wasn't a big, big othello tournament - the Oadby regional only attracted five people and no clocks to time the games with (Geoff was meant to be bringing them, but he was ill), but even so, it was a great event. And more importantly, I won it!

Actually, I wasn't playing all that well and probably deserved to lose, but still ended up winning all my games. And that's what counts, after all. That gives me a good head-start in this year's British Grand Prix, especially over the people who didn't turn up (the BGP title, and its accompanying entry into the world championship, generally goes to the only half-decent player who goes to most or all of the five regional tournaments in a year - maybe that will be me this year!)

Or maybe I'll end up coming last in all the others. If I was a betting man, I'd go for that.

3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds

I'm wondering if I should go to the Speed Memory World Championships. This is a different thing entirely from the World Memory Championships, if you were wondering. We use the word 'memory' to mean something entirely unrelated to what these people are talking about. Memory, of course, is a concept that encompasses a whole lot of things, and to be honest, we really should change the name of the WMC to something a lot more specific - it'd stop me being constantly mistaken for someone who's an expert on teaching people how to remember where they left their car keys.

"Speed Memory" is basically a photographic memory kind of thing - looking at a small handful of numbers or other information for 2 seconds or so and trying to recall them perfectly. It's a discipline that basically is only done by one guy, Ramon Campayo, and he's the one who sets the rules and regulations for this championship - which is organised in an old-fashioned "challengers' tournament to decide who gets to compete against the reigning champion" format. It would be fun to take part and try my hand at it, because I've never done this kind of thing before. On the other hand, it's in Munich, the week before the German Memory Championship in Hamburg, and I can see myself taking a week and a half off work, touring around Germany, and ending up using all my holidays long before the end of March, like I did this time round. And working five days a week, every week for months on end is no fun at all, I tells you.

Five million channels and nothing on

It's true, you know. Sometimes I find myself flicking through the channels after watching a fairly uninspiring Man City v Aalborg game, and find not a single thing worth watching on any TV station! I should set up my own station and broadcast something good, 24 hours a day. I'll call it "The Good Programmes Channel" and it'll be quite popular.

The worst thing about holidays

Is coming back home and going to work all jet-lagged and tired. I want a big long holiday. At least a month, in some exotic foreign place! And then maybe go back to the office when I get bored with having fun...

New Mork

That title is meant to represent 'more New York', only phrased in an entertaining way. I've got a feeling it didn't really work.

Anyway, to continue my random reminiscences about my holiday, Ronnie White, who was comfortably the best of the competitors there and unquestionably deserved the win, has some interesting training techniques. Wanting to prepare for the inevitable distractions you're likely to suffer while memorising at the US championship (there's more hustle and bustle there than at any other competition I've been to), he memorised packs of cards in unusual locations, with his nephews and nieces climbing all over him and, most brilliantly of all, underwater. Seriously, he says - with plastic cards and a snorkel. There really should be a world record for underwater memorisation. There probably is, actually. There's a world record for everything nowadays.

Also at the US Championship was Tom Groves, a British memory competitor from the very early days of the sport, who now lives in America. Tom has the honour of being the first person to describe the basic principles of memory techniques to me, and being the first person (some time later) to convince me that they actually do work. I decided to give it a go, and the rest is history. So it was good to see him again, and I did my best to persuade him to come out of retirement. I'm becoming the old man of memory sports, and we need some of the real old-timers back in the game!

Outside the competition, I bought volume two of the complete Popeye comic strip, which I'd been looking for for quite a while. 1931 was a bad year for Castor Oyl - having been downgraded from funny-man to sidekick, the former star of "Thimble Theater" was finally dropped altogether from the storylines in favour of Popeye - but a great year for comics in general, and Popeye and Olive in particular. Popeye wearing a skirt and being mistaken for a particularly ugly old grandmother is a highlight.

It's not a New York reminiscence, but Steven Gerrard's incomprehensible scouse mumblings after a game always make me giggle. I'm sure he's making some valid and interesting points, but I can never make out a word he's saying.

