I'm not feeling too much like a lazy slob right now. After all, I've been doing well with the swimming - last Friday and then yesterday and today and have every intention of going back tomorrow, and I'm starting to feel less like collapsing after a couple of lengths. And I've got an interview with Proquest in Cambridge next Tuesday, which I'm feeling optimistic about - it will take the form of an Excel test (I'm all in favour of tests at interviews rather than just talking) and then a more standard talk, featuring 'competency-based questions' (you know the kind of thing, 'give an example of a situation where you...', arguably a less stupid interview technique than 'what are your strengths and weaknesses', although I'm still not a fan). I do quite like the sound of this job, so fingers crossed, eh?
And I've also embarked on this year's National Novel Writing Month project - for newcomers or oldcomers without flawless memories, this is the annual task of writing a 50,000-word novel from scratch during the month of November, the point being that you'll produce a load of rubbish but get your creative juices flowing. This year, instead of trying to do something different and stretch my boundaries, I'm going to write a silly but epic story that will be made up as I go along and not make any kind of sense. It's called "Virtuous Dean" and will consist of thirty chapters, each containing exactly 1,666 words, followed by a ten-word epilogue. So far, Virtuous Dean, Despicable Dean and the man whose dog Despicable Dean accidentally killed with an axe have decided to go to Paris to buy coffee beans. As the first stage of their plan to get there, they've acquired jobs as cabin crew on a plane going to Iceland, and I'm sure further adventures await them there.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Dream diary
Sorry I didn't post this last night, but my internet connection dropped dead. I actually wrote it yesterday morning as soon as I woke up, but decided not to post it till the evening for reasons of tradition, so it's now a whole day old. Sorry about that. Anyway, here goes:
My head is really full of dreams I’ve just had, so I thought I’d write them down. I don’t remember exactly what order these sequences occurred in, but the following things all happened:
I was driving a car (which is strange enough, since I never do) in Tumby Woodside. I turned right at the end of the road to head towards Boston, but there were several new sets of traffic lights, a few yards apart – permanent ones, not the temporary ones they put around roadworks. I negotiated them okay, but had a feeling I’d gone through a red one. I pulled in to the side of the road to let a tractor pass in the opposite direction (this is pretty mundane for a dream – driving along those roads, you get out of the way of tractors a lot), and it was lucky that I did, because then I was overtaken by a blue car moving sideways. It stopped, horizontally across the whole narrow road, and I stopped to wait for the driver (he was a yuppie type, but nobody I know) to get out of the way. He tried to do something, but only ended up going forward and down into the ditch along the side of the road. The front windscreen shattered and the guy fell out, but he wasn’t hurt. I got out of my car to see if I could help him.
We knocked on the door of a nearby farmhouse (not one of the real houses that line that road) – it had a friendly, cluttered interior and the owner was a friendly old man who I knew (not based on any real-life person again). He offered us a mobile phone with which we could call a magic fairy who granted wishes. This didn’t seem at all like an unusual kind of thing to do. The fairy came along and fixed the car with a wave of her hand, returning it to the road, chatting with me that it was a surprise to get the call from the yuppie, since that mobile phone is the only way of contacting her and she normally only speaks to the old guy. As an afterthought, she transformed the yuppie’s car into a magnificent vehicle – a sort of burgundy limousine, three doors along each side and decidedly antique, looking like it dated from the forties or fifties. I was delighted by it – it was a ‘Spyder’, and there was a manufacturer’s name too, but I can’t remember what it was.
The yuppie, on the other hand, was extremely annoyed by this – he hated the Spyder and preferred his original car, which had been an unexceptional modern vehicle, newer and shinier than mine. I suggested that we swap, and he cheerfully agreed and drove off in my shabby old car, while I took the cool one. Then there was a sort of brief narrated epilogue saying that I went wherever I’d been going in the first place, came back, and helped the old guy from the house transport some potatoes into town.
In an unrelated sequence of events, I was sitting in a classroom at the end of a lesson for some kind of course at a college. The lesson ended and people started leaving. The teacher was reading the comic 2000AD at his desk, and asked me in admiring tones how I’d managed to write something as great as a series he named (I can’t remember what it was called). I told him he’d got me confused with someone else, and the only thing I’d ever had published in 2000AD was a Future Shock short story. I had the feeling I was trying to make myself sound like a full-time comic writer whereas in fact that might have been the only thing I’d ever had published anywhere, but then I remembered that they’d printed another story of mine, a five-part superhero story, and I couldn’t remember the name. I racked my brain, trying to remember what it was called, who the artist was, and what had happened in it, but could only get the vaguest ideas. Meanwhile, the next class was coming into the room and urging me to get out in a hurry so they could start. I had no interest at all in whatever subject they were learning, but they seemed to think I was trying to hang around and join them, and didn’t want me to. I think the class might have been ‘Asian Studies’, and I noticed that the people attending it were unusually ethnically diverse, representing between them the full spectrum of race, age and gender (for this to be unusual suggests I was still in Lincolnshire in the 80s or 90s, rather than ethnically-mixed Derby). So I picked up my bag and wandered off down the corridor, which resembled one from my old school in Horncastle.
That probably led into this bit – I think I was still trying to remember my superhero story (it was something of a disappointment to wake up and recall that I’ve never had anything published in 2000AD) and thinking I’d find the file on my computer when I got home. But for the moment I was at my old school in Horncastle (of course, I didn’t have a computer at home when I was a pupil there), although I’m pretty sure I was still an adult, rather than a teenager again. It was the end of the day, I’d been held up by something after school and I went out to the buses, hoping mine wouldn’t have left yet. But unfortunately, I was just in time to see it leaving. It was pouring with rain and I was wearing nothing but the Brazilian Mystery Cloak – this didn’t strike me as unusual in any way.
I went back inside and into the sixth form common room, where I dug through my bag to find some clothes, since the cloak was soaked through. The bag contained my corduroy trousers, which I rejected since there’s a small hole in them and I didn’t have any underpants, and a skimpy pair of shorts, plus a very tight, pale pink, knitted tank top. There may have been shoes as well, I can’t quite remember. I was conscious that this outfit would make me look extremely silly, but decided to wear it anyway for a laugh. I invited a woman nearby, who might have been Jenny, to walk into town with me, and maybe go to the library. I have a feeling she had to think about it, since I was dressed extremely strangely, but I don’t remember anything else after that point.
So, any Freudians out there want to analyse my brain and tell me exactly the extent to which I'm a loony?
