That's how we use an apostrophe

There's a birthday card on sale in Smith's with the words "Life's to short" on the front (and "...to date ugly men" on the inside). I mean, seriously. What is it with young people* these days? Don't they teach them anything in the schools now that my dad's no longer with us**? He'd be turning in his grave if he hadn't been cremated. Yes, you might say "does it really matter if people don't know the difference between 'to' and 'too'?" You might add "it's perfectly obvious to anyone who reads it what the card means to say, so misspelt or not, the card is doing its job." You might go on to say that in a couple of decades' time, "to" (or even "2") might well be the dictionary-approved spelling of the word we pedants now write as "too". You might question my own grammar and punctuation in the preceding paragraph. And you'd be perfectly correct to make all these points, and within your rights to call me a weirdo for objecting at such length, but I don't care. I hate this kind of thing. With a passion. I'm going to find out who made this horrible birthday card, go round to their house and shout at them.

In less insane news, my mum sent me an easter egg in the post, and for some reason Thorntons decided to package it in a cardboard box that could have fitted a dozen easter eggs of the same size inside it. Seriously, it's the size of a house. I might live in this cardboard box if I ever feel I need a second home in the country. I found this box sitting outside the door to my flat today (someone else in the building must have signed for it) and thought some mystery admirer had sent me a new television set or vacuum cleaner.

*I'm assuming, with no evidence to back me up on this, that everybody involved in the production of this card is younger than me.

**And now I'm apparently assuming that everyone involved in the production of this card is so young that they went to primary school within the last year.

I guess I'm just lazy

This afternoon I got as far as laying out 33 packs of cards on my desk with the intention of doing an hour cards practice, then decided I wasn't really in the mood. So I left them out so I could do it tomorrow instead. A bit later on, after coming back in from the shops, I found that it was unbearably hot in my living room. Possibly, with hindsight, it was a bad idea to turn the heating on on the hottest day of the year so far. But if I opened the window, the wind would blow the cards on the desk all over the floor! I was faced with the choice of either leaving the window closed and the room like an oven (an oven at a temperature of about 30 degrees at the very most, but an oven nonetheless) or putting rubber bands back around each of my 33 packs of cards to keep them together. And I found the latter to be a quite unacceptable use of my time, so spent half an hour in stifling heat before finally giving in. And now I'll have to take all the rubber bands off again tomorrow!

That's if I do the cards tomorrow. Actually, I was planning to devote most of the day to promoting the Cambridge Memory Championship - dig the groovy new website, courtesy of James Kemp and James Ponder! One month to go, start practicing now!

The horrors of commercialism

Blogger tried to persuade me last night to put Google ads on this site. I would, but I gather they don't actually pay you anything until you've amassed a huge number of clicks' worth of money, and I doubt whether very many of my readers would be at all interested in adverts for memory foam mattresses (which is pretty much exclusively the ads you get on memory-related sites). Not that I've got anything against memory foam mattresses. I'd buy one myself if they weren't rubbish.

Ooh! I'm watching Heroes and there's a woman on it whose superpower is a super-memory! Seriously, everyone nowadays is saving the world by remembering long numbers! That's my new job, I've decided.

Land speed record

Ramón Campayo has invited me to the first World Speed Memory Championships, in Spain, on April 28th and 29th. Rather short notice, but since that (I'm almost positive now) is the one weekend in the foreseeable when I'm not doing anything, I might consider it.

"Speed memory" - memorising the maximum possible number of digits or whatever in one second, or three seconds, or half a second or so on - is not really my thing. In fact, it's not really anyone's thing except Ramón's, he's the only person who does it, as a rule. So it might be fun to do something a bit different here. I don't have much spare time to practice what with Cambridge and that loony idea of getting my book finished in the next month, but then the thing about speed memory is that it involves a lot more luck and instinct than 'real' memory competitions - there's no need for fancy techniques and things, it's just a matter of getting your brain used to going quickly.

On the other hand, it means going to Spain, and hanging out with a lot of other people who will presumably be mostly Spanish and complete strangers. As I might have mentioned before, I don't really like going places where I don't speak the language, and I certainly don't have time in the next four weeks to learn Spanish. I can't even watch Dora the Explorer, because I haven't got Nick Jr and it's only on ITV once a week. Also, it's a terrible, terrible cartoon.

