Zoom - it's part of my name

On the way back from Luton today, I saw the strangest company slogan I've ever seen, written on the side of a van. The company in question are called Huntleigh Healthcare, or something along those lines, and the slogan was "Healthcare - it's part of our name."

They either deserve applause for coming up with a brilliantly ironic swipe at senseless advertising, or else public derision for putting something so mindlessly stupid on their vans. Either way, this blog is dedicated to Huntleigh Healthcare, or Something-beginning-with-H-and-ending-with-something-like-leigh Healthcare, anyway.

In other news, if I'm going to get back into the habit of watching EastEnders, I'm going to need reminders. Addiction has always been something I've needed to work at. But I'd resolved to watch it this week just because I've always loved the Mitchells. Don't ask me why. I might catch the repeat on BBC3 tonight, if I can be bothered.

Also, I've been practicing speed cards for the last couple of nights, three packs a night, and I've made mistakes in all six packs. And they were all over 35 seconds, too. I really need to get back in training on a regular basis.

Okay, I've got one now!

My mistake, obviously, was to decide to do my blog before taking my washing out of the machine. Which is still working more or less fine, incidentally. Positive reinforcement always does the trick.

When I won the WMC back in August 2004, the local news came round to film me at work. Marketing director David, never one to miss a chance to promote the company, strategically placed Parkhouse Recruitment logos around the office (including an enormous triangular toblerone-shaped thing intended to be displayed at rugby matches that happened to be in head office at the time because nobody had remembered to send it wherever it was meant to be), and produced from somewhere a T-shirt with the Parkhouse logo for me to wear on the interview.

I kept the shirt around in my desk for a couple of other photo shoots that week, and then basically left it there and forgot about it, until I was clearing out my desk last week and finally took the shirt home with me. Now, this shirt is either black or very dark blue, I'm not quite sure. Sort of navy blue, if the navy had been taken over by goths or vampires. I put it in the wash without considering the consequences, and now I find that all my white things that were in there tonight are now a sort of greyish-blue colour. Or maybe bluish-grey, I'm not quite sure.

If you were wondering, I don't do that separating-whites-and-colours thing when I do my washing. That's always struck me as the kind of thing that you'd only do if you deeply care about your clothing being whiter than white, and spend hours agonising about the different brands of washing powder, or nasty liquid-filled plastic bubbles, and fabric conditioners, and little bags that you put little cubes of washing stuff in the machine with, because using washing machines the way they were designed to be used and putting the stuff in the drawer just isn't good enough. No, I refuse to conform to what these profiteering companies want me to do, and just buy the first box that comes to hand from the supermarket, and bung everything in together. This doesn't lead to nearly as many disasters as you would think.

It has tonight, though. Although it's a very mild kind of disaster. My white jeans are now greyish-blue, which is a shame, and a towel, a couple of hankies, and some pants and socks, but the only work shirt in there was the one that was grey already, and the work trousers seem to be exactly the same shade of brown that they were when they went in, so obviously they're immune to dyeing somehow. I remember the last time this happened, years and years ago and involving socks, all my work shirts went a uniform shade of dull grey, so I've been quite lucky here. And the jeans look quite cool, really. It would have been nicer if they'd had a sort of tie-dyed look, but it's all one smooth shade. Maybe it'll wash out. Or half-wash out. Or maybe I'll try washing everything with something bright red and see what that does.

Zoom's 97 varieties

Getting close to my hundredth blog entry. Who would have thought I'd still be finding things to talk about after all this time? You'd think I'd be reduced by now to counting the number of entries I've made and trying to get away with filling a whole page with talking about it, but no, I manage to come up with ways to keep this thing so fresh and interesting, you'd swear I was just starting out on this thrilling adventure that is bloggery!

Sigh. I hate running out of ideas.

I need a holiday

Which is a strange thing to say, really, since I haven't been doing proper work for months. But I just feel like I need a break from the sort-of-but-not-quite work routine I'm in at the moment. Maybe starting my new job next week will feel like a refreshing change.