But back to NY, and the US Championship takes place on the 19th floor of the Con Edison building. The funny thing about it is that the lifts go from floor 1 to 11 and then straight up to 19. The contents of floors 12 to 18 are cloaked in mystery. I suspect that's where they plot to take over the world.

Also, Men's Health want to do a "stylish, sophisticated photo shot" of me, to accompany the interview they did the other week. With a real photographer with his own website with pictures of Bafta winners and everything!

LN4 4XH

Now, how am I going to do this? Lots and lots to write about my New York visit, but doing it all in chronological order is so passé these days (I did that when I went to NY in 2006, and I hate to repeat myself). I'll just randomly talk about incidents, I think, over the next few blog entries, unless something else comes up.

Firstly, I should report that scary internet acquaintance number 1 and his equally scary-sounding friend turned out to be the most fun people I've ever met! Seriously, my existing friends should prepare themselves to be bumped down my favourite-people list a couple of places. I might even start referring to them as Dee and Ry, rather than continuing to describe them as scary strangers, that's how much I like them. And likewise, I had an enormous amount of fun with scary internet acquaintance number 2 (or, as I might want to call him from now on, John) - we went to the enormous FAO Schwarz toy store, as featured in the movie "Big", and played on the giant lighting-up piano! And saw sea-lions playing in Central Park, which I didn't realise was a thing you could do in New York. AND had a genuine New York hot dog from a cart and found to my surprise that it tasted quite nice!

Also, the city is teeming with squirrels! There are a whole lot of them in Central Park, who come scampering up to see you in case you're bringing them nuts, and another gang who hang out in Union Square, who I spent an enjoyable time feeding cashews early on Saturday morning.

I got recognised by one (geordie-accented) person in the city while I was seeing the sights, and two people on the plane home, one of whom was American. Obviously my fame is becoming a global phenomenon. I've just had another email from David Blaine's people, saying he wants to talk to me, too. I'm going to say no thanks, but it's very flattering.

While I'm talking about memory-related things, let's mention my pretext for a holiday there in the first place, and congratulate Ronnie White for winning the US Memory Championship! He really was on another level to the other competitors, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does in the future. He's also got a book out, if you're one of those people who collect memory books - called "The Military Memory Man" and subtitled "An Afghanistan war veteran shares his secrets of memory techniques", or something along those lines. Personally, if I'm looking for a good book on memory, the author's war record isn't the first criterion I use for making my decision, but presumably that kind of thing goes down well in Texas. Ronnie, although a very nice person, is what the Americans call "conservative".

By one of those funny coincidences that make me suspect that my subconscious has got a mind of its own, I randomly picked a book from my bookcase to read on the plane (couldn't make up my mind, so thought to myself 'I'll move my finger along the shelves, and see where it's got to when I've counted to ten'), which turned out to be "Are You Dave Gorman?" I'd completely forgotten this, but during their travels chronicled in the book, Dave and Danny stay in the Roosevelt Hotel, just like I was doing. It's a very nice place, if you ever want to go there. Right next to the awesome-looking Grand Central Station, which certainly lives up to the 'Grand' part of its name (and also the 'Station' part, although that's less of an exceptional thing to say about it. It's a little bit too much to the south of Manhattan to really justify the 'Central' name, though...)

It was in Grand Central, in fact, while I was heading back to my hotel on a break from hanging out at the US Memory Championship and being told by everyone present how great my memory was, that I heard someone say "Hi, Ben," and turned to see who it was. I was a bit surprised by the casual (and midlands-English-accented) greeting, as if from someone who'd expected to see me there, since I didn't recognise the woman at all. "It's Kelly, from Boots," she explained, and I said "Ah, yes," as if that made everything clear.

I still have no idea who she is. But the important thing is that the American memory competitors and hangers-on think my memory is wonderful, so who cares if it turns out that I work alongside people who I completely forget as soon as I'm away from the office?

Finally for today, a conversation between two American women I overheard in Times Square one night, talking about one of the many, many groups around there of shouting people informing the world about their religious beliefs:

"They were wearing, like, Jewish symbols, but they were reading from the Bible. Shouldn't it have been the, you know, the Jewish thingy?"

"The Torah?"

"No, that's not it..."