It's the holidays!

Or at least it would be if I was a teacher or a schoolboy. It's deeply unfair that I don't get some kind of paid holiday, in fact. I mean, technically, I could go on holiday or just stop doing even the tiny bit of "work" I'm doing at the moment, but it's not the same unless there's some kind of official sanction for me not working.

Anyway, while we're talking about Easter, remember that Tale of the Bunny Picnic video I bid on on eBay even though it was £5? It ended up going for £23! I mean, I didn't really want it all that much, but seeing several other people bid insane amounts of money for it tweaks my competitive impulses. There's another copy on eBay now that I'm bidding on, and I can see me squandering my whole life savings on it.

Brown ale and black pudding

So, last night was Vicky's birthday party. We went for a meal at Soul, a place I've never been before because I had the vague idea that it was all organic food and things, so I avoided it on principle. It possibly is organic food and things, but if it is it doesn't rub it in customers' faces. Now I'm prejudiced against it mainly because it's posh and expensive. On the other hand, the food, though inexcusably posh, was actually very nice. Well, except for the chicken liver parfait which seemed to be the most edible starter on the menu. That wasn't terribly nice. But the main course I had, roast duck with black pudding, some fancy kind of potato with a creamy spinach concoction on top and a blackberry jus, was absolutely delicious. And considering it was posh, which normally means tiny portions on big plates, it was very filling. Big plates, but quite large portions, piled up vertically so it looked like small portions. I approve of this kind of thing. And then rhubarb creme brulee with rhubarb ripple ice cream for pudding, which was really scrummy too. The company was good too - nobody I knew, but a nice bunch of people all round.

Afterwards we went to the beer festival, where the highlight was the live music, provided by a German oompah band. The leader and tuba player, surreally enough, looked exactly like Ulrich Voigt (a comment that will be useful only to the very select group of my readers who not only know what Ulrich looks like but can imagine him dressed in lederhosen and a German army helmet, playing an Abba medley on a tuba). Their music was absolutely brilliant, and everybody got very much into the spirit of it, aided by the wide range of strangely-named beers on offer. They also played happy birthday to Vicky.

Onto other business, I've been "tagged" by a "meme", or by Jemfy, I'm not sure exactly how you phrase these things. So even though I don't do things like this (they make me feel like I'm trying to be a trendy young person), I'll do this one because the answer to it provokes a sort of funny story:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next three sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
6. Tag five other people to do the same.

"Call Lionel, over at the Times, and tell him his press privileges have been revoked. I didn't appreciate his little comment about my earrings. Questions?"

Not a particularly exciting three sentences, sadly - if we'd gone a few sentences further you could have read "What the--?" "Leave the lights off." "Gasp!", which gives a bit more of a clue to what the book is - only in comics do people say "gasp". It's from "Blood and Water", the fourth compilation volume of "Noble Causes", the comic by Jay Faerber. It doesn't have page numbers, so I hope you appreciate the effort it took to count 23 pages into it (when I run out of fingers and toes I tend to run into difficulty).

Jay Faerber is an American comic writer who I have a bit of a complex about. Back in the distant dark ages when I first bought a computer and started discovering the wonders the internet had to offer, I commented on a newsgroup about the upcoming second volume of New Warriors. I was a huge fan of the original New Warriors series until it was cancelled, and I was decidedly unimpressed by the previews of the sequel. I said as much on the newsgroup, and observed that Marvel Comics obviously didn't care about the New Warriors and their small but loyal fanbase, since although they had finally decided to relaunch the series, they'd done so with very little publicity, downright bad artwork, a change in tone to more light-hearted adventure with few of the original characters, and a second-rate writer in Jay Faerber. I was horrified to find that Jay Faerber himself replied to my comments, taking exception to the description. This was the first time I realised that talking about comics on an internet newsgroup was a bit more public than talking with friends in my house. It really hadn't occurred to me that I could bad-mouth someone on the internet and the person in question might actually hear about it.