My head is really full of dreams I’ve just had, so I thought I’d write them down. I don’t remember exactly what order these sequences occurred in, but the following things all happened:
I was driving a car (which is strange enough, since I never do) in Tumby Woodside. I turned right at the end of the road to head towards Boston, but there were several new sets of traffic lights, a few yards apart – permanent ones, not the temporary ones they put around roadworks. I negotiated them okay, but had a feeling I’d gone through a red one. I pulled in to the side of the road to let a tractor pass in the opposite direction (this is pretty mundane for a dream – driving along those roads, you get out of the way of tractors a lot), and it was lucky that I did, because then I was overtaken by a blue car moving sideways. It stopped, horizontally across the whole narrow road, and I stopped to wait for the driver (he was a yuppie type, but nobody I know) to get out of the way. He tried to do something, but only ended up going forward and down into the ditch along the side of the road. The front windscreen shattered and the guy fell out, but he wasn’t hurt. I got out of my car to see if I could help him.
We knocked on the door of a nearby farmhouse (not one of the real houses that line that road) – it had a friendly, cluttered interior and the owner was a friendly old man who I knew (not based on any real-life person again). He offered us a mobile phone with which we could call a magic fairy who granted wishes. This didn’t seem at all like an unusual kind of thing to do. The fairy came along and fixed the car with a wave of her hand, returning it to the road, chatting with me that it was a surprise to get the call from the yuppie, since that mobile phone is the only way of contacting her and she normally only speaks to the old guy. As an afterthought, she transformed the yuppie’s car into a magnificent vehicle – a sort of burgundy limousine, three doors along each side and decidedly antique, looking like it dated from the forties or fifties. I was delighted by it – it was a ‘Spyder’, and there was a manufacturer’s name too, but I can’t remember what it was.
The yuppie, on the other hand, was extremely annoyed by this – he hated the Spyder and preferred his original car, which had been an unexceptional modern vehicle, newer and shinier than mine. I suggested that we swap, and he cheerfully agreed and drove off in my shabby old car, while I took the cool one. Then there was a sort of brief narrated epilogue saying that I went wherever I’d been going in the first place, came back, and helped the old guy from the house transport some potatoes into town.
In an unrelated sequence of events, I was sitting in a classroom at the end of a lesson for some kind of course at a college. The lesson ended and people started leaving. The teacher was reading the comic 2000AD at his desk, and asked me in admiring tones how I’d managed to write something as great as a series he named (I can’t remember what it was called). I told him he’d got me confused with someone else, and the only thing I’d ever had published in 2000AD was a Future Shock short story. I had the feeling I was trying to make myself sound like a full-time comic writer whereas in fact that might have been the only thing I’d ever had published anywhere, but then I remembered that they’d printed another story of mine, a five-part superhero story, and I couldn’t remember the name. I racked my brain, trying to remember what it was called, who the artist was, and what had happened in it, but could only get the vaguest ideas. Meanwhile, the next class was coming into the room and urging me to get out in a hurry so they could start. I had no interest at all in whatever subject they were learning, but they seemed to think I was trying to hang around and join them, and didn’t want me to. I think the class might have been ‘Asian Studies’, and I noticed that the people attending it were unusually ethnically diverse, representing between them the full spectrum of race, age and gender (for this to be unusual suggests I was still in Lincolnshire in the 80s or 90s, rather than ethnically-mixed Derby). So I picked up my bag and wandered off down the corridor, which resembled one from my old school in Horncastle.
That probably led into this bit – I think I was still trying to remember my superhero story (it was something of a disappointment to wake up and recall that I’ve never had anything published in 2000AD) and thinking I’d find the file on my computer when I got home. But for the moment I was at my old school in Horncastle (of course, I didn’t have a computer at home when I was a pupil there), although I’m pretty sure I was still an adult, rather than a teenager again. It was the end of the day, I’d been held up by something after school and I went out to the buses, hoping mine wouldn’t have left yet. But unfortunately, I was just in time to see it leaving. It was pouring with rain and I was wearing nothing but the Brazilian Mystery Cloak – this didn’t strike me as unusual in any way.
I went back inside and into the sixth form common room, where I dug through my bag to find some clothes, since the cloak was soaked through. The bag contained my corduroy trousers, which I rejected since there’s a small hole in them and I didn’t have any underpants, and a skimpy pair of shorts, plus a very tight, pale pink, knitted tank top. There may have been shoes as well, I can’t quite remember. I was conscious that this outfit would make me look extremely silly, but decided to wear it anyway for a laugh. I invited a woman nearby, who might have been Jenny, to walk into town with me, and maybe go to the library. I have a feeling she had to think about it, since I was dressed extremely strangely, but I don’t remember anything else after that point.
So, any Freudians out there want to analyse my brain and tell me exactly the extent to which I'm a loony?
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
November rain
I might have mentioned in my blog before that November is traditionally when I start a new thing in my life, generally a new job. It's happened every year since 2002, without me really planning it, and I seem to be a bit behind schedule this time. Or maybe something new and exciting will come along in the next couple of days - I do have a second interview coming up for that Cambridge job, and I could always ask the agencies for temp work again and trust to fate or the time of year to drop me in a good one this time round.
Or maybe I'll be abducted by aliens? That'd be cool.
Or maybe I'll be abducted by aliens? That'd be cool.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Online Memory!
Okay, a bit of advance hype this time, for the second Online Memory Challenge! It's this coming Saturday, 1pm my time, it'll last about an hour, and I think everybody should come along and check it out, whether as a competitor or spectator. All you need to do is click here, and drop Simon a line to tell him you're coming, then he'll give you the link to the website.
If you've never tried memorising things before but have always been vaguely curious about what I do, this is a perfect time to find out for yourself without leaving your home. I'd urge you to compete rather than spectate, for the full experience, but there's no denying that spectating is a lot of fun with the way this ingenious program is set up. Come along and have some fun!
If you've never tried memorising things before but have always been vaguely curious about what I do, this is a perfect time to find out for yourself without leaving your home. I'd urge you to compete rather than spectate, for the full experience, but there's no denying that spectating is a lot of fun with the way this ingenious program is set up. Come along and have some fun!
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Par-tay
Well, the whole house party thing was a bit of a bust, but I still got to hang out in Manchester with David and Kitty and Jack, and what more could anyone want? I'm also still too tired and/or hungover to write at length about it, so, well, sorry about that.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Facecloths?