I still heart NY

Yep, New York is still a cool place to be. And just like every time I go to America, the weather has been lovely, warm and sunny all day, even though the city's still blanketed in snow! In many, many ways I'm the exact opposite of the Selfish Giant - spring follows me around everywhere I go (except in Britain)!

Just briefly dropping by internet land to see if any of the people I've arranged to meet up with over the next couple of days have sent me a last-minute message. They haven't, so you get a quick bonus blog before my net-cafe time runs out. Itinerary for the weekend: tomorrow morning, meet scary internet acquaintance I've never met in real life before, who's bringing along an equally scary-sounding friend too. Afternoon, meet a different but also scary internet acquaintance I've never met in real life before. If I'm still alive at that point, evening dinner with a memory man I have met before and who isn't scary at all (accompanied by a 'memory researcher' who probably is a bit scary). Saturday, hang out with numerous non-scary (mostly) American memory championship competitors, and hopefully a meet-up with another "internet acquaintance" who I've known for the best part of ten years now and have almost stopped being scared of - funnily enough, Crispy's in New York right now too.

Sunday morning, back home. Monday, work. I'm going to be asleep at my desk.

Miscellaneous babblings

My GOD, Excel 2007 is rubbish! Who the heck invented it? I've got it on my new laptop, and I'm going to have to download 2003, or better yet whichever version it was before that. Have you tried drawing a graph with 2007? It's the stupidest system I've ever seen!

Still, to compensate for that annoyance, I have got an old-style 10p coin, courtesy of Roel Hobo at the weekend (I swapped it for a legal-tender new-style one). It was minted in 1968, one of the first batch that were made as 10p rather than two shillings. I've added it to my collection of vaguely interesting coins!

Andre who posted a question as a comment to my blog entry of a few days ago: Yes, my memory system is the same as the one described here. And I've never used photos to keep track of my mental images. That seems to me like it would be very limiting - the images in my head have changed and developed as I've got used to them, and I don't think that would have worked so well if there'd been a real picture in my head rather than a vague idea.

New York! Getting the train down to London tomorrow evening after work, flying out early on Thursday morning. Woohoo!

And before I go, you could listen to Radio Nottingham tomorrow morning, at nine o'clockish. It probably won't be the worst thing in the world if you miss it, but they're interviewing me. Record it and play it in the evenings for the next few days, it'll make up for not having my blog to read!

A few more things that happened at the weekend

It's a bit more difficult to get to Cambridge from Beeston than it is from Derby. And even Derby was somewhat difficult - Cambridge boasts about its frequent and fast service to and from London, but tries to discourage northerners from being able to reach the city. They set the wrong tone, you know. Nonetheless, I was able to work out how to get there and wasn't delayed too much by a train breaking down in Nottingham station. However, it was while getting off that train and on to a new one that I noticed someone wearing a nice T-shirt, and idly thought to myself "Which T-shirts did I bring with me for the weekend? Oh, drat, I forgot to bring any. The only things I packed were my pyjamas and a change of pants and socks."

This still left me with at least options for the othello championship - go there dressed in the clothes I'd travelled down to Cambridge in (my work trousers and shirt, which look horribly like the kind of thing an accountant would wear and were also somewhat sweaty from cycling); go there dressed in my pyjamas, which are stylish but uncoordinated (it's the trousers from one pair and the top from another, so as to maximise the amount of remaining buttons on the ones I'm wearing); go there dressed only in my underwear and hat (it was a bit cold, unfortunately); or buy some cheap and stylish clothes from a charity shop.

I went for option four, and got myself a very groovy shirt with lots of pink on it. It got a fair few comments. As for the competition itself, I mostly played very badly, as I said yesterday. Bintsa Andriani played staggeringly well, beating everybody in the eleven rounds of swiss only to lose to David Hand on disc count in the final when they drew the last game. Epic stuff. Despite not achieving very much of note beyond losing to Kali Turner (who's 15 now, so it's entirely acceptable to lose to her), I was able to retain my 100% win record against Takuji Kashiwabara, which dates all the way back to 2003. I beat him that year and have always avoided playing him again ever since.