Actually, what I need is an adventure, preferably involving magic, dragons and an assorted cast of friends and enemies with unusual and charming personality quirks. I must sit down and write it some time. I've just got back from seeing Howl's Moving Castle, and while I maybe wouldn't recommend it to anyone who likes their plots to make sense, it's very atmospheric, and I left the cinema feeling all magical, which is always a good thing. It also sort of inspired me to sort of combine two of the unwritten stories that have been circling in my imagination for absolutely ages now, with added bits and pieces arising from that idea. Trouble is, I have a feeling it needs to be a graphic novel, or at least profusely illustrated with the pictures interacting with the words at important points. If only I could draw, this kind of thing would be so much easier.

Back to work tomorrow. On Tuesday I've got to go down to Luton to show the assorted eejits there how to do the handful of things I do that they've decided are worth doing in future. They've left it much too late to take over these things, so I'm quite certain they're going to just drop it - it's not vitally important information, it's just presenting a few figures they already have, but in ways that make sense, which comes in handy if you want to plan for the future. I'm sure people will miss them once I've stopped doing them, but I've never felt that they were essential to the smooth running of a company.

I'm thinking of bowing to the inevitable and getting a DVD player. I've always tried to resist it, because I know what I'd do is get lots of cartoon DVDs that you can't get on video and spend all my time watching them. But while wandering through the auctions on eBay today, I found a complete collection of Bosko cartoons that I'd really quite like to have. And if I'm going to achieve that back-burner ambition of mine to watch every WB cartoon ever made, it's going to be a lot easier to collect them on DVD rather than VHS. And yes, lots of them, Bosko included, are public domain and I could get them from various other sources, but I much prefer to track down obscure ancient video releases. Finding them is half the fun. More than half if they're not very good cartoons.

Ooh, less than a week and I get all that money! Which reminds me, I had a call from my dad this morning about getting together with grandma and my brother on Saturday - he's going to bring my Christmas presents along with him. He probably bought them last year some time. I sometimes wonder if his internal clock is just wound up too fast. At least he's meeting me at Attenborough on Saturday, not coming round to pick me up here, so for once I don't have to get woken up by him knocking on my door three hours before the time we agreed...

Five past nine

Whatever happened to telly programmes starting on the hour? BBC1, 2 and 3, ITV1, 2 and 3 and Channel 5 all have shows starting at 9:05 tonight. It's probably a sinister conspiracy.

It probably wasn't worth doing two posts in one day just to observe that, but hey. I've also got 'The Penultimate Peril', and if there's anyone out there who hasn't read the Lemony Snicket books, you really should get out there now (or when the shops next open) and buy some.

Plans for tomorrow - practice a bit of memory, see Howl's Moving Castle, get some lights for my bike, write a book or two, become some kind of millionaire.

Scientific progress goes boink

That's better. Stella Artois is horrible stuff. I'm sure there are people in the world who can drink more than three pints of it with no ill-effects, and I'm sure they're very admirable and manly people, but I'm just not one of them. So what was meant to be just showing my face at the work do last night ended up leaving me going to bed at half nine, feeling on the verge of collapse. Possibly I'm getting old.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I gave the impression last night that I was going to write about earth-shattering and exciting news, but it really isn't anything like that. When I got home from work last night I had a call from Nick the TV producer, who rather sneakily had decided to phone me to ask if I'd made my mind up about doing this documentary, rather than waiting for me to email him. So I said yes, and having thought about it a bit decided not to get back to him and say no after all. So I'm going to be on TV, yay.

He also wants to film me at work next week, so as to get to see work colleagues who know me. Not that we're going to be doing much in the way of work, although I suppose we can pretend to be busy and industrious for the camera.