Bought a new towel today, so I can go swimming without looking like some kind of ragged pauper, and the woman on the till in the textiles shop asked me "Do you want any facecloths to go with that?" I find that quite offensive, actually. It's like saying "You obviously don't wash your face on any kind of regular basis", and not too far removed from spitting on a hanky and wiping my face for me in full view of the public. I suppose that might be a normal thing to say in textiles shops, actually, since I haven't bought towels for many years, but that was my reaction, anyway. I didn't buy any facecloths.
I didn't go swimming, either, but fate was just conspiring against me there, it wasn't my fault. I woke up at 4am for no readily apparent reason, and wondered if it was my subconscious mind prodding me to talk to my friend on the west coast of the USA who'd been wanting to chat with me for a while, and who would most probably be sitting at his computer in the early evening over there right then. So I got out of bed and found that not only was he online, he'd just sent me a message five minutes before, so naturally we had to have a quick chat. Two and a half hours later, he went to bed and I figured there wasn't much point in me going back to sleep. By nine o'clock I'd changed my mind, since I was feeling like I might fall asleep on the floor at any moment, so I went back to bed and slept till one in the afternoon.
I REALLY need to get a job. This can't be a good way to carry on. My body clock's all out of whack now. Although that might be a good thing - I'm going to Manchester this weekend for my late birthday party, we're all renting a house for the weekend and going to bed at unusual hours is very much the norm at these things.
Might not blog again till Sunday, we'll see - I might bring my laptop with me and share some enlightening drunken ramblings with my loyal readers in a quiet moment.
I didn't go swimming, either, but fate was just conspiring against me there, it wasn't my fault. I woke up at 4am for no readily apparent reason, and wondered if it was my subconscious mind prodding me to talk to my friend on the west coast of the USA who'd been wanting to chat with me for a while, and who would most probably be sitting at his computer in the early evening over there right then. So I got out of bed and found that not only was he online, he'd just sent me a message five minutes before, so naturally we had to have a quick chat. Two and a half hours later, he went to bed and I figured there wasn't much point in me going back to sleep. By nine o'clock I'd changed my mind, since I was feeling like I might fall asleep on the floor at any moment, so I went back to bed and slept till one in the afternoon.
I REALLY need to get a job. This can't be a good way to carry on. My body clock's all out of whack now. Although that might be a good thing - I'm going to Manchester this weekend for my late birthday party, we're all renting a house for the weekend and going to bed at unusual hours is very much the norm at these things.
Might not blog again till Sunday, we'll see - I might bring my laptop with me and share some enlightening drunken ramblings with my loyal readers in a quiet moment.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
My bank has become a trendy wine bar
The HSBC in Derby is closing down and moving to a much smaller building down the road, some time next year. It's a real shame, because it's a really impressive big stone bank building of the kind that you practically never see still being banks any more. But apparently it's about ten times bigger than modern banks need, with all this work-of-the-devil internettery and cashpoint machines, so they're selling it.
Maybe the new owners will turn it into a swimming pool. That'll be convenient for me, seeing as I'm the kind of fitness fanatic who goes swimming every day, starting tomorrow. Remember that resolution I made last week to lose a small amount of weight in the next month? Well, swimming is the answer. I would have started today, only I haven't got a decent towel that isn't falling to pieces, and it looked like rain, and it was a bit chilly, and I'd got a new book to read. But tomorrow, definitely.
And I'm also going to write my book tomorrow, too.
Maybe the new owners will turn it into a swimming pool. That'll be convenient for me, seeing as I'm the kind of fitness fanatic who goes swimming every day, starting tomorrow. Remember that resolution I made last week to lose a small amount of weight in the next month? Well, swimming is the answer. I would have started today, only I haven't got a decent towel that isn't falling to pieces, and it looked like rain, and it was a bit chilly, and I'd got a new book to read. But tomorrow, definitely.
And I'm also going to write my book tomorrow, too.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Doncaster, synaesthesia and kitty-cats
There can't be many blogs that offer you all three of those in one night.
You may remember that a month or so ago, I wrote about how I'd decided to go to Doncaster, on the grounds that it's quite nearby and I've never been there before. Well, it occurred to me today that I HAVE been to Doncaster, at least once, for an othello championship. It was the nationals, back in 2003, I think, and I played extremely badly. There was also probably a regional in the same place that I went to, as well. It's a good thing that I didn't end up going to Doncaster and expecting it to all be new to me, or I would have been deeply disappointed.
Or maybe not. You never know, since my mind works in strange ways. It's the Champions League football tonight, and I recently found myself thinking that it's unfortunate that Manchester United and Arsenal are playing one night this year, and Chelsea and Liverpool the next, since Man U and Arsenal are very similar teams to each other, as are Chelsea and Liverpool, so viewers who prefer one or the other type of team don't get to watch both their games. I contemplated writing this in my blog, and started trying to put into words exactly why these pairs of teams are alike, and the best I could come up with was that Man U and Arsenal are sort of like a big red cube, whereas Chelsea and Liverpool are more like some kind of wavy line. It makes sense in my brain. Chelsea and Liverpool are very much like the letter C in that respect, whereas the others are more like B or D. I suppose this is the synaesthesia in my family that I've always said I haven't got. Ah well, I'll have to stop denying it in future.
Doncaster is an anagram of 'on red cats'. If you want to read up on red cats, and other kinds, you could certainly do worse than check out http://www.kittiesandcats.com/, a site that's just been set up by a friend of mine. This is an unpaid advertisement, there has been no bribery involved whatsoever, so as a personal favour to me, please go over there and click a google ad or two, even if you loathe and detest cats.
If you loathe and detest cats, by the way, what are you doing being friends with me? I love cats. How dare you say such nasty things about them?
You may remember that a month or so ago, I wrote about how I'd decided to go to Doncaster, on the grounds that it's quite nearby and I've never been there before. Well, it occurred to me today that I HAVE been to Doncaster, at least once, for an othello championship. It was the nationals, back in 2003, I think, and I played extremely badly. There was also probably a regional in the same place that I went to, as well. It's a good thing that I didn't end up going to Doncaster and expecting it to all be new to me, or I would have been deeply disappointed.
Or maybe not. You never know, since my mind works in strange ways. It's the Champions League football tonight, and I recently found myself thinking that it's unfortunate that Manchester United and Arsenal are playing one night this year, and Chelsea and Liverpool the next, since Man U and Arsenal are very similar teams to each other, as are Chelsea and Liverpool, so viewers who prefer one or the other type of team don't get to watch both their games. I contemplated writing this in my blog, and started trying to put into words exactly why these pairs of teams are alike, and the best I could come up with was that Man U and Arsenal are sort of like a big red cube, whereas Chelsea and Liverpool are more like some kind of wavy line. It makes sense in my brain. Chelsea and Liverpool are very much like the letter C in that respect, whereas the others are more like B or D. I suppose this is the synaesthesia in my family that I've always said I haven't got. Ah well, I'll have to stop denying it in future.
