Why does everything I own inevitably explode?

Had to buy a new vacuum cleaner today in order to keep my clean-this-pigsty-up-a-bit resolution. The old one started pouring smoke out of itself when I turned it on, and although I'm not one of those technological whizzes, I'm pretty sure that's a bad sign. I considered leaving it on to see whether it would either stop or go bang and destroy half the street, but decided to just go and splash out on a new one from Argos. It's good for the economy to buy new vacuum cleaners, I understand.

Real plans this time!

I was out of bed this morning in time for a few speed cards before going to work (it's official, my brain is four seconds slower in the early morning than in the afternoons) and now I'm all fired up to actually do some memory training this weekend. And also some house-cleaning, because the BBC News website are coming to film me on Tuesday. And I've also had an email today from Korean TV wanting to film me for a memory documentary. The whole fame and fortune bandwagon keeps on rolling! (On a very obscure kind of back road that few people are watching...)

Have you ever noticed?

That if you're typing an email to somebody called Jim, and your right hand accidentally slips one key to the left, you end up writing a sentence like "Hun, if I send you an amended file, can you include it in a new report?" Which completely changes the tone of the whole email.

Yes, I'm still superhuman

I'm actually getting tired of seeing "Superhuman: Genius" in the TV listings. It seems to have been playing constantly on ITV4 for the last few months, and now tonight it's on ITV1 again. I mean, it's nice, but can't ITV make some new documentaries? And couldn't they buy "The Mentalists" and subject that to the same round-the-clock showing? "The Mentalists" is all about the world of memory competitions, and it's the kind of thing that motivates people to take part themselves. "Superhuman: Genius" just motivates people to tell me I'm extremely clever if they see me in the street.

Ah well, at least it clashes with Celebrity Big Brother Eviction, so nobody's going to watch it...

Meerkat market

Since I've posted more than one blog entry criticising TV adverts that have no idea how to sell their product, I thought I really should praise comparethemarket.com, for their brilliant 'comparethemeerkat.com' ads. Now THAT's how to present a concept in a memorable way!

For the benefit of foreigners or non-TV-watchers, comparethemarket.com is a car insurance website, and their adverts consist of a meerkat explaining that his website, comparethemeerkat.com, has been getting a lot of hits by mistake. If you want to compare meerkats (size, hobbies and so on) go to his website, if you're looking to compare the market for car insurance quotes, check out theirs.

The best part of it is that they've really created a http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/ site! Someone's had a lot of fun making it, I can tell. If I wanted car insurance, I'd almost be tempted to use the comparethemarket.com website. Almost. I'd probably still just call Direct Line, to be honest. Their adverts are more convincing.

Suspicious

Yesterday I bought "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher", largely because I'd seen someone at work reading it, liked the title and then noticed it in the bookshop and decided to flick through it, rather than because I had any idea what it was about. Who needs fancy advertising techniques, anyway?

Luckily, it turned out to be brilliant - it's a detailed true account of an 1860 murder investigation, and what's best about it is the picture it gives of the very earliest days of police detectives. The developing vocabulary of detective fact and fiction is really fascinating, and the writer (Kate Summerscale) has a real knack for picking up on the little nuances of meaning in 150-year-old language. I'd recommend the book to anyone!

More family history

In the spirit of the genealogical research of last Tuesday, it seems only fair to write something on the subject of my grandmother too. My other grandmother, that is - not the one who starred in The Mentalists, wasn't born until 1920 and is still alive and well today, but the one who died when my dad was young and consequently doesn't get mentioned very much when I talk about my family. Her only fifteen minutes of fame, to the best of my knowledge, come in this 1948 article from a Sheffield newspaper:

"The parents were delighted, and none more than Mrs. S. Pridmore, of 72, Robey Street. She has ten children, nine boys and a girl. They are all members of St. Thomas's, and two of them are in the choir, but it was left to 17-month-old Georgie to represent them and give the daffodils to their mother."

And here's little Georgie himself, proving that aside from the moustache, my dad really did look exactly the same for his entire life!



And finally, here's Mrs. S. Pridmore on the 1911 census, back when she was still Katherine Millership and a middle child of one of those wonderful enormous Sheffield familes, rather than spending her entire life from the age of 19 to 45 churning out offspring of her own:



Let's preserve the memory of my long-dead Other Grandma! I'm sure she'd be just as big a hit with documentary-watchers if she was alive today!

Just maybe...

... I might be getting back into the memory mood. Really feeling like getting in some hard-core training in preparation for the Welsh Championship at the end of March. I might just spend tomorrow memorising a whole lot of numbers, cards and anything else that comes to hand!

Stupid Expedia

Not stupid working when I'm trying to book a stupid trip to stupid New York. Stupid letting me pick out all the stupid flight/hotel/other options and then not stupid letting me stupid book them.

Still, assuming it becomes possible to buy flights and things at some point before March 5th or thereabouts, I've decided I'm definitely going to non-stupid New York for the US Championship. Woohoo! It'll be fun to see the sights and the people and the giant monsters! Who wants to hang out with me while I'm there?