It's Oadby in two weeks - clearly I'm never going to have a free weekend to practice memory, but never mind. I'd love to mount a serious challenge for the BGP this year, but I don't think I'm going to without a lot more preparation. And I just don't seem to have the time to do anything these days, what with having to go to New York for a fun sightseeing and friend-hanging-out-with holiday and everything...

Ol' hotel

CityRoomz, formerly known as Sleeperz, is a really nice little hotel right next to the train station in Cambridge. I always stay there for othello tournaments, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who might want to come to an othello tournament or any of the other things that happen in Cambridge.

Anyway, fun weekend. As I predicted, I played pretty terribly, apart from a quite nice win over Phil. I did develop a new theory about othello games, though, which I'll write in more detail if I really can't think of anything else to talk about tomorrow.

Weekends

It occurs to me that I'm going to have no time to get into any kind of practice routine for memory competitions for the next couple of weeks. Othelloing in Cambridge this weekend (so no blogging for the next couple of days, Zoomettes*), then New York the following weekend-and-a-bit (so again no blogs, most likely, from Wednesday to Sunday, Zoom-fans** - try not to forget about me).

*I've decided that followers of this blog should be called "Zoomettes"
**I've subsequently decided that "Zoomettes" sounds a bit silly and decided to phase it out of use

I really really need to do some long-discipline training, too. It's been a very, very long time, and I know I'm going to be rubbish when I finally sit down to do it. Almost as bad as I'm going to be at othello this weekend! I haven't played that, or thought about it, or found my clock, or anything for ages and ages.

DVD people are stupid

I can just about understand them releasing Thundercats DVDs with the episodes all in the wrong order - there are lots of episodes, there's rarely any direct continuity from one episode to the next, and it is just a 1980s cartoon that very few people are obsessive about to the extent that I am. But there's no excuse at all for the people who made the DVD of Police Squad and got the sequence of episodes wrong. There's only six of them, for crying out loud, and the end of each episode explicitly lists all the previous ones, and they still couldn't get it right!

I repeat, DVD people are stupid. Bring back videos.

Go team!

I do like watching Champions League football. I've turned into a bit of a Man Utd fan these last few years, especially in Europe, in an attempt to discourage Chelsea from winning things. It's working, too. Perhaps if I devoted myself more determinedly to supporting Boston Utd, maybe they'd win something one of these days...

A little bit of memory

One thing people often say to me when I'm explaining my system for turning three-digit numbers into images is "Surely it makes more sense to have 999 be a policeman [or 112 or 911 or whatever the number for the emergency services is in the asker's country] and so on?" I know Dominic does recommend diverging from his system if the number itself suggests an image to you, but I disapprove.

The 'Ben system' and any other system for turning numbers into words and thus images is best compared to learning another language. If you've got it working properly in your head, you don't see the numbers as such, you read '999' as 'b-oh-b' and think of Bobo (Mr Burns's teddy bear) or whatever your favourite word starting with that sound is (I recommend the cartoon series Bobobobs, or the German children's book series 'Bobo Siebenschläfer', but I'm just weird like that). Reading it as a number in some cases and a word in others is just confusing.

Look at it this way - if you speak French and read the word 'pain' in a French text, you don't automatically think 'ouch', because you're mentally pronouncing it differently and taking it in context. That's how it works with reading a story in a 2000-digit number too.

Coronation Stone

I hadn't been to Kingston for a relatively young donkey's years, and it's funny how much the place has changed. First glance on emerging from the train station suggests that it hasn't been a change for the better - Books, Bits & Bobs, the cool little shop that sold comics, costumes and party gimmicks is standing derelict and waiting to be demolished along with that whole block of buildings, but judging by the snazzy new cinema just over the road, it's going to be replaced by something shiny and modern.

And most of the city centre has gone all 21st-century too. I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's something smoother and shinier about shop-fronts these days. A few little redecorations and a place becomes unrecognisable. And with the Bentalls centre I had the usual fun of visiting a place from one of my memory journeys and realising how very different it looks in real life - my journeys tend to stylise the layout of a place like that, shrinking the parts in between locations and subtly changing the positions of significant places. Doesn't help that they've turned the fountain into some kind of weird plant-display, either.