Doncaster is an anagram of 'on red cats'. If you want to read up on red cats, and other kinds, you could certainly do worse than check out http://www.kittiesandcats.com/, a site that's just been set up by a friend of mine. This is an unpaid advertisement, there has been no bribery involved whatsoever, so as a personal favour to me, please go over there and click a google ad or two, even if you loathe and detest cats.
If you loathe and detest cats, by the way, what are you doing being friends with me? I love cats. How dare you say such nasty things about them?
Monday, October 22, 2007
I'm number two!
The very worst, most unoriginal thing you can do with a blog is link to an interesting story on the BBC News website, so in the spirit of that, here is an article all about the talent English sportspeople and teams have for coming second in major international events. I'm proud to be part of that tradition. Who knows, if we work really hard at publicising the world memory championship, I might end up mentioned in the same breath as Lewis Hamilton and Jimmy White.
Which reminds me that the BBC Sports Review Of The Year is coming up soonish (or at least they're already running ads to encourage people to vote for the Personality Of The Year), and I've always thought it would be nice to get a passing mention for mind sports somewhere in the course of that long, dreary, annual celebration of the year's sporting events (or at least those of the year's sporting events that the BBC has the rights to video footage of). I'm not saying I should win the Sports Personality Of The Year award (although I should), just that it would be cool if they'd do a bit about the likes of chess and bridge and things, by way of contrast to the usual stuff on there. There's plenty of interesting stuff to talk about in the world of British mind sports.
And anyway, I'd be a better winner than Zara bleeding Phillips.
Which reminds me that the BBC Sports Review Of The Year is coming up soonish (or at least they're already running ads to encourage people to vote for the Personality Of The Year), and I've always thought it would be nice to get a passing mention for mind sports somewhere in the course of that long, dreary, annual celebration of the year's sporting events (or at least those of the year's sporting events that the BBC has the rights to video footage of). I'm not saying I should win the Sports Personality Of The Year award (although I should), just that it would be cool if they'd do a bit about the likes of chess and bridge and things, by way of contrast to the usual stuff on there. There's plenty of interesting stuff to talk about in the world of British mind sports.
And anyway, I'd be a better winner than Zara bleeding Phillips.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Otara Millionaires Club
Yes, today saw the inaugural Online Memory Challenge, and a lot of fun it was too! Two Englishmen, an Australian, a Norwegian, an Indian and a Latvian brought together by the wonders of the internet to compete against each other in a mini-memory championship without having to leave their homes.
Simon Orton (the Australian) has designed a flabbergastingly magnificent website for the purpose - we had three disciplines, five-minute words, five-minute numbers and speed cards, and all we competitors had to do was log in at the right time, chat while we watched the timer counting down the time to the start, and then start memorising when it told us to. The words/numbers/cards appeared on the screen for five minutes (all in the right format and size for easy competition-standard memorisation), then disappeared to be replaced by the recall page. We typed in the answers, and if you finished early you could click a button, the machine instantly calculated your score, and returned you to the spectator lounge, where you could watch everyone else's recall pages being filled in. And laugh at my inability to remember the word 'fauna' - I reeled off the rest of the words with no problem, and then spent the rest of the recall time staring at the blank space and thinking "I know it was some kind of animal, but what kind?" At the last second I took a wild guess at 'goldfish'. Well, it was close.
And you know what? I think this is the future of memory competitions. Not so much the doing it over the internet part (I like to trust my fellow competitors to play fair, but I don't think I'd be entirely comfortable with having the world championship rely on people not sneakily writing down what had appeared on screen), but the computerised aspect. I've always been sceptical when people have suggested doing it all on computers before, but the OMC has converted me. Simon's program worked so smoothly and perfectly, completely without human intervention once the competition had started, that I now believe it would be possible to do this at a real memory championship without it all going horribly wrong.
I'm looking forward to the next OMC - hopefully it will be bigger and better! (And yes, I won this one).
Simon Orton (the Australian) has designed a flabbergastingly magnificent website for the purpose - we had three disciplines, five-minute words, five-minute numbers and speed cards, and all we competitors had to do was log in at the right time, chat while we watched the timer counting down the time to the start, and then start memorising when it told us to. The words/numbers/cards appeared on the screen for five minutes (all in the right format and size for easy competition-standard memorisation), then disappeared to be replaced by the recall page. We typed in the answers, and if you finished early you could click a button, the machine instantly calculated your score, and returned you to the spectator lounge, where you could watch everyone else's recall pages being filled in. And laugh at my inability to remember the word 'fauna' - I reeled off the rest of the words with no problem, and then spent the rest of the recall time staring at the blank space and thinking "I know it was some kind of animal, but what kind?" At the last second I took a wild guess at 'goldfish'. Well, it was close.
And you know what? I think this is the future of memory competitions. Not so much the doing it over the internet part (I like to trust my fellow competitors to play fair, but I don't think I'd be entirely comfortable with having the world championship rely on people not sneakily writing down what had appeared on screen), but the computerised aspect. I've always been sceptical when people have suggested doing it all on computers before, but the OMC has converted me. Simon's program worked so smoothly and perfectly, completely without human intervention once the competition had started, that I now believe it would be possible to do this at a real memory championship without it all going horribly wrong.
I'm looking forward to the next OMC - hopefully it will be bigger and better! (And yes, I won this one).
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Hey, it's Tegs!
Only he's a gay American now! For want of anything better to do before the rugby tonight, I watched the new American sitcom "The Class" on E4, which the Radio Times had half-heartedly recommended. Although their suggestion to "Keep an eye on this - it could be a grower" is a bit silly - a cursory internet search tells me it's already been cancelled in the US. But it does star Sean Maguire, doing an impressive American accent, and claiming to have gone to school with the other central characters, when we all know he really went to Grange Hill, as Terence "Tegs" Ratcliffe, in my year, before showing up on EastEnders as an Irish football player. The show itself had some funny moments, but not enough to justify watching the rest of the series.
Anyway, tomorrow I'm competing in the first Online Memory Challenge, organised by Simon Orton, which should be fun. Basically a mini-memory championship, all done over the internet with participants promising not to cheat. It'll be a useful bit of practice, an enjoyable experience and hopefully the start of a lot of things like that to come!