So ever since then, not only have I been a little more careful to keep my opinion of comic book writers I dislike to myself, but I've gone to great lengths to pretend that I really, really like Jay Faerber's writing, so as to make up for my faux pas. This has been quite difficult at times - New Warriors volume 2 really wasn't very good, and was cancelled after ten issues. Volume 3, by someone else, was much, much worse, so I have high hopes for the upcoming volume 4. Anyway, after years of generally not reading anything by Faerber so I didn't have to say it was brilliant, I just recently decided to try "Noble Causes", his series about a family of superheroes. Flicking through the first collected volume in the shop, I was hooked. By the time I'd bought and read the first two volumes, I was positively ecstatic. Not only is Noble Causes quite genuinely and honestly great, it's by Jay Faerber! I really like something by Jay Faerber! I felt like I'd laid some ghosts to rest and could praise him to the skies without knowing that I was just doing it because I was rude about him eight years ago.

So just last week I bought volumes three and four, and... they're not as good. Volume 4 particularly so. I was quite disappointed, in fact. The story shifts towards more traditional superhero adventures and it's rather more insubstantial and less intelligent than the first two volumes. The artist of "Blood and Water", Fran Bueno, is a step down in quality from his predecessors. All in all, I feel let down after that brief burst of euphoria. And the fact that I haven't yet put the book away, coupled with this "tagging" thing, just brings all these conflicting emotions to the surface.

Well, enough. From now on, I resolve to not only buy more Jay Faerber stuff, in the expectation that I really will like some of it, I won't go out of my way to pretend I like the rest of it when I don't. Honesty is the best policy. I'm sure he's long forgotten the whole second-rate-writer episode anyway, so perhaps I should too.

Ooh, unless he reads this....

No time, no inspiration

Don't you hate it when you're going out to a beer festival and think it's probably best to update your blog beforehand because you're not intending to be in a fit state to type when you get back, but find that you have to leave pretty much immediately so as not to be unfashionably late and can't think of anything to write about?

Actually, I don't hate it as such, and if you do you really need to get your priorities right. I mean, it's only a blog, for crying out loud! What's wrong with you?

Existentialism

Having forgotten what he did for a living, Cecil was participating in an archaeological dig in Middlesbrough when he uncovered the fabled Amulet of Dennis, which confers on its owner the power to become ruler of the world. He phoned Phillip to tell him the news, before getting back to work.

Phillip immediately burst into Samantha's bedroom, kicking the door down and dynamiting the remains in his haste to get inside. "Cecil's only gone and found the Amulet of Dennis," he lamented, "and he's going to end up ruling the world unless we stop him right away."

"But what can we do?" asked Samantha from the dining room where she had been sitting having lunch with Phillip before he ran upstairs to talk to her.

"We have to stop him using the Amulet," explained Phillip. "Luckily, he won't be able to do anything with it until he knocks off work for the night. It seems he's under the impression he's an archaeologist today. That gives us four hours to find him and do him in."

"But surely," protested Samantha, thinking that this whole endeavour sounded too much like hard work, "if the amulet gives him so much power, we won't be able to do anything?"

"No, no," explained Phillip, "it confers on its owner the power to rule the world. By which I mean that what you do is present it to the Prime Minister and he turns over control of the country to you. It doesn't give you super-powers or anything. And it's an Amulet, not an amulet."

"It's not possible to aurally distinguish between a word spelt with an upper-case letter and one spelt with a lower-case letter, so get off my back," commanded Samantha. "So what are we going to do?"

"Well," explained Phillip, "Cecil neglected to tell me where in the world he is at the moment, so I'm going to get Richard to drive me randomly around the country in the hope that we bump into him. I need you to go to London, seduce the Prime Minister and persuade him to go and hide down a hole in Czechoslovakia."

"You mean the Czech Republic," said Samantha, "and what if the Prime Minister is a woman, a homosexual man or a member of a different species such as dog or wolf?"

"We'll have to take that risk," said Phillip firmly. "I know there's no way of knowing who or what the Prime Minister is until you get to 10 Downing Street and meet him, but I think it's statistically likely that he'll be seductible by an attractive woman. And don't bother pointing out that you're not the slightest bit attractive and in fact look less like a woman than I do, beggars can't be choosers and you'll have to do."