So at about quarter past six I went out to the pub to meet the work people. Coming in the door, I took my glasses off to wipe the rain off them, and they snapped in half. Luckily they had a roll of sellotape behind the bar, so we made some repairs, and while they don't look pretty, they stay on my face, more or less. I haven't got a spare pair, unless you count my prescription shades, so I'm just going to have to go with the Harry Potter look for the time being. (Katydid once said I look like 'Harry Potter all grown up', which is the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me)

So this necessitated a trip to the opticians this morning. It's been three or four years since I had an eye test, so I thought it would probably be a good idea. What impressed me, though, was that everything there is much more technological than it was the last time I had them checked. Maybe the Boston Specsavers is just a lot less up to date than the Derby one (the Derby one is much, much bigger, so it probably is), but this one has lots of fancy electronic gadgets for probing and measuring your eyes. I was impressed. My prescription hasn't changed at all, same as the last eye test I had, but my new glasses are going to look a bit different. Big round ones seem to be out of fashion nowadays (well, they were never in fashion, but at least you could get them last time I was buying a pair), so I've had to go for some little rectangular ones instead. Two pairs, this time, to avoid something like this happening again. Everyone at Specsavers was adamant that the new ones would look much better on me than my old ones, so I suppose I'll get used to them. But I've worn round glasses for ages now, and I think they're part of my unique charm. Ah well.

But they can't put the things together until Thursday at the earliest, maybe not till Saturday, so I'm going to be stuck with the old ones when I'm captured on camera at work next week, most likely. My major worry about this documentary thing is that Nick is secretly evil, and is planning to make me look really bad, and while having taped-together glasses may look cute and eccentric if you present it one way, it could also make me look like some kind of socially-inadequate nerd (yes, I am one of those anyway, but you can make me look not like one if you make a documentary the right way, I'm sure).

There's just been a poll on Football Focus for cult hero goalkeepers, and Paul Bastock was one of the choices. Quite rightly too - for many years he was Boston Utd's only good player, always the kind of guy who was much too good to be playing in a non-league team, and really to be admired for sticking with the Pilgrims through thick and thin. If I had a mobile, I'd vote for him, but the poll is texts only. Perhaps I should get one. I seem to come across situations where one would be useful more and more frequently these days.

Too much, too young

It shows what kind of person you are when you're on a night out and you're thinking "I must get home quickly so I can write in my blog about everything that's happpened tonight."

Also, the length of time it's taken me to type the above sentence is quite alarming. Somebody, either Lee or Zoe, kept ordering rounds a bit quicker than I can comfortably drink them. With the result that I've had four and a half pints of Stella by nine o'clock. I know from experience that more than three and I'm useless for the next day at least. I switch to rum and coke after three pints, as a rule.

It's no good, I can't do all the typing I was planning to do tonight. Getting the spelling right (and this is very important to me) just takes too long. I keep hitting the wrong keys. Tomorrow, I'll tell you all about everything that's happened tonight. But now, I'd better go to bed.

Howling at the moon

Curse of the Were-Rabbit is absolutely brilliant. But I've remembered today that I can't go to see Howl's Moving Castle tomorrow night, because I'm going out with work people for Zoe's birthday. This seems a bit excessive to me, since we're all going out next Friday too to celebrate our unemployment and/or unprecendented wealth. But still, it keeps me on the streets.

Thursdays off work also give me a chance to buy comics the day they come out, too. This week's selection are all pretty good, but don't inspire me to write about them. On the other hand, though, I read the Beano in Smith's like I do every week, and I was pleased to see a Billy the Cat and Katie story. They keep making attempts to bring Billy back, in the hopes that he'll catch on with the youth of today who don't buy the Beano for adventure stories, and I think that's highly commendable. The tastes of readers seem to be leaning more towards that kind of strip now, judging by the last vote-for-a-new-strip thing that selected Zap Zodiac, which is as close to a non-comedy adventure strip as the Beano has come for yonks.

Funnily enough, there was also the second part of a 'Beano gang' adventure (a multiple-page story with all the characters from multiple Beano strips, which they do from time to time - usually with much better art than this one) featuring Lord Snooty, who concludes that he's too old-fashioned to appear in the Beano nowadays. That's probably fair enough - they kept him on for years when nobody liked it, just because he was the last surviving character from the first ever issue - but it's strange that an attempt to resurrect an old character was put in the same comic as a definitive statement that they're not going to bring back another.

Also funnily, the story featured some snippets of old Lord Snooty strips, one of them showing Polly, the black caricature who (in a genuine attempt at political correctness) was part of Snooty's gang for many years, but who they generally try to avoid talking about now.