Still, at least the combined ice-cream-and-burgers van is still in the same place it's always been, just outside Woolworth's, despite the shop itself being all closed down and empty.

What a beautiful day!

Oooh, it's been like summer! I did get a nice short summery haircut, and went down to London (and also Kingston on Thames) to see the sights and bask in the comparative warmth and sunshine, and I've only just got back in. Now to rest my weary feet and watch Match Of The Day for the highlights of the few games whose result I didn't overhear in other people's conversations or see on randomly-placed TV screens over the course of the day. Why can't people maintain football-related silence on Saturdays for the benefit of people who like to watch MOTD in the evenings?

Hair piece

I need a haircut. My remaining hairs don't grow all that fast, but they've already got to the length where it's starting to look silly, and this weekend's the last chance to get it done for weeks - Cambridge othelloing next weekend and New Yorking the week after. However, I was thinking of going to London tomorrow, and I distrust southern hairdressers. I'm almost certain that they all charge you a hundred pounds and give you a perm whether you want one or not.

I'll just have to find a barber around here that opens reasonably early in the morning, get my hair cut and then get the train down south. I could always not go to London, since my only reason for going is that I quite feel like it and I haven't been there for ages, but I believe in doing what your heart tells you to do, and then rambling on about some insignificant technicality on your blog the night before.

I suppose I could cut my own hair. I did that once, years ago, and nobody noticed. Or shave it all off like a cool person.

Fingerbobs

I've trimmed the fingernails on my left hand and not the right, out of an understanding that that's what ukulele players do. Well, 'trimmed' makes it sound like I've given myself a caring manicure. I bite my nails off, rather than using nail-clippers or scissors or suchlike. Anyway, I'm still having fun with the ukulele, and I wanted appropriate fingernails.

However, it's got me thinking about whether it will get in the way of the other things I do with my fingers. What's the optimum length for othello-disc-flipping fingernails, for example? I flip with my right hand and I think that you need medium-length nails for perfect flippery - no nails at all and it's hard to pick up the disc, big long nails and it's hard to hold on to it. This is probably why very few othello players have long fingernails. That or the fact that 99% of othello players are men.

As for memorising, I think, although I haven't really tested out the theory, that long or short fingernails shouldn't make a difference with the way I look through packs of cards now. Very long nails might get in the way, but I'm not planning to grow them to excessive lengths.

And what if I learn to make Fingermouse-style finger-puppets? That's on my list of things to do, and I think long nails would definitely get in the way there. It's a complicated business, being a polymath. The kind of polymath who's not particularly good at anything, of course.

In other, less finger-related news, Prince Charles is coming to my workplace tomorrow. Just a flying visit - according to his website he's also got other appointments in Nottingham and Mansfield in the course of the day, and I doubt he'll have the time in his schedule to find my desk and tell me he's a big fan of my TV appearances. In fact, he's scheduled to be in my building for ten minutes, according to the announcement on the company intranet, in which time he'll come in the main reception, be shown the 'heritage area' and leave by the exit on the far end of the big head office. He'll have to run. And the tour of the company heritage will have to be limited to one of the less overweight directors gasping "That's a bust of Jesse Boot! Right, come on, let's go!" as they run along after him.

Call me a socialist radical if you like, but I don't really see the point of Royal Visits.

Sluggish brain

I have to confess, it's a very, very long time since I did any serious memory-training. Tonight I did something that is part of my regular practice routine when I'm practicing regularly, but which I don't think I've done at all since the WMC last October - memorised 1500 binary digits in as quick a time as possible. When my brain's up to speed, I can do it in a bit under 8 minutes with a passable level of accuracy in the recall (four or five lines out of the fifty with mistakes, that kind of area). Tonight it took me 10:42.88.

This is horrible, but it's not unexpected. I know I'll snap back into my usual form when I've done it a couple more times, but when I haven't practiced for a while, my thought processes just slow down - it's not that I find it more difficult to remember what the image for 1110010111 is or that I struggle to make a mental picture out of it, it's just that my mind wanders and starts going off on tangents, and I have to drag myself back down to the mental story I'm supposed to be telling. It's nice to be confident that my times are going to increase by leaps and bounds the next few times I try this exercise, but it's frustrating that I'll have to work hard to get back to the level I was at last year before I can keep going and improve my personal best.