Samantha, who hadn't been intending to say anything of the sort and actually considered herself to be quite good looking, shrugged consent, and Phillip stormed determinedly out of the door and down the street to Richard's house. Samantha got to work on her part of the plan immediately, going into the kitchen and putting the oven on. "I'm going to need energy for the trip to London," she reasoned, "and although I just finished a large lunch five minutes ago, I'd better cook some Findus crispy pancakes, just in case..."

Meanwhile, Cecil had left work early, having got permission from his bemused "boss", who of course had no idea who Cecil was. However, on his way down to London, the train was suddenly derailed by a sinister cloaked figure, who abducted Cecil and dragged him up to the top of a perilous mountain in the vicinity of Stevenage. "And now, Cecil," the mysterious stranger intoned, "prepare to meet your nemesis!"

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Cecil. "Uncle Graham!"

"That's right," intoned the stranger, throwing off its cloak. "It is I, your third cousin Brenda, returned to destroy you once and for all as I swore to do seventeen years ago!"

"But you said you'd leave it twenty years before destroying me," whined Cecil.

"I meant seventeen," snapped Brenda ill-temperedly. "It was a slip of the tongue."

"I'm sorry, you did say twenty. I'm free for another three years and there's nothing you can do about it. Now bog off. See you at cousin Steve's wedding next month."

Brenda wandered off, kicking small stones and sheep, and Cecil climbed back down the mountain and headed off towards London again.

Meanwhile, Richard's car was not fifty miles away from Cecil's position and heading in roughly the right direction. "We're making good time," observed Phillip, quite loudly so as to be heard from the roofrack, to which he was fastened with chains (Richard's car had no seatbelts).

"Yep, we're sure to find Cecil before long," said Richard happily. "Oh, blast," he suddenly added, bringing the car to a screeching halt in the middle lane of the M1.

"What's the problem?" Phillip asked.

"I've just realised that an isoscles triangle exhibits reflectional symmetry along one axis, regardless of the size of its internal angles," said Richard, in tones of deep despair.

"Is that such a problem?" Phillip inquired, but Richard was lost in silent contemplation, occasionally muttering to himself that he had wasted his entire adult life, and for what? Phillip freed himself from the roofrack and ran for the safety of the hard shoulder, but was hit by a speeding unicycle-steamroller and sent flying.

By a stroke of luck, he landed on Cecil, who was in the process of hitching a lift down to London. Phillip was rather annoyed to see that the driver who had stopped to give him a ride was in fact Samantha.

"What in the name of Dennis are you doing?" he demanded of her.

"I'm giving Cecil a lift," said Samantha. "Turns out we're both going to see the Prime Minister. Small world, eh?"

"Words fail me," said Phillip, inaccurately, and went on to explain at length what he had told her at lunchtime.

"Oh, that's okay," said Cecil. "I accidentally buried the Amulet of Dennis again five minutes after I phoned you, and then couldn't find it. I was just going to see the Prime Minister to ask him whether I'm actually an archaeologist. I just have a feeling that I might not be."

Torvill and Zoom

I think we should all give a nice round of applause to Boris Konrad for producing the above image. You know, sometimes I worry about the sanity of my friends, but then they go and prove that I've got nothing to worry about by producing a very impressive composite photo of my head on Christopher Dean's body, without me even asking them to.

Back in the real world, have you seen "Desperados"? It's a rather brilliant drama series on children's BBC, about a wheelchair basketball team. I've seen the last three episodes of the series over the last couple of days, and I was enthralled. I've sometimes considered taking up some kind of wheelchair sports - I can't do the non-wheelchair kind on account of my dodgy knees, but the more I get towards middle aged fat-and-laziness, the more I feel like some kind of regular, competitive exercise would be a good thing for me. Although I always find memory competitions physically exhausting, so maybe the solution is just to have more of those in a year...

Figure skating

Yes, figure skating. You and I know that figure skating is the stupidest kind of so-called sport in history, consisting just of people faffing around on ice skates and looking stupid, and that I'm not at all saying that because I'm jealous of people who can skate, look good in sparkly spandex and dance acrobatically on ice. Anyway, I think the rules of figure skating competitions provide an interesting analogy to memory competitions (a real sport, because I'm good at it).