Ties

There are many aspects of this world that history books of the future will poke fun at and which make me deeply ashamed to be living in this time period. One of the more trivial but nonetheless annoying is the fact that I wear a tie to work. And an ironed shirt. I mean, really, it's the 21st century. Why is it still necessary to knot a decorative strip of cloth around your neck in order to look smart? Perhaps I should make a stand and go to work in my pyjamas. Or naked. I'm extremely cool and popular, after all - maybe it would start a new trend and I'd appear in those history books as an inspiration for change?

The illustrations would be hand-drawn and would make me look a lot better in the nude than I do in real life. History is written by the cool people.

Time flies when you're... working

I just realised today that I've now been working for Boots for six months! It really doesn't feel like it - sad to say, I really am having fun. This thought disturbs me so much that I can't think of anything appropriate to write about the semi-anniversary.

The good old days

I heard today that the 1911 census is available on the internet, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and some bright spark noticing that it didn't become technically a law that you have to wait 100 years before releasing a census until 1920. And so, even though they make you pay money to look at it, I couldn't resist. Here's my granddad:

That's him at the bottom, Sidney Pridmore, age 10. Yes, my great-grandfather was born in the 1850s - we believe in big, big generation gaps in our family. Sid-Prid is rather an ugly rhyme, but then his parents had had twelve previous children (almost certainly most of them boys - females in our family tree are few and far between), so they were probably running short of names by then.

Funnily enough, if I'm remembering my family history properly, Granddad went on to have 13 children himself, three of whom died in infancy. I had no idea he was taking after his father. That's a weird family trend. And also, if Sid was the youngest of his Pridmore brood, does that make my dad the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child? And just how many magic powers does that grant me?

I really need to find out more about my family. Must get in touch with my cousin Sue, who actually knows about these things...

Office rituals

I'm vaguely irritated by the tradition of getting a 'secret' card for anyone in the office who has a birthday, gets married, has a baby, leaves the company, things like that. And particularly by the tradition of furtively passing the card around the office disguised by an old brown envelope and pretending it's some kind of tedious bureaucratic business. Every place I've ever worked does this, and I think it's just silly. It's not like the card-recipient ever doesn't know that a card is coming to them. Bah humbug, I say.

This doesn't mean I don't want a card next time I have a birthday, get married, have a baby or whatever. That'd be terrible! I hope nobody from work reads this...

The Cambridge Memory Championship!

Just a heads-up to let you all know that the Cambridge Memory Championship website, thanks to the usual great work by Grand Master of Memory James Ponder (sounds rather cool, doesn't it? I need to start using my GM title more in everyday conversation), is updated with everything you need to know about this year's competition.

Please do come to the championship! It's a lot of fun, it's designed to be beginner-friendly, and everyone is welcome! Also, it's free if it's your first competition!

I had plans for today

I had actually worked out a very specific programme of things to do today - I was going to clean the place up, do some memory training, all kinds of productive things. Maybe even pay my electic bill, since I've never got round to setting up a direct debit and haven't paid them any money since I moved in. My impression is that EDF haven't even noticed yet, but I think there's a fair chance that even a company as useless as them might start sending me letters soon.

Anyway, in the event, I woke up feeling lazy, took a long time finding a good reason not to stay in bed all day, and then noticed that "The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr T" was on Channel 5, so I just had to watch that, and then that was the whole morning gone, so I decided to spend the day relaxing and doing nothing instead, in preparation for a productive and successful day tomorrow.

But hey, isn't Dr T a wonderful film! The writing is hilarious and clever, the sets are amazing (some uncredited geniuses achieved the impossible and made three-dimensional versions of Dr Seuss designs!), the costumes are fantastic (I might try to make a Dr Terwilliker costume for the next fancy dress party I go to, and I really feel sorry for poor Peter Lind Hayes, who has to spend the entire film in ordinary-working-guy clothes when everybody else gets to dress up in the most awesome creations) and the acting (and singing, and dancing) from the four central actors is sensational! It's another one on my everybody-who-hasn't-seen-it-yet-needs-to-go-and-find-a-DVD-right-this-second list.

Yes, right this second. I don't care if it's 10pm and your local Zavvi store has been shut down by the administrators. Get out there!

Come let us stray our gladsome way and view the charms of nature

Look! Squirrels! A blog dedicated to pictures of red squirrels in Bavaria! It's great. I miss the squirrels who used to hang around my old flat in Derby - they had a regular route across the back yard which involved a section skittering quickly along a vertical wall to get to the roof of the shed in the next door garden. There don't seem to be any squirrels watchable from the windows of this house, although there are plenty of trees, big gardens and hiding-places. Maybe I'll leave some nuts lying around out the back and see what happens.