Anyway, tomorrow I'm competing in the first Online Memory Challenge, organised by Simon Orton, which should be fun. Basically a mini-memory championship, all done over the internet with participants promising not to cheat. It'll be a useful bit of practice, an enjoyable experience and hopefully the start of a lot of things like that to come!
Friday, October 19, 2007
Hey, I know him!
Look, Ed Byrne's a guest on Have I Got News For You! I wonder if he mentioned having this memory guy as a guest on The Panel and suggested that I'd make a perfect HIGNFY host?
Actually, it's quite cool how many famous people I've met now. You can hardly turn on the TV without seeing someone I've crossed paths with. As long as you exclusively watch the kind of programmes that Phillip Schofield presents. And yes, I kind of miss all the excitement of being on TV now that the buzz of the world memory championship has died down and I'm a nobody again until next year. Can we have another WMC next week? I'd do badly in it, because I haven't been practicing, but I don't think any of the people who interviewed me this year really knew or cared whether I'd won or not...
Actually, it's quite cool how many famous people I've met now. You can hardly turn on the TV without seeing someone I've crossed paths with. As long as you exclusively watch the kind of programmes that Phillip Schofield presents. And yes, I kind of miss all the excitement of being on TV now that the buzz of the world memory championship has died down and I'm a nobody again until next year. Can we have another WMC next week? I'd do badly in it, because I haven't been practicing, but I don't think any of the people who interviewed me this year really knew or cared whether I'd won or not...
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Vital statistics
There's the 21st-century equivalent of a speak-your-weight machine in Woolworth's, and I had a go on it yesterday. You tell it how old and male you are and it scans you and does the rest. It gave me a little print-out that says
---------------------------------------------------------
YOUR MEASUREMENTS
Weight.......................12st4.6lb/78.3 kg
Height.......................5ft8.5in/174 cm
Body Fat Estimation:
Fat Index.................21.7%
Fat Mass..................2st9.2lb/16.9 kg
Free F.Mass...............9st9.3lb/61.4 kg
Age and Gender...............31 ♂
REFERENCES
Your Normal Weight is between:
60.6 kg-75.4 kg
9st7.6lb-11st12.2lb
Your current Body Mass Index
is 25.9 kg/m². The Normal B.M.I.
value is between 20 and 24.9
Normal Fat Index............17-23 %
Normal Fat Mass: 12.6-18.3 kg or
1st13.7lb-2st12.3lb
17/10/07,Wednesday...........11:54:59
This in not a medical act.
· Do not self medicate.
· Control your weight.
· Consult your doctor regularly
or pharmacist.
---------------------------------------------------------
Well, I thought I should share it. You all want to know everything about me, right? In my defence, I had just had a Drifter and a can of cherry coke (yes, I eat sweets before lunchtime and ruin my appetite), and I was wearing my shoes and clothes and hat, that has to add a bit of extra weight.
I'm not sure I should take advice on losing weight from any machine that says "this in not a medical act", but you know, maybe I should make an effort to get back into my Normal Weight range. It wouldn't take too much effort, would it? Half a stone? Any old fool can lose that much. You just have to go to the world memory championship for a day. I think I might make this a project. November 17th, I'll go back to the machine and see if it tells me I'm Normal!
Note for Americans - 14 pounds to a stone. Do the math, if you really want to.
---------------------------------------------------------
YOUR MEASUREMENTS
Weight.......................12st4.6lb/78.3 kg
Height.......................5ft8.5in/174 cm
Body Fat Estimation:
Fat Index.................21.7%
Fat Mass..................2st9.2lb/16.9 kg
Free F.Mass...............9st9.3lb/61.4 kg
Age and Gender...............31 ♂
REFERENCES
Your Normal Weight is between:
60.6 kg-75.4 kg
9st7.6lb-11st12.2lb
Your current Body Mass Index
is 25.9 kg/m². The Normal B.M.I.
value is between 20 and 24.9
Normal Fat Index............17-23 %
Normal Fat Mass: 12.6-18.3 kg or
1st13.7lb-2st12.3lb
17/10/07,Wednesday...........11:54:59
This in not a medical act.
· Do not self medicate.
· Control your weight.
· Consult your doctor regularly
or pharmacist.
---------------------------------------------------------
Well, I thought I should share it. You all want to know everything about me, right? In my defence, I had just had a Drifter and a can of cherry coke (yes, I eat sweets before lunchtime and ruin my appetite), and I was wearing my shoes and clothes and hat, that has to add a bit of extra weight.
I'm not sure I should take advice on losing weight from any machine that says "this in not a medical act", but you know, maybe I should make an effort to get back into my Normal Weight range. It wouldn't take too much effort, would it? Half a stone? Any old fool can lose that much. You just have to go to the world memory championship for a day. I think I might make this a project. November 17th, I'll go back to the machine and see if it tells me I'm Normal!
Note for Americans - 14 pounds to a stone. Do the math, if you really want to.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Reader mail
Thanks to Boris, Gregory and Mike for responding to my request for subjects to write about! This is going to be a long (and hopefully interesting) blog entry...
I´d like to read, how your telephone interview went like.
Really? Because last night, sitting down and intending to write about my telephone interview was what made me think 'this blog of mine is getting really boring nowadays'. But hey, if you really want to know about my half-hearted job-hunting... It went quite well, really. I was talking to the financial director and an HR person - this job reports directly to the FD, which is a bit unusual, there's normally another level separating the big boss from the management accountant - and I think I mostly gave the impression of knowing what I'm talking about. I did have one embarrassing blank spot though - they asked me the routine question of what I know about their company, and I suddenly realised I couldn't think of anything. It's the telephone's fault (curse you, Alexander Graham Bell!), because normally while I'm travelling to an interview, I take a printout of interesting pages from the company website with me and read through them, memorising useful snippets of information. In this case, I hadn't done that and couldn't even remember which of the various companies I've been looking at lately I was talking to at that moment. I stumbled through it in the end, and I do have the Excel skills they want (and very few people do have that level of ability), so we'll see if I get a second interview. If I do, that one will be face-to-face, at least.
Do you have any ideas on how to make memory sports more popular especially for new competitors with and without taking into account limits on people and money to do the necessary tasks?
Yes, I do. I think a large part of any plan to increase the popularity of 'memory sports' would have to be to make the general public aware of its existence, and to give them the impression that it's something anyone can do, and have fun doing! I would like to see a televised memory championship along the lines of the US Championship, only with more emphasis on the numbers and cards, so as to show off the more impressive skills of the European competitors. This TV competition (which would be made in a swish TV studio with groovy graphics and things) would be in addition to, not replacing, the normal memory competitions, and would mainly be to highlight to the general public what's possible with memory skills. I think it'd get a good audience on Channel 4.