Apparently, in the olden days, 60% of the scores in major figure skating championships came from what they called 'compulsory figures' - skating in such a way as to carve circles, figures of eight and so on into the ice. Judges would examine the figures in afterwards and mark them according to how perfectly circular and evenly-shaped they were. Which was all well and good, but then people outside the figure-skating bubble noticed that spectators weren't at all interested in that bit, which took hours and was mind-numbingly boring, but loved the free skating part. So when it became big and televised, the free skating gradually got a higher proportion of the marks, until the compulsory figures were dropped altogether.

So the world ended up with was a sport that looks pretty but has lost most of the claim it used to have to being based on any kind of technical skill, as opposed to looking pretty and waving your arms in time to the music.

And this is a pretty similar kind of situation to the world of 'memory sports' - there are those who want to introduce shorter events, and more telegenic championships like the US, and those who feel that the hour-long marathon number-memorising sessions are the real test of memory, as well as a big part of what makes memory competitions special. There are arguments for and against that I deeply sympathise with, but when it comes down to it, I really don't want to turn into Torvill and Dean. However handsome and athletic and well-dressed as Christopher Dean might be. Not the slightest bit of jealousy here.

Hectic life

It occurred to me today that it's a good job I'm not gainfully employed, or I'd never get any extracurricular memory-related stuff done. Granted, I'm not getting much of it done as it is, but it would be even worse if I had a real job, because it struck me that I'm fully booked for every weekend for the next seven weeks. What worries me particularly is that having established that to be the case, I now find that I can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing on April 28th. Oh well, I'm sure it can't be anything life-threatening. I just checked to see if it's another othello regional, weirdly scheduled for the week prior to Cambridge, only to find out that it's not, but Mansfield is on May 19th, so that's eight consecutive weekends. I don't know, I thought I was the unsociable type.

For the record (and in case I forget again), it's Vicky's party next Saturday, the Nottingham comic fair the Saturday after that (combined with my grandma's birthday on the Friday and possibly going to see Notts County v Boston Utd if I can fit that into the schedule too), then the Ashford regional (maybe I'll go down there on the Friday, seeing as I've had trouble in the past with getting up early enough to get all the way to Kent in the morning, possibly even hang out in London on the Saturday night and see a show, like some wealthy socialite), my mum's wedding on April 21st (if I forget that one she'll write me into her will just so she can write me out again), some mystery event on the 28th (really ringing mental bells there, but I can't think why the heck it would), the Cambridge MSO with all its attendant othello and memory hoopla, the Bristol comic expo (haven't booked a hotel yet for any of these things, and I really must get round to it - Bristol keep adding really great names to the guest list), then Mansfield. If I had a job, I'd be stark raving mad by the end of it.

True confessions

I bought two medium-sized easter eggs at the supermarket the other day, because they were cheap, and I've eaten one a night for the last two days.

Film And Cult Television

The real highlight of my extremely brief university career was the FACT club. We met once a week and watched Star Trek and things. I've been in a trekkie kind of mood lately, having stumbled across "Memory Alpha", the Star Trek wiki while wandering around the internet. It's always nice to know I'm not the only person who feels that the world really needs an authoritative analysis of every appearance of the ever-present but untalkative Lieutenant Leslie in the original series.

I'm going to have to stop doing these links to whatever website I've been reading. This blog is becoming full of them. It should be full of talk about how great I am, and I'll make sure it is in future.

Meanwhile, I've also lately been watching my way through the "future" series of the Transformers cartoon. It's set in 2006, but that was the future when it was made. It's something I've always had a great affection for - the artwork is generally terrible, and the plots are normally more simplistic than the older episodes, but there's something really compelling about the ongoing storylines and characters that makes it all worthwhile. We didn't just watch it for the glimpse of toys we posessed or wanted to posess, it was exciting space adventures of the kind that you just don't see much of nowadays. Poor youngsters today don't know what they're missing, those who watch Ben 10 excepted.

Cookies!

Why doesn't new Blogger remember my login details, even when I tell it to? I think I'm much too busy and important to be expected to type my username and password in every night. I've a good mind to refuse to write anything tonight, in protest.