I'm in a bit of a nature-boy mood tonight, for some reason. I don't normally watch nature documentaries, but I saw an article earlier about a thing about cuckoos tonight, so I decided to watch it. And it was good stuff, too - it's always fun in a weird way to watch a tiny reed warbler feeding a massive screaming cuckoo chick three or four times its size.

2009 is your unlucky year!

This post has been edited because I just realised the Excel spreadsheet I used to work out the luckiness factors had a mistake in it!

It's true, we are now in what I like to call an Unlucky Year. Let me explain. The weirdness of the calendar means that every year has either one, two or three instances of a Friday The Thirteenth, and this year is one of the ones with three. 2006 and 2007 were Average Years (two Friday 13ths), but if we manage to get through the misfortunes of 2009, the following two years will be Lucky Years (just one Friday 13th)!

Unlucky Years don't happen very often. As any calendar-calculator knows, the days of the week run in 28-year sequences - if you were born on a Thursday, your 28th birthday will also be on a Thursday. If your third birthday is on a Saturday, your 31st birthday will be on a Saturday too. And, as a side note, during any 28-year cycle, each date will land on each day of the week exactly four times. So if you're one of those people who complain that your birthday is never on a weekend, you're lying.

In every 28-year cycle, there are 12 Lucky Years, 12 Average Years and just four Unlucky Years. The last Unlucky Year was 1998, the next will be 2012 (then 2015, then not until 2026). At one extremely boring point in the 28-year cycle, there are four consecutive Average Years - the next one is the dull period from 2017 to 2020 inclusive. The best run of luck you ever get is two Lucky Years in a row.

The three thirteenths to watch out for this year will be in February, March and November, as is the case in three of the four Unlucky Years of the cycle. The other is an Unlucky Leap Year, and has Friday 13ths in January, April and July.

Speaking of leap years, the year 2100 will not be a leap year, which will throw the 28-year sequence out. The upshot of this is that there will be some 28-year periods overlapping the turn of the century which have five or even six Unlucky Years in them! I'm going to spend the entire period from 2078 to 2099 hiding under my bed!

I hope you've enjoyed this fascinating blog entry. If you didn't, make sure to avoid this blog on July 6th, when I and all Excel users around the world will be celebrating Day 40000!

With a krypton factor of 999!

I missed the relaunch of The Krypton Factor at the weekend, but I caught the repeat tonight (didn't go to the football, sounds like it was a good game, though. Yay Derby!) and it was fantastic!

I always loved KF in the old days, and it was pleasing to see that the new series is exactly the same (except, sadly, without the aeroplane-simulator round). I would love to be a competitor! The obstacle course would literally kill me, of course, but the rest of it would be fun.

Adverts of which I disapprove

I can't believe they're STILL showing that "Colour Catcher" advert with "the proof's on the sheet!" stupidity. I complained about it on my blog MONTHS ago! And they still haven't taken it off the air!

And now there's an advert for some company or other that's changing its name, in which a number of actors and musicians observe that their stage names are better than their real names. Ringo Starr interacts with footage of screaming Beatle fans and asks "Would any of this have happened to me if I was still Richard Starkey?"

Well, yes, Ringo, it would. If you remember, you adopted the stage-name in order to become the drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who all had silly names, and then your mates in another band asked you to start playing with them instead, and it all got quite big from there. I'm almost certain that the exact same amount of fame and adulation would have come your way if you were still Richard Starkey.

Incidentally, I can't remember what company this advert's for. Like many adverts, it has no idea about how to make something memorable. The new and old names of the company are just flashed up on screen right at the end, entirely disconnected from the preceding celebrity-fest. They must have spent a fortune on the advert, and it doesn't do its job at all. I ask you.

Also, what's with those Renault adverts that operate from the starting point that nobody wants to buy a Renault, and then tries to convince you that the new one is actually quite cool, so maybe you should reconsider your prejudices. I thought Renaults were cool all along! Weren't they? What was wrong with Nicole and Papa? Now that was a good advertising campaign.

Also, and this isn't an advert I'm complaining about, I have a strange urge to go and see Derby play Man Utd in the league cup semi-final first leg tomorrow night. I don't know why, I never once went to see Derby play, even when I was living there and they were in the premier league and playing Man Utd all the time (well, twice in a year, anyway). Still, I feel like going to see this one now. Anyone want to come with me?

Doctor what?

I suppose, seeing as I go on about Doctor Who all the time on this blog, I should jump to conclusions about the new star actor without knowing anything about him or the future plans for the series. I've seen Matt Smith in The Ruby In The Smoke and The Shadow In The North - or at least, I must have seen him in those, since I watched them, and thought they were quite good. And Jim is a great character in the books, so it's a bit disturbing that I don't remember a single thing about Matt Smith's performance. Still, maybe he'll be a better match for the Doctor. There's nothing wrong with having a very young actor playing the part (although he'll be the first younger-than-me Doctor, which is alarming), but they'll need a hairstyle and costume that are timeless rather than trendy for it to work.

That's enough anticipation, though, we're not going to see him until 2010, and by that point we'll all be living on the moon and driving space cars.