But it's nearly the start of the memory season! New York and Cardiff will put me back in the mood, I'm sure, and then I'll be back into training nearly nightly, exchanging memory-technique ideas with other memorisers with much more enthusiasm than I am at the moment, catching up on the latest buzz from the world of competitions, finding out what rule-changes Gunther has been lobbying for all winter and objecting to them, all the joys of memory!

It really is a LOT harder to motivate myself while I'm the world champion, but I'm pleased to report I'm much more in the zone right now, out of practice though I am, than I was back in 2005. Who knows, if I keep it up I might stand half a chance this year...

Correspondence course

I was going to write a blog tonight about feeling proud of myself for getting up-to-date with my emails, but then I remembered one from a few days ago that I hadn't replied to, went back to my inbox to respond to it and found a whole virtual pile of other messages that I need to get back to as well. It's not like I'm even a big email-exchanger, it's just that sometimes I seem to get swamped by the things! So if you're waiting for an email from me still, I assure you it's nothing personal.

New York!

I've got a really quite big apple in my fridge right now, which just serves to remind me how much I'm looking forward to my trip to New York in a couple of weeks. It's ages since I had some time off work - what with starting there in the middle of July I only had 17½ days' holiday, and I used up most of those with various memory championships (and a certain amount of staying at home rather than going to the Memoriad because I was too worn out by the WMC), so I've been working five days a week, every week, for much too long now.

Also, I like long plane journeys every now and then. There's usually cartoons, films and video games, and what more could anyone want? And then there's all the fun people I'm arranging to hang out with when I actually get to the city! Gee, it's gonna be swell!

One of those "sorry, it's late at night and I can't think of anything to blog about" posts

Sorry, it's late at night and I can't think of anything to blog about

This is where I get it from

Grandma, reminiscing about her days working in the payroll department of British Jeffrey Diamond 65 years ago: "Old Sammy Wainwright, 7505 his number was..." Seriously, her recall of every detail of her life is uncanny, and the way she tells it is captivating. I'm going to have to get myself a video camera and capture some of her stories on film.

The occasion for the four-hour non-stop recounting of Grandma's life story I enjoyed today was of course those 1911 census returns featuring her parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts. It's great to hear the stories of the people behind that snapshot of households on April 2nd 1911 - how Grandma's Uncle Ronald did well for himself (or at any rate had a good job and bought his own house, which was good work in the Depression), while Uncle Colin spent some time in the nick (but we don't talk about that). Uncle Jack, four years old in 1911, grew up to be quaite refained and wore a bowler hat, but the best part was that mystery 'boarder' I mentioned in my post here.

It turns out that nine-month-old Ethel Gough, living in my great-great-grandparents' household, was the result of an indiscretion between my great-great-granddad and another woman, and ended up coming to live with him rather than her unmarried mother, and having the subject of her parentage resolutely ignored by the family from that moment on. Not that Grandma found out about this until long after the fact, of course - she recalled "I came home one day and told my mam 'Auntie Ethel looks just like me!'... And she hit me."

I can just imagine the difficult decision process of how to record little Ethel's "relationship to head of family" on the census form. The instructions say to 'State whether "Head," or "Wife," "Son," "Daughter," or other Relative, "Visitor," "Boarder," or "Servant."' and they went for "Boarder" in the end.

All shame and scandal in the family is long gone and forgotten now, of course. It's the kind of thing that makes you think - all these names on the census were real people at one point, before they became names on a page and half-remembered stories. Poor great-great-granddad on the Batty branch of the family died in a coal-mine accident only a few years after filling in his census form. There need to be more books, documentaries, websites, whatevers about the ordinary people of history. I should make one...

Mensa - a table; Mensa - O table

The Mensa people want me to do my memory thing at their Annual Gathering in October, as a warmup act for the Brain of Mensa finals. I'm not sure whether or not to take them up on the offer - on the one hand, it's always great when people want me to perform in front of an audience (it still doesn't happen all that much), but on the other hand Mensa members are the worst possible audience for any kind of brain-related showing-off. They'll just respond with "Hmm, well, I could have done that just as well, of course" or "Hmm, well, it's an amusing trick, but it's not real intelligence, is it?"