I also did a bit of memory training today. Just enough to convince me that I'm still horribly out of practice and need to do a lot more to get back up to my best. Sigh. Ah well, got to stick to those resolutions. When I'm settled into my new job, I'll take a week off and cram pi back into my skull. 25 days holiday at the new place, by the way! Wheee!

Motion picture funnies

Having sounded all virtuous yesterday about doing useful things on my day off tomorrow, I've remembered that I need to go and see the Wallace and Gromit film, so I think I'll do that too. Or instead. We'll see how I feel. Then on Friday after work I'll go to Derby's artier cinema and see Howl's Moving Castle. And probably write about them here, it's been a while since I've done something like that, and variety is the Spice Girls, or whatever the saying is.

Got to work twenty minutes late this morning, not having seen any real reason to get out of bed, to find Suzy waiting outside and nobody else to be seen. By the time someone with a key turned up, it was 9:15. I'll have a longer lie-in in future. Sheesh, I can probably count the number of work days to go on the fingers of one hand now - I doubt I'll be in more than three days next week. So let's say it's five days to go! Probably four, since we almost certainly won't be in on the final Monday (which is officially the last day). It's kind of sad, in a way.

The Importance Of Being Zoomy

I sometimes feel like I'm under some kind of obligation to make these blog posts of mine funny and interesting, even on days when nothing out of the ordinary has happened to me, I haven't interacted with any of the interesting people I know, and I haven't even seen anything on TV worth commenting about. But then I remember that the ones where I'm trying to be clever and/or funny are always the worst ones.

Anyway, nothing's happened today that I consider worth talking about, so I thought I'd talk about something that hasn't happened. It hasn't rained here today, although I see from the telly that it's pouring down at Old Trafford (no goals at half-time, although Man U should be expected to beat Lille without too much difficulty). I can't actually remember the last time I had to cycle to or from work in the rain, strangely enough. It has rained, quite a lot, but never during those all-important timeslots between 8:10 and 8:30, and 5:00 and 5:20 on work days. And it doesn't seem to have rained here in Derby anywhere near as much as it has in the rest of the country.

I'm quite impressed by this, really. Possibly someone's installed an impressive system of weather-controlling devices or giant invisible umbrellas in order to make my life slightly easier, or possibly it's just coincidence.

Another day off on Thursday. I'm going to use it for a trial run of the commute to Burton-on-Trent, just to see what kind of time I would get to the office if I catch the train at half past eight (I don't have to start till nine at the new job! Yay!), and then I'm going to do some serious memory practice.

Also, at some time before November 26th, I'm going to practice othello in the kind of professional way that I've always meant to do. I think I'm going to switch to the diagonal opening, and hopefully catch some people by surprise. As long as they don't read this blog, that is.

Just got an email from Step, telling us that he's written a "poem about the assertion that Zoomy has powers a lot like King Midas only much ruder." There's a story behind this that I probably shouldn't go into in such a public forum in case it puts anyone off their lunch, but it just shows the kind of conversations we tend to get into at these meets after a lot of drink and very little sleep. Step wrote me another poem for my birthday, incidentally - that was why he wanted to know the exact details of my age. I'm going to get it framed and hung on my wall, because it's very flattering.

Skeletor, Dick Dastardly, Count Duckula, Tom Cat, Captain Pugwash

Yes, two entries in one day, just to make up for skipping Saturday. Don't expect deep insights, though. I've just seen the video to Franz Ferdinand's "Do You Want To?", which has the above list of cartoon characters written on a wall, for reasons presumably best known to the band. Nice mix of personalities there.

It actually surprised me a bit - I'd been under the entirely mistaken impression that the Franz Ferdinand gang were significantly younger than me, as everyone seems to be nowadays, somewhere in their early twenties. And that would mean that they were of a generation less likely to know of Skeletor or Duckula (both have made various resurrections over the years, but there's a definite gap for that age group, as Ed Cooke and his friends demonstrated at the world championships when we got talking about Skeletor, like you do).