Apart from that, what we need is more publicity, and a lot more teaching of memory skills at a basic level to people who've never heard of it before. This is something that's been done in Germany but has been completely neglected in Britain in the past. There are plans in the works right now for a couple of different projects to go into schools and universities and organise competitions - one of them is being organised by the WMSC, and so probably won't happen (they're good at planning things but not at actually doing anything about their plans), the other is by someone else and really is likely to make a difference and bring in more competitors.
One more thing we need, naturally, is more championships, with accessible locations, lots of advance publicity and maybe even some prize money. Most championships in the past have managed one or two of the three - if someone manages to hold a competition that brings all of those together, it really will excite interest on a much wider scale.
Discuss the developments in England between 1815-1832. Explain why Parliament eventually chose to pass the reform bill of 1832.
Something that I think is often neglected in discussion of the buildup to the Great Reform Bill (which wasn't really all that great, if you ask me, although at least it laid the groundwork for later electoral reforms that really achieved something) is the role of the monarchy. People answering this kind of essay question like to say how the industrial revolution and the defeat of Napoleon had given the average Briton more time on their hands to complain about iniquities, without looking at the way Parliament had gradually assumed a much more important role in recent years, due to the diminishment of the traditional role of the King.
Until after the end of the 18th century, there was still a general feeling that Parliament existed to fulfil its traditional role of gathering together important people to advise the King on how to rule his country. George III had always taken a very active part in politics, but by 1815 he was incurably insane and his fat, lazy, useless son was technically in charge of Britain. George IV wasn't interested in politics at all, unless it directly affected his plans to stuff his face and have fun, and reduced his role in the great events of the day to agreeing with whatever politician had spoken to him last. Parliament for the first time in many years was free to do what it wanted, without the monarch butting in. Naturally, the likes of Earl Grey took the opportunity to make the Commons into a fairer representation of the average working man.
I'm in college and this is a question our professor gave us in advance for Donnerstag. can you give some advice on how one can utilize memory techniques in essay writing?
No. No, I really can't. I've never used memory techniques for essay writing or anything vaguely like it. I use memory techniques for the sole purpose of trying and failing to win the world memory championship, not in any everyday-life application.
Is there a way to make a journey follow the ideas of an essay? I suppose you could use the same strategy that you employ for poems, but I think the richness of imagery in poetry lends itself to mnemonics much more easily. What mnemonic techniques could I use for this essay for example?
Well, I suppose you could use a journey to sort concepts or ideas into the sequence that you're intending to use them. I think that's what the books on the subject advise you to do, anyway, although I have no idea whether it would work or not. Or you could use the kind of technique we use in the 'historic dates' discipline to associate images with the year and the events that happened in it - 1832 for me is the obscure 1940s superhero the Fin (he wore a suit with a big shark fin on his head); I'd imagine him lecturing parliament or maybe rampaging through a rotten borough, denouncing it loudly, and probably drinking Earl Grey tea as he did so. That's quite fun, actually. 1833, abolition of slavery - the characters from badly-written preschool children's TV show the Fimbles, slaving away in chains being whipped by that frog they hang out with, until they're liberated. 1834, Tolpuddle Martyrs - a muscleman ('virile man' is the phrase, for anyone who's following the Ben-system logic) being loaded onto a ship, singing trade union songs in a manly kind of way. I could work through a whole history book like this. Maybe I should...
write about your teenage years =D
Well, my teenage years were in the early nineties, so I'm not sure it would mean anything to a current teenager like you. If memory serves, I mainly spent my time waiting for the internet to be invented. Well, that and playing chess. A gang of us at school used to spend every spare moment playing chess. Which is what the cool kids did in those days. All the handsome, athletic types were deeply envious of us. Really.
Apart from that, I don't think I ever really did anything worth writing about. I was living in the middle of nowhere with my dad and brother, going to Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle, as previously mentioned, and generally not working as hard as I should, if at all. Then I left school and briefly went to Kingston University before giving it up as a bad idea, then went to a training centre to do an NVQ in accountancy, then got a job, then stopped being a teenager.
Outside my own life, things of vague interest were happening. I remember being excited when Margaret Thatcher resigned when I was 14 - she'd been PM since I was two and a half, so deep down I still think she's really cool, despite all rational thought on the subject. I also remember hearing that John Smith had died - I was in the sixth form common room and someone had been listening to the radio on a walkman. When he heard the headline, he got up and turned on the radio to play it to the whole room. That's one of those rare moments where I really do remember where I was when it happened.
I´d like to read, how your telephone interview went like.
Really? Because last night, sitting down and intending to write about my telephone interview was what made me think 'this blog of mine is getting really boring nowadays'. But hey, if you really want to know about my half-hearted job-hunting... It went quite well, really. I was talking to the financial director and an HR person - this job reports directly to the FD, which is a bit unusual, there's normally another level separating the big boss from the management accountant - and I think I mostly gave the impression of knowing what I'm talking about. I did have one embarrassing blank spot though - they asked me the routine question of what I know about their company, and I suddenly realised I couldn't think of anything. It's the telephone's fault (curse you, Alexander Graham Bell!), because normally while I'm travelling to an interview, I take a printout of interesting pages from the company website with me and read through them, memorising useful snippets of information. In this case, I hadn't done that and couldn't even remember which of the various companies I've been looking at lately I was talking to at that moment. I stumbled through it in the end, and I do have the Excel skills they want (and very few people do have that level of ability), so we'll see if I get a second interview. If I do, that one will be face-to-face, at least.
Do you have any ideas on how to make memory sports more popular especially for new competitors with and without taking into account limits on people and money to do the necessary tasks?
Yes, I do. I think a large part of any plan to increase the popularity of 'memory sports' would have to be to make the general public aware of its existence, and to give them the impression that it's something anyone can do, and have fun doing! I would like to see a televised memory championship along the lines of the US Championship, only with more emphasis on the numbers and cards, so as to show off the more impressive skills of the European competitors. This TV competition (which would be made in a swish TV studio with groovy graphics and things) would be in addition to, not replacing, the normal memory competitions, and would mainly be to highlight to the general public what's possible with memory skills. I think it'd get a good audience on Channel 4.