Actually, I've a good mind not to write anything because I'm trying to play in an othello tournament on Kurnik, watch Match of the Day and type this, all at the same time, AND when I'm finished with that and finally go to bed, it's British Summer Time, so I have to lose another hour to the government. Sometimes there literally aren't enough hours in the day.

Judge For A Day

I've just devoted part of my evening to reading the judgement in this legal case, which Paul O'Brien linked to. It's fascinating on multiple levels for me - I find the basic facts of the case hilarious (a work of modern art was supposed to be being stored by the defendants, but in fact they seemingly mistook it for rubbish created by building work, and threw it away), as a businessman (it's a side of me I do my best to conceal and suppress, but it's still in there) I'm horrified that the company didn't make sure to include their terms and conditions in correspondence with their clients (you ALWAYS do that, in case something like this does happen!), and generally speaking, I'm always intrigued and enthralled by the obscure workings of the legal process. I had to do an exam in business and company law for my accountancy qualifications, and even though it involved a lot of writing rather than number-crunching, and a lot of questions where there isn't a single right answer (something I hate more than anything else in the universe, except kiwi fruit), I enjoyed it a lot.

In fact, I rather think I'd like to be a judge, or as a second choice a lawyer. I appreciate that a lot of it would be boring and routine, and another lot of it would involve extremely unpleasant delving into the motives and reasoning of unpleasant people, but I think it would be worth it for the occasions when you get to hear two opposing art experts arguing as to the value of Hole and Vessel II. Plus you get all the fun of pedantically observing the rule of law and/or interpreting it in ways that nobody, least of all the people who wrote the laws in the first place, has ever considered before. And then you get the fact that everyone looks up to you and thinks you're clever, which is always a bonus in any job. I'd go and look up how to be a judge now, but it's late, and you probably had to go to public school anyway.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to work out how to get better at hour cards. I did a practice today, attempting 30 packs and getting 27 right, exactly like at the WMC last year. But I have great difficulty getting beyond that level, and it's frustrating. I hate plateaus. Or is it plateaux? I don't like the things, anyway. If I attempt more packs, I get fewer of them correct, and it's been like that for a couple of years now. With everything else, I'm still gradually improving my best results (very, very slowly), but here I'm stuck.

Miscellany

I've bid on a tape of The Tale of the Bunny Picnic on eBay, even though it's a fiver, which is a ludicrous price to ask for something like that, because I was gripped by a sudden urge to hear the big song at the end again. I've been sort of humming it to myself for the last twenty years or so, and today I looked up the words and had trouble fitting them with the tune as I remember it, so now I need to hear it again to make sure I know what it goes like. And it seems it's the only piece of film in the world that isn't on YouTube.

Boston Utd beat Mansfield Town last weekend to drag themselves out of the relegation zone. It made me wonder why I never go to Mansfield, when it's only down the road. Still, there's an othello regional there this year, so I'll have a good opportunity to find out what's so bad about the place.

There's a new strip in the Dandy called Space Raoul, by Jamie Smart who did My Own Genie, and it's brilliant.

The interview this morning was surprisingly fun. It was very apropos-of-nothing, because they didn't bother with the general talk about forgetfulness that they were sort of planning beforehand, and just dropped a chat with me into the middle of the breakfast show. And it was a completely pointless kind of chat, too - I made them laugh by recounting the pi record story and reciting a hundred or so digits just to prove I could do it, and only spent a few seconds on the remembering names bit that I was expecting to do. I'll have to see if I can get some more media exposure like that.

I'm not sure whether to watch "The Yellow House" with John Simm as van Gogh, or just switch off the television set and go out and do something less boring instead. I will confess that I just don't get van Gogh's art. I don't honestly think it's all that good. I do like John Simm, but somehow I feel like my opinion of the work of the historical character he's playing is more important for my enjoyment of an ITV drama.

I'm a writer, you know

I've actually been properly working on the book today. I've set myself a deadline - I'm going to have it done in a nice, tidy, complete draft form to show people (whether they want me to or not) at the Cambridge championship on May 6th. Then I'm going to get a proper job again and be respectable, in return for which my grandma will refrain from hitting me over the head with her walking stick.