In fact, it seems that three of the four band members are older than I am! This teaches me two important lessons: 1) Don't assume that cool people are young, and 2) It's not too late to become a pop star! This has cheered me up quite a bit, really.

After the merrymaking

Twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep after last night's entry, I was woken by my alarm at half past seven this morning thinking "God, I'm still knackered..."

I spent a while debating whether it was worth the effort of getting up and going to work, and ultimately decided that it wasn't. Called the office at 8:45, but nobody was in yet. Called back at 9:15, intending to confess that I had a hangover after a weekend's boozing, but Zoe just said I could have the day off without me needing to give any reason, so that's all right.

Anyway, it was a great party. And everyone did more or less fit in the flat, so I needn't have worried about that. Documentary guy wants to film a Poohsticks meet some time, which we all think might be cool. Although we'd have to watch what we say, and behave a bit more decently than usual. He also wants to film an othello tournament, which might be very cool for the game, raising public awareness, making it look sexy and appealing and so on.

Also, talking to the aforementioned docco-wallah (thanks for the expression, Sam) was a lot of fun - he's a nice guy. He was flattering/patronising/humouring me to a certain extent, but not so much that it's likely to become annoying. And I suppose you're not going to get anywhere as a filmmaker if you don't develop a habit of doing that automatically, so I can't blame him. He was filming me for a couple of hours in the morning, with a minimum of rearranging my furniture and asking me to say things more than once, so if he carried on like that it would be bearable to do this documentary thing. But I'm still not convinced that I want to waste my time with it.

On the other hand, if I'm going to keep those resolutions of mine, I probably should. A bit of self-publicity like appearing on TV would probably help with the aim of getting a book published. I said I'd let him know some time after this weekend, so I've got plenty of time to think about it.

Partied out

I'd like to write about the party we've had here over the weekend, as well as the surprisingly enjoyable visit by Nick the documentary producer on Saturday morning, but I'm tired. A bit under three hours of sort-of-sleep isn't really enough for me, so I'm off to bed now to recharge my batteries before I go back to work tomorrow.

Happy birthday to you, Cliff!

The great Cliff Richard reaches pensionable age today. Many happy returns are also in order for Roger Moore, the late E E Cummings and the very late Battle of Hastings.

And I'm tired out. I set my alarm clock for half seven, same as usual, and ignored it as I always do, only to be dragged out of bed five minutes later by my dad phoning with birthday greetings. He'd been at work for four hours, so it was the middle of the day by his standards, and he'd assumed I'd be going to work today. Even when I do go to work, I'm never out of bed by 7:35, but the early risers of this world just don't appreciate that.

Anyway, I've spent the whole day since then buying supplies and making preparations for this party. I've baked a cake, or rather two cakes since I didn't have a cake tin big enough for all the cake mix I'd prepared. They're not going to win any beauty contests, but I'm hopeful that they'll be edible. Also made a trifle and jelly and blancmange, and found my Back To The Future board game (free with Smith's Crisps back in 1985) - if there's anything else you need for a great party then I certainly don't know what it is.

I found a bunny-rabbit mould for the blancmange in the Co-op, which I just had to buy. A pink blancmange bunny and green jelly grass was an essential part of birthday parties for the first ten years or so of my life - see, that's another good thing my mother's done, in accordance with those resolutions yesterday. Had a perfectly civil conversation with her on the phone this afternoon, if anyone's keeping track. I was even doing my best to nudge it over the line into 'friendly', but we generally stuck to 'polite'.

It's a good thing I phoned Grandma to get that number, actually, because she was distraught at not having sent me a card or phoned me, due to an incident with marmalade and her address book. I filled in the bits that had been obliterated by orange sticky stuff and promised to come down and take her out for a fancy meal when I get my redundancy money.

My brother had called earlier, also assuming I'd be at work but phoning me anyway with the intention of leaving a message (he hasn't got a phone at home so has to call from his office or a phone box - we don't go in for mobiles in this family) so I signed him up for this lunch date and gratefully accepted his generous promises to buy me a card and present if and when he has any money.