Apart from that, what we need is more publicity, and a lot more teaching of memory skills at a basic level to people who've never heard of it before. This is something that's been done in Germany but has been completely neglected in Britain in the past. There are plans in the works right now for a couple of different projects to go into schools and universities and organise competitions - one of them is being organised by the WMSC, and so probably won't happen (they're good at planning things but not at actually doing anything about their plans), the other is by someone else and really is likely to make a difference and bring in more competitors.
One more thing we need, naturally, is more championships, with accessible locations, lots of advance publicity and maybe even some prize money. Most championships in the past have managed one or two of the three - if someone manages to hold a competition that brings all of those together, it really will excite interest on a much wider scale.
Discuss the developments in England between 1815-1832. Explain why Parliament eventually chose to pass the reform bill of 1832.
Something that I think is often neglected in discussion of the buildup to the Great Reform Bill (which wasn't really all that great, if you ask me, although at least it laid the groundwork for later electoral reforms that really achieved something) is the role of the monarchy. People answering this kind of essay question like to say how the industrial revolution and the defeat of Napoleon had given the average Briton more time on their hands to complain about iniquities, without looking at the way Parliament had gradually assumed a much more important role in recent years, due to the diminishment of the traditional role of the King.
Until after the end of the 18th century, there was still a general feeling that Parliament existed to fulfil its traditional role of gathering together important people to advise the King on how to rule his country. George III had always taken a very active part in politics, but by 1815 he was incurably insane and his fat, lazy, useless son was technically in charge of Britain. George IV wasn't interested in politics at all, unless it directly affected his plans to stuff his face and have fun, and reduced his role in the great events of the day to agreeing with whatever politician had spoken to him last. Parliament for the first time in many years was free to do what it wanted, without the monarch butting in. Naturally, the likes of Earl Grey took the opportunity to make the Commons into a fairer representation of the average working man.
I'm in college and this is a question our professor gave us in advance for Donnerstag. can you give some advice on how one can utilize memory techniques in essay writing?
No. No, I really can't. I've never used memory techniques for essay writing or anything vaguely like it. I use memory techniques for the sole purpose of trying and failing to win the world memory championship, not in any everyday-life application.
Is there a way to make a journey follow the ideas of an essay? I suppose you could use the same strategy that you employ for poems, but I think the richness of imagery in poetry lends itself to mnemonics much more easily. What mnemonic techniques could I use for this essay for example?
Well, I suppose you could use a journey to sort concepts or ideas into the sequence that you're intending to use them. I think that's what the books on the subject advise you to do, anyway, although I have no idea whether it would work or not. Or you could use the kind of technique we use in the 'historic dates' discipline to associate images with the year and the events that happened in it - 1832 for me is the obscure 1940s superhero the Fin (he wore a suit with a big shark fin on his head); I'd imagine him lecturing parliament or maybe rampaging through a rotten borough, denouncing it loudly, and probably drinking Earl Grey tea as he did so. That's quite fun, actually. 1833, abolition of slavery - the characters from badly-written preschool children's TV show the Fimbles, slaving away in chains being whipped by that frog they hang out with, until they're liberated. 1834, Tolpuddle Martyrs - a muscleman ('virile man' is the phrase, for anyone who's following the Ben-system logic) being loaded onto a ship, singing trade union songs in a manly kind of way. I could work through a whole history book like this. Maybe I should...
write about your teenage years =D
Well, my teenage years were in the early nineties, so I'm not sure it would mean anything to a current teenager like you. If memory serves, I mainly spent my time waiting for the internet to be invented. Well, that and playing chess. A gang of us at school used to spend every spare moment playing chess. Which is what the cool kids did in those days. All the handsome, athletic types were deeply envious of us. Really.
Apart from that, I don't think I ever really did anything worth writing about. I was living in the middle of nowhere with my dad and brother, going to Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle, as previously mentioned, and generally not working as hard as I should, if at all. Then I left school and briefly went to Kingston University before giving it up as a bad idea, then went to a training centre to do an NVQ in accountancy, then got a job, then stopped being a teenager.
Outside my own life, things of vague interest were happening. I remember being excited when Margaret Thatcher resigned when I was 14 - she'd been PM since I was two and a half, so deep down I still think she's really cool, despite all rational thought on the subject. I also remember hearing that John Smith had died - I was in the sixth form common room and someone had been listening to the radio on a walkman. When he heard the headline, he got up and turned on the radio to play it to the whole room. That's one of those rare moments where I really do remember where I was when it happened.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Being Boring
You know, I get the feeling that I haven't written anything interesting in this blog lately. I think it's mainly because I haven't done anything interesting lately, but I still feel guilty about depriving my readers of interesting babblings every evening. So I'd like to ask for suggestions - what should I write about? I mean, I generally write this thing to entertain myself, but it would be nice to know what my various weird readers enjoy reading about and what they don't. Someone tell me what to write, and I'll do it tomorrow. That way I don't have to think of something myself, and I preserve my brain cells, in case I need them later.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Everyone wants a piece of me
One advantage (possibly the only advantage) to being imminently featured on a Channel 5 documentary is that it makes it easier to decline offers to be the subject of other documentaries. Another producer called me today, thinking of making a documentary about me (she'd looked me up in the electoral roll, she said - I never cease to be amazed by the ways people go to get in contact with me. Just put my name into google, you'll even find my phone number quoted without my permission in a press release...), but was easily deterred when I pointed out that a documentary about me is in the final stages of editing at the moment. Nick says I'll like it - I very much doubt that I will, but we'll see.
I was less successful in saying no to the one accountancy recruitment agency who I neglected to tell that I don't want any more temp jobs, when they called a bit later on to offer me an interview-followed-by-immediate-start kind of thing at Bombardier the train people down the road, lasting till Christmas doing project work of some kind. It's on Thursday, unless I find a way to get out of it.
Before that, though, there's a telephone interview tomorrow for a real job, with Proquest in Cambridge, which sounds like it might be fun. It's a very Excel-heavy job, that sounds like it might be right up my street, although they might want some more VBA programming experience than I've got. I got a crash-course book to refresh my knowledge of it, and I'm pleased to see that I do mostly know what I'm doing after all. Might be a cool job, if it works out. But telephone interviews are a terrible thing. I hate phone calls in general, and especially phone calls when they're important. What's wrong with dressing up in smart clothes and shiny shoes and talking to people face to face? Yes, I dislike that too, but not as much as telephone interviews.
I was less successful in saying no to the one accountancy recruitment agency who I neglected to tell that I don't want any more temp jobs, when they called a bit later on to offer me an interview-followed-by-immediate-start kind of thing at Bombardier the train people down the road, lasting till Christmas doing project work of some kind. It's on Thursday, unless I find a way to get out of it.