As well as the book, there's plenty of preparation work still to be done for Cambridge, so I'm going to be kept busy. But this is a good thing. There's no place in this world of memory experts for loafers.

The never-ending media circus

I've got an interview on Radio Lancashire on Thursday morning, in case I have any Lancastrian bloglings who might want to tune in to the breakfast show. I don't know when exactly, it was going to be 7:55 tomorrow, but they've postponed the bit about forgetting names and anniversaries by a day. I'd be interested to know what fascinating subject has bumped me.

Of course, they're under the impression that I might have some words of wisdom to impart on the subject of remembering names. Anyone who knows me knows otherwise, but I didn't have time to point this out - having asked the Alzheimer's Society people for my contact details (a new way to find me that I haven't encountered before), the conversation went "You'll do it? Great, I'll call you five minutes before we go on air. Bye." Still, it's not going to be an in-depth searing exposé, judging by the five-minutes-before-the-news timeslot. It'll go:

Tony Livesey: So, Ben Pride-more, you're the world's number one memory man, do you have any advice on how we can remember those important wedding anniversaries?

Me: Gor, I dunno.

Tony Livesey: Great! And now it's Hercule Poirot with the news.

I'm actually annoyed with my memory today. I woke up singing a song I'd been dreaming about (it was a strange alternative title sequence to Tiny Toon Adventures), but at some point in the morning I totally forgot the tune, although I can still remember the words. It's frustrating - I think it was an original tune, at least that's the impression I had this morning when I could remember it, but now it's disappeared from my brain the sceptical part is saying "oh, it will just have been one of those Japanese songs you were listening to yesterday, you can't compose music." This is the second time I can remember writing about something like this happening in my blog. Next time I dream a song, I'll grab a tape recorder when I wake up and sing into it. I don't own a tape recorder, so there'll be a certain amount of running down the street in my pyjamas and then hanging around outside... a shop that sells tape recorders, which come to think of it probably don't exist any more. It's all MP3s and DVDs these days. Modern life is rubbish.

Wait a minute. I do own a tape recorder. It's sitting there on top of my telly in plain sight. I haven't used it since I was practising reciting pi in 2005, but for pete's sake. What's wrong with my memory today?

Blame it on the weatherman

It's cold and intermittently haily around here today, and I've achieved very little in the way of work. I've been contemplating getting a real job again and giving up on this life of freedom sooner rather than later, but then I've also been contemplating joining a gym and not being so fat, and I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. Still, if I don't improve my work rate, I'll feel like I'm wasting my life.

I have been having some fun wasting my life today, though - I've been watching Japanese things on YouTube (as an alternative to working on the textbook because I've got to a hard bit), and this is the kind of thing we should have been entering in the Eurovision Song Contest. It's such a catchy tune that you're dancing and singing along to it as soon as it starts, and it doesn't matter at all if you don't understand the words. I certainly don't, so I apologise if you do and it contains explicit sexual references or a savage denunciation of western society - I'm assuming based on the wonderful cartoon that accompanies it that it doesn't, but you never know.

The beat of the drum goes round and around

Yes, I'm writing about TV two nights in a row. Sorry. But tonight on BBC4 it's "Tube Night", four solid hours of programmes about the London Underground. The theme nights these people come up with never cease to amaze me. It's just started with a 1958 film about the night shift who work on the Tube after it's shut down, and a bit later on there's episode 1 of the Doctor Who story "The Web of Fear", which I've never seen (the BBC saw fit to destroy all the other episodes, so watching it is likely to be a little unsatisfying, but never mind).

I think that when "Moonwalking With Einstein" is a big hit, there needs to be a Memory Night spectacular to tie in with it. Or possibly a whole Memory Week - we need documentaries about famous world championships and champions, repeats of Dominic O'Brien on Friends Like These and Ant and Dec, Andi Bell when he was on Transworld Sport that time, me on The Weakest Link... come to think of it, there's more than enough footage there to do a really great theme night, without even having to dip into foreign TV shows! I'd still like to do a US-championship-style thing in Britain, maybe that can be the centrepiece of the week's themed entertainment?