I don't know if other people can have conversations with their family without it sounding like something out of a sitcom (or, in my mother's case, some kind of deep BBC2 drama). Still, which would you rather be, weird or boring? No contest.

Twenty-nine tomorrow

Which inspires me to look back over the last year and think "What have I achieved while I was 28?"

Not all that much, really. The year when I was 26, I quit my job, grew a beard, spent a lot of time wandering around wondering around the subject of what to do with my life, spent a month in Cambridge learning how to teach foreigners English, came up with some revolutionary new techniques for memorising numbers and playing cards, lost a lot of weight, got a new job, quit it, went to Kuala Lumpur and muscled my way into the top echelon of memory people.

When I was 27, I got a better new job, moved to Derby, made what I think was a real contribution to stopping the whole 'memory sports' thing splitting into warring factions, won the world championship (and the 'world cup' that would have been another world championship if I hadn't suggested the name change), played some uncharacteristically good othello and qualified for the world championships of that, and was on The Weakest Link.

What have I done while I've been 28? Played in the world othello championships that I'd qualified for in the previous year of my existence, and did quite badly. Found that I couldn't motivate myself to try to win the world memory championship again, decided to memorise pi to 50,000 places instead only to give up on it when someone else did it better, entered the world memory championship after all and did quite badly in that too. Got made redundant.

No changes of job, address, facial hair, no world champion titles, a definite sense of lack of achievement in any of the areas that matter. Am I just being pessimistic? It just seems like the pace of my life has been slowing down as I inch my way reluctantly towards thirty.

So what am I going to do with the final year of my third decade on this planet? I think it's time for some new year-of-my-time-on-this-planet resolutions!

Well, there's going to be a new job, for starters. And unlike the last one which mainly relied on me doing really easy things that everyone else thought (wrongly) were difficult, this one is likely to involve actual work. Making a go of that is going to be a big achievement, I think.

There'll probably be a new address if I stay working in Burton too. Consider me officially resolved to get a nice place and keep it relatively clean and pretty-looking.

Memory things? I'm not sure what to resolve, just yet. To keep in training is a good one, whether I go for the WMC or not (and I think I probably will). Next weekend, I'll make sure to do a proper training session, and keep in the habit of doing it whenever I get a chance. Will I go for pi or not? Seems a shame to waste all the work I did earlier this year, but then again at least half of it has drained out of my brain already, so it'll mean a lot more work. Oh, what the heck. Consider that another resolution. I'll be checking my progress against this ill-advised list for the next year, so I'll regret it later, but yes. Recite pi to 50,000 places, maybe next March. Depending when or if Boris does his speed cards contest thing.

I think this also calls for a general resolution to do something new and spectacular. Getting a book of some kind published would be good.
Be it How To Be Clever, Jayce and Alex, or something else entirely. In fact, I hereby resolve to write not just HTBC, but something else entirely too, and make a decent effort to get someone other than my circle of friends to say it's good.

Also, I need to resolve to be nicer to my mother. I know it's a bad idea to write about that here, since as previously mentioned she's almost certainly reading it, but what the heck. Got a card and present from her this morning, with a letter attached - and none of this "I wish it was easier for us to relate" stuff either, a nice friendly letter. Seems she's been part of a study on synaesthesia by University College, London. "I have it quite strongly," she says, which is news to me, but as you might have gathered we're not big on communication in this family. I haven't, but synaesthesia has been a frequent subject of discussion in memory circles. Daniel Tammet says he's synaesthetic, and so did the famous (and, according to Oleg Stepanov, wildly overrated) Russian memory man Shereshevsky. But none of the 'real' memory people, as far as I know, do.

By 'real' people, I mean the ones who do well in memory championships, of course. I make no claims that this relates in any way to actually having a good memory. Anyway, I'll give my mum a call tomorrow, if I can summon up the nerve. Although I'll have to get the number from Grandma, obviously.

Incidentally, it's Neil Aspinall's birthday today. Tends to get overlooked in all the John Lennon hoopla that goes on at this time of year, but I've always thought Neil seemed like a really great guy. Maybe not the Fifth Beatle, but at least the ninth or tenth.