Having been a member myself for many years, I know what a bunch of snobs Mensans can be. If I really want to stroke my ego, I should go to a stupid-people convention. They'll genuinely believe that I'm really, really clever and not suggest that I might be an entirely average person who can do a party trick with cards. On the other hand, I'll get a free meal out of Mensa and maybe even some intelligent conversation. So I'll probably do it. I'm bad at saying no to people, after all.

Incidentally, I'm seeing a lot of people writing it as "MENSA" just lately. It's not an acronym, people. It's the Latin word for "table", indicating a round-table kind of society, and a play on words with "mens", meaning "mind".

Happy Charles Darwin/Abraham Lincoln day!

It's their joint 200th birthday today, you know. And while some might say Darwin is better than Lincoln because he appears on the £10 note, worth roughly three times as much as Lincoln's puny $5 bill, others might argue that Lincoln is better because he's probably going to be on those unimaginative Americans' money forever, while Darwin's about due to be replaced by some other notable dead person.

Anyway, this gives me an idea. I could secure my legacy as a famous person forever by simply sharing my birthdate with someone more famous! That way, whenever his birthday is celebrated with a BBC2 evening of programmes, there'll always be a passing mention of "funnily enough, world memory champion Ben Pridmore was born on the very same day!" That's the only reason anyone's ever heard of John Major, you know - Eric Idle tribute programmes.

Trouble is, nobody who shares my birthday has yet achieved any real degree of fame. The best that 14/10/76 currently has to offer is Henry Mateo, Dominican minor-league baseball player whose wikipedia article is even more skimpy than mine and can't even decide whether he's a shortstop or a second-baseman. I suppose it's still possible he could become the next Joe DiMaggio, but I think we should pin our hopes on some currently obscure 32-year-old suddenly achieving superstardom. Come on, all you Zoomy-birthday people out there, get famous! And quick!

You might not think of me as a shining example of male health...

... But nonetheless, I've just been interviewed for Men's Health magazine. It'll be on the shelves in April or May if you want to check it out - part of an article about "superhumans". I wish people would stop calling me that. Or, even better, I wish people would find some way to give me superhuman powers (faster than a speeding bullet, that kind of thing) so as to justify the title.

I don't make people smart

I did wonder how they'd adapt my repeated assertions that IQ tests are basically all entirely worthless, that no sensible person cares about them in the slightest, that the only, and very easy, way to improve your score is to practice the handful of very specific kinds of questions they ask, and that memorising cards isn't going to do anything for your intelligence, but it seems they decided to chop it all out. Likewise, my scoffing at the twaddle that Michael's other interviewees came out with. Still, I came across quite well, I thought. Except that people are going to get the impression that I'm one of those people who believe it's important to improve your IQ, which I'd like to take this opportunity to deny absolutely.

Shame they didn't include the moment when I was taken by surprise by Michael's belief that he himself isn't a nerd, because it was very funny, and he does come across in his narration as if he still thinks of himself as a 'normal' person compared to the 'brainy' types he was trying to emulate.

It's another one to add to the list of TV appearances, I suppose, and it's always nice to get a bit of coverage of the world championships, but I'm hoping this one doesn't get repeated as incessantly as Superhuman Genius...

Next week, "Make Me Live Longer"? And judging by the previews on the internet, no Aubrey? What kind of life-extension documentary doesn't feature Aubrey?

I owe you nothing

Ooh-woh, nothing at all. Let me explain. Back in, ooh, June 1996 it must have been, I took out a loan of a few hundred pounds, I forget exactly how much, in order to buy a little motorbike. Impressed by how easy it is to have people give you money in return for a promise to pay it back eventually, I subsequently ended up borrowing more money in order to move into a rented room of my own even though I wasn't earning nearly enough money on my trainee-accountant pittance to afford it. After all, the only other alternative was to keep living with my dad, who also couldn't afford it, and I thought it'd be preferable to bankrupt myself rather than him. And besides, he always refused to put the heating on.