Before that, though, there's a telephone interview tomorrow for a real job, with Proquest in Cambridge, which sounds like it might be fun. It's a very Excel-heavy job, that sounds like it might be right up my street, although they might want some more VBA programming experience than I've got. I got a crash-course book to refresh my knowledge of it, and I'm pleased to see that I do mostly know what I'm doing after all. Might be a cool job, if it works out. But telephone interviews are a terrible thing. I hate phone calls in general, and especially phone calls when they're important. What's wrong with dressing up in smart clothes and shiny shoes and talking to people face to face? Yes, I dislike that too, but not as much as telephone interviews.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
I want a star!
Roger Moore got a star on the walk of fame for his birthday, and I want one too! I could be an actor. The evil English genius, as someone suggested recently. Still hoping someone plays me that way in the movie of "Moonwalking With Einstein". Or I think I'd make a good evil scientist in a Japanese monster movie, the kind who starts out seeming like one of the good guys, but turns out to in fact want the monster to destroy Tokyo.
Anyway, happy birthday to me, and Roger, and Cliff Richard, the late E E Cummings and the very late Battle of Hastings, and Jason (someone on the rugby coverage was just holding up a sign saying "happy birthday Jason"). Also, happy birthday yesterday to the other Ben Pridmore on Facebook (the one who formerly had dreadlocks) - had I been born five minutes earlier, we'd have shared a birthday as well as a name and a fondness for silly hairstyles. We should have had a double party, open only to people called Ben Pridmore who are celebrating a birthday this weekend. It would have been great.
Also, you should watch Pillow's Pillow's Story, made years ago but I've only just discovered it's on YouTube. The voice of the pillow is my brother.
Anyway, happy birthday to me, and Roger, and Cliff Richard, the late E E Cummings and the very late Battle of Hastings, and Jason (someone on the rugby coverage was just holding up a sign saying "happy birthday Jason"). Also, happy birthday yesterday to the other Ben Pridmore on Facebook (the one who formerly had dreadlocks) - had I been born five minutes earlier, we'd have shared a birthday as well as a name and a fondness for silly hairstyles. We should have had a double party, open only to people called Ben Pridmore who are celebrating a birthday this weekend. It would have been great.
Also, you should watch Pillow's Pillow's Story, made years ago but I've only just discovered it's on YouTube. The voice of the pillow is my brother.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Try, try again
The commentator on the rugby tonight described Sébastien Chabal as 'the 21st century Asterix', because he's really large. Honestly, what do they teach them at school nowadays?
Watching the game right now, after the football this afternoon, not to mention a bit of golf before that. It's not my fault if I haven't achieved anything productive today, it's the TV people.
Also, yes, Boris, got your emails, I'll reply as soon as I get a chance. Likewise James, and no doubt lots of other people too. I'm just lazy. As you can see from the short blog entry tonight.
Watching the game right now, after the football this afternoon, not to mention a bit of golf before that. It's not my fault if I haven't achieved anything productive today, it's the TV people.
Also, yes, Boris, got your emails, I'll reply as soon as I get a chance. Likewise James, and no doubt lots of other people too. I'm just lazy. As you can see from the short blog entry tonight.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Nimble fingers!
Woo! I memorised a pack of cards in 23.05 seconds today! I should have switched to that shuffling-the-cards-between-my-fingers method years ago! It really is a lot quicker than turning them over two at a time, and it didn't take long to get used to it at all. I've hardly done any practice since the world championship, and I'm well over two seconds better than my previous best. I might just beat 25 seconds in a competition next year!
I also did a perfect 200 in spoken numbers today, for the first time ever. So all in all, I'm extremely happy with myself and in the mood to boast to everybody else in the world that I'm better than them. On the other hand, what I actually need to work on if I'm going to win the blasted WMC next year is the long events - it wasn't really the speed cards that lost me the world championship this year, it was the mess I made of the hour cards, and that was all down to me not having practiced the long disciplines enough, and built up the stamina you need to memorise for hours and hours over a three-day period. I would vow to spend all this weekend doing hour cards, hour numbers and half-hour binary, but a) you all know I wouldn't do it anyway and b) it's my birthday and I don't want you to think I'm a complete saddo.
Although I'm not having a party for another fortnight, and I don't actually have any plans for Sunday. Maybe I am a complete saddo...
I also did a perfect 200 in spoken numbers today, for the first time ever. So all in all, I'm extremely happy with myself and in the mood to boast to everybody else in the world that I'm better than them. On the other hand, what I actually need to work on if I'm going to win the blasted WMC next year is the long events - it wasn't really the speed cards that lost me the world championship this year, it was the mess I made of the hour cards, and that was all down to me not having practiced the long disciplines enough, and built up the stamina you need to memorise for hours and hours over a three-day period. I would vow to spend all this weekend doing hour cards, hour numbers and half-hour binary, but a) you all know I wouldn't do it anyway and b) it's my birthday and I don't want you to think I'm a complete saddo.
Although I'm not having a party for another fortnight, and I don't actually have any plans for Sunday. Maybe I am a complete saddo...
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Should've wispaed a bit louder
I was quite surprised to read on Sam's blog that Wispas are being re-launched. I'd genuinely never noticed that they'd stopped selling them. Four years ago. How could that, and the subsequent internet campaigns and petitions, have passed me by so completely? It's not like I'm one of those health-food-eating, chocolate-hating weirdos you hear about - whenever I'm passing a newsagent or corner shop, I'll have a choc bar of some description. I quite like Wispas. Has it really been four years since I had one?
What other confectioneries might have been scrapped without my noticing? I'll have to take a thorough inventory of all the sweetie shelves in Derby. Trying to think what chocolate bars I haven't seen lately... Do they still make Topics? Never liked them, but haven't seen one for a while. I'm pretty sure they stopped making Fuse bars, which is a shame, because they were great. I think I heard something about Ripples recently, too - have they stopped, or restarted, those? I remember when they first came out. Wispas too. It's disgraceful that they should stop selling these things without asking me first.
What other confectioneries might have been scrapped without my noticing? I'll have to take a thorough inventory of all the sweetie shelves in Derby. Trying to think what chocolate bars I haven't seen lately... Do they still make Topics? Never liked them, but haven't seen one for a while. I'm pretty sure they stopped making Fuse bars, which is a shame, because they were great. I think I heard something about Ripples recently, too - have they stopped, or restarted, those? I remember when they first came out. Wispas too. It's disgraceful that they should stop selling these things without asking me first.
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