Two and a half hours (and, if we're being technical, three minutes, since I was born at 12:03am) of being 28 left. Is it too late to do something spectacular? The only thing I can think of is to take all my clothes off and run screaming down the street, but it looks a bit chilly out there. And there's no streetlights, so I might tread in something nasty.

Now we're cooking on gas!

Am I leaving it too late to make a fruit cake? Most of the recipes out there seem to expect you to make the thing weeks in advance of eating it. They don't explicitly say that it will kill you if you don't, so it's probably okay. Anyway, Crispy's promised a cake anyway, I'm only making one because I had one of those irresistible urges. And I'm making a trifle and jelly and blancmange and things, and I'm sure it's not possible to go wrong with those.

No more work till Monday! Things I need to do before the party on Saturday:

Pick up that pile of books in the bedroom and arrange it a bit more tidily.

Hoover the place so it's not quite so obviously filthy.

Acquire some beanbags and cushions and things so there's something for everyone to sit on (apart from the floor).

Go shopping and buy the bits of equipment I didn't think to buy earlier (a whisk being the main one) and the ingredients for the aforementioned cake. Also booze.

Make the aforementioned party goodies.

Move the sofa into the bedroom so as not to get in the way. It's uncomfortable and falling apart, so sitting on it probably isn't an option at the party.

Meet that TV producer guy and find out whether I want to be in a documentary or not.

Hmm, just had a phone call from Step asking me exactly what day my birthday is, and how old I'm going to be. Sounds like he's planning something. Perhaps he's going to check my horoscope for Saturday to make sure I'm not going to be struck by lightning or some other party-cancelling calamity before he gets on the train. Ah well.

The picking-up-books-and-then-hoovering thing was going to be tonight in my original plans, but I've decided to watch the football and generally not bother instead. England are playing reasonably well, for a change, although they haven't managed to score a goal yet, 25 minutes in.

Bedtime story

I really can't wait to finish work at Parkhouse. There's just nothing to do there. I've gone home for lunch the last couple of days - I don't normally bother, seeing as it's a 20-minute cycle ride each way, and 40 minutes travelling is a bit much for 20 minutes sitting at home - just to have a bit of time away from playing on the internet or otherwise doing nothing. Still, just another couple of weeks and I get to go to my scary new job and see if I can remember how to do actual work.

I watched the Booker Prize award ceremony last night, since for once I'd read one of the books on the shortlist, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go". It didn't win though, which is probably fair. Much as I love the book, it's probably not his best work (the problem with having written "The Remains of the Day" and "The Unconsoled" is that it's a very hard standard to keep up), and so I'd say there's a good chance it's not the best book of the year. Besides, he's won it before, which none of the other shortlisted writers had. So now I'll need to go out and read John Banville's "The Sea" and pretend I'd heard of it before it was cool.

His acceptance speech was fun - it's hard to thank your agent, publisher and family and not make it terminally boring, but Banville managed it. Considering he was a surprise winner, it's funny to note that he had his speech prepared on a little bit of paper in his pocket. I wonder if all the others had prepared a little speech too? And what they did with their notes afterwards?

Of course, it's not the Booker Prize now, it's the Man Booker Prize, 'Man' being the name of the sponsor. It's silly enough having the prize for best book being called the 'Booker', but calling it the Man Booker makes you wonder if there's a Woman Booker Prize too.

Apparently it was a split decision on the judges' panel between Banville and Ishiguro, with the chairman, John Sutherland, casting the deciding vote. John Sutherland is an enormously clever man, with great taste in literature, so I'll take that as a recommendation to go out and read "The Sea" as soon as possible.

It's no secret that one of my many, many ambitions in life is to be a great writer (I'm still determined to get "The Adventures of Jayce and Alex" published one of these days), but Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the people who makes me realise that I'm just never going to be that great. I think it was Stephen King who once said that there are writers who have great ideas, and writers who can write well, and only a very few who fall into both categories. Ishiguro and King are certainly both among them. I'm not sure which I am, but I'd be inclined to say 'neither'. I mean, look at the last five paragraphs of this. It's all disjointed and doesn't flow at all, dotting about from random thought to random thought on the subject.