Anyway, I went on living beyond my means for a fair few years, running up further little debts here and there (a succession of little motorbikes that I kept crashing into cars or having stolen, among other things), confident that I'd eventually be rich and successful and anyway it's not real money if it's a loan, even to the extent of giving up my job in November 2002 and deciding to spend some time doing my own thing and seeing just how far my credit cards could take me before I had to go back to the working world again. Surprisingly far, considering by this time I was adding regular memory-competition trips to places like Germany and Malaysia to my expenditure.

And so it came about that in November 2003, having left my six-month temporary accounting job in Skegness, and returned from Kuala Lumpur with a third-place World Memory Championship trophy (rather stylish, made of pewter) and an alarmingly empty bank account, I found a job in Derby and took out one big loan to consolidate all those other debts, finance the relocation and give me a bit of extra spending money to have fun with. £16,000, it came to, which surprised me a little. But hey, over five years it didn't amount to all that much, and I was earning semi-decent money by this point, after all. And at some point in the distant future, it would all be paid off and I'd feel comparatively rich!

And now, woohoo, that day is finally here, and I've just made my 60th monthly payment. I am now, for the first time in living memory, entirely free of debt! No loan, no credit card balances, no nothing! Now I can be scornful of the indebted masses and tell them if they can't handle their finances properly it's their own stupid faults and they shouldn't expect the government to bail them out with us hard-working taxpayers' cash, by cracky. I'll write a letter to the Daily Mail!

No, actually, I'll tell you what'll be even more fun than that - I'll work out what I'm going to do with my extra £350 a month that I'm not giving back to the Royal Bank of Scotland. It's like getting a credit-crunch-busting pay rise!

Sorry, haven't had the time or the non-laziness to sort out pictures of Ham and Ex to illustrate my planned ramblings about them, so they'll have to wait till Wednesday (tomorrow and Tuesday I already know what I'm going to blog about - I sometimes worry that my life is getting planned out too far in advance).

Instead, let's talk about fizzy drinks. I went through quite a long period of drinking water at home, but lately I've got back into the habit of coke as my regular liquid intake. I'm thinking I should probably stop, but on the other hand I don't want to. Could someone please fabricate some scientific research to prove that the stuff is actually good for you?

And no, I'm not going to switch to diet coke. It tastes like wee.

More family ties

A sequel to this post and this one. I realise that census records of my ancestors aren't terribly interesting to anybody outside my immediate family, but as I keep saying, it's my blog, not yours, and I can write about whatever I want. So nyah. And maybe somebody else out there will think it's cool too, who knows? Besides, tonight's subject matter was either this or Ham and Ex, the loveable cartoon puppies from mid-1930s Looney Tunes, so I'm not going for mass appeal here either way.

So, fans of Grandma's star turn on "The Mentalists" can now see the 1911 census returns featuring her parents! My family tree is very lopsided - thanks to the huge generation gaps in the Pridmore family, my great-grandparents on that side were actually a fair few years older than my great-great-grandparents on the Bancroft branch. Here's great-grandma:

Ada Eliza Batty, a 17-year-old worsted spinner from Wakefield. It is cool to see all these distant relatives - if only I had more time on my hands, I'd try to track down the descendants of all those great-great-uncles-and-aunts in my extensive family tree. Of course, this research would be a bit more exciting if there was a single person anywhere in my family history who wasn't from a working-class Yorkshire family, but at least I make everybody else's ancestors look fascinating by comparison...

Anyway, here's great-granddad:



Herbert William Bancroft, 14-year-old apprentice bricklayer. Lots of bricklayers in my family. And hey, check it out, no infant mortality among the Bancrofts! Five children and they're all still alive in 1911! And they've even apparently got a 9-month-old 'boarder', Ethel Gough. I have no idea what that was about - I'll ask Grandma when I go to see her next weekend.

As a footnote, having had a telling-off when I phoned her today, here's a public apology for not calling or visiting Grandma nearly enough, considering I only live just down the road and all. I really am terribly sorry.

Tomorrow, Ham and Ex, the loveable puppies from mid-1930s Looney Tunes.