I need to go out and read some of the rubbish that makes it to the bookshops, just to reassure myself that any old idiot can become a published writer.

Wave World Municipal Children's Miniature Golf Emporium

I was going to write about a really weird advert I've just seen, but then I remembered I'd decided to write about something other than TV tonight. So the reason why it inspired the title of this post will have to remain just one of those mysteries. Until tomorrow, at least.

Instead, let's talk about pictures of me. Always an entertaining topic, I'm sure. Sam's comment today about having to get a passport-sized photo for a railcard reminded me that I'll have to do the same. Not for a Young Person's Railcard, obviously, seeing as how I'm such an Old Person, but for a monthly season ticket to Burton-on-Trent when I start a new job.

I haven't got many pictures of myself, but I do have, somewhere, a collection of old passport-size mug shots that I've had taken over the years for one reason or another and obviously only used one or two out of the four. They date back to when I was about 17, and it's fun to chart the progression of my facial features over the last ten years or so.

There's my largely unsuccessful attempts to look like a long-haired layabout, the unflattering moustache that I genuinely thought looked good on me when I was 20, the debut appearance of the hat looking all shiny and new in 1999, the gradually disappearing hair on top of my head over the years, culminating in the latest ones, from early 2003, with stupidly long beard. I didn't grow the beard because I thought it looked good, incidentally, it was just the realisation that the time I spent shaving every morning could more profitably be spent lying in bed a bit longer.

It'll be fun to add a new set of photos to the collection. While I'm at it, I might see if I can replace the one currently in my passport. It dates back to mid-2000 and really doesn't look anything like me any more. I get all kinds of funny looks whenever I travel abroad with it.

Snooker loopy, nuts are we

I realise that this is the third post in a row where I'm talking about something I've been watching on telly, but what's the point of having weekends if you can't switch off your brain every once in a while and just soak in the radiation from the idiot box? It hasn't even been about cartoons either, which I think displays a refreshingly broad range of interests from me.

Anyway, it's good to see the new season of snooker back on TV. I think it's a peculiarly British kind of entertainment, seeing men in evening dress gently hitting balls around a table with a stick, and getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to do it. I think a lot of the appeal comes from the way it looks so darn easy - you sit there and think 'well, I could do that, no problem!'

Actually, it's harder than it looks. It's always been one of my many dreams in life to become a great snooker player, but I'm prepared to admit that that's one of the ones that will probably remain unfulfilled. I suppose with a few years of practice I could still get good, but I think that's more time than I can really afford to put in, especially since I can't fit a snooker table in my flat.

Ho hum, back to work tomorrow. A three-day week, what's more! Who knows, maybe something not on television will come up that I'll want to blog about?

Where's me washboard?

I thought I should mention that my washing machine worked perfectly today. It would be terribly unfair of me to complain on my blog when it doesn't work and then not mention it at all when it does. Three cheers for my washing machine!

What's wrong with England's football team lately, anyway? Is there some kind of rule saying that just when our cricket team start playing really well, the footballers have to get much worse? Okay, Beckham certainly didn't deserve the red card, but we didn't really deserve the penalty either, and never looked like scoring at any other time. Without Beckham against Poland we probably won't have a chance (the team always goes to pieces, seemingly as a matter of principle, whenever he's not playing), but hopefully the other results will make the Poland game academic.

In more interesting football news, Boston Utd won that game last night that I was thinking of going to but didn't. We had five players booked and two sent off, and apparently there was a fantastic goal by Joachim and a hilarious own-goal to put us 2-0 up, so it must have been fun to watch. Ah well.

Operation: p.a.r.t.y. (prepare apartment ready to ya-ya) is proceeding apace - I've picked up my pile of clothes and put them all in drawers for the first time ever. That'll make a bit more space to swing a cat in my living room, and if I move the settee out of the way, there should just about be room for everyone to fit in next Saturday. Otherwise I haven't really done anything all day, but that doesn't matter. I'll buy some cooking gear tomorrow, but since I've unexpectedly got Thursday and Friday off next week, I'll have plenty of time for preparations. Yay!