Here I am in Edmonton, Alberta! It's VERY cold, but also nice and sunny and a really great city! There's a truly excellent comic shop just around the corner from my hotel, and a West Edmonton Mall full of things that I've spent the morning wandering around. I'm extraordinarily jetlagged and sleep-deprived, but I'm sure I'll catch up with the dream schedule before Saturday's competition.
Anyway, among the things to be found at Happy Harbor Comics is Runaways #8, so let me just remind you all at length that you should be reading it. The eighth issue of a modern comic is sort of the difficult second album - nowadays, the first six issues generally have to compromise the first trade paperback, and so the seventh will have a lot of recapping of what's gone before, so it's hard to judge how good or bad the second arc will be until you get to #8. And it's generally bad. Pretty much all the writers of superhero comics today are perfectly capable of writing a six-part story introducing the characters and setting, but often really quite terrible at the doing-something-with-it part that comes next. I don't mean to sound like one of those comic fans who says all comics suck, but, well, they sort of do.
Rainbow Rowell, though, is quite possibly an exception to that! I can safely say that after the getting-the-gang-back-together story that took up the first six issues, it's continued on in an entertaining and well-written way that still has that much-appreciated feel of genuinely 'getting' the characters without just rehashing the old stories. I still like it! And maybe, if the TV show gets renewed for a new season and Marvel doesn't mind the comic's low sales figures, it won't be cancelled after #12! It really shouldn't be; it's actually a great comic!
Thursday, April 05, 2018
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
Live from Gatwick Airport
And a very boring airport it is too, hence the blogging. But still, I'm on my way to Canada!
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Hardly worth getting out of bed
But even though tomorrow's a whole hour shorter than the average day, I'm going to do some more extensive old-school pen-and-paper memory training. I'll be on something approaching half-decent form by the time I get to Canada, hopefully!
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Wilkie Collins's missing person
Here's a fun trivia question for anyone who's as big a fan as me of the works of Wilkie Collins - he was strangely fond of giving supporting characters in his novels a title of distinction coupled with an unusual surname starting with "Ben". Scattered among his books you can find Father Ben----, Doctor Ben----- and Captain Ben------. Anyone who can fill in the blanks and name the books deserves a special prize, which I'll provide once I've looted it from a revered Indian idol. I'll provide the answer below, after a brief spoiler-space filled with ramblings about 1860s English literature, so if any genuine Collins-lovers happen by this blog, look away now, until you've remembered the answer.
When it comes to Victorian fiction, I think I'm what the people back then would call "modern" in my tastes - I can do without Charles Dickens, in fact, but if I'm ever exiled to the Desert Island Discs island, I'd have to take some kind of mega-compilation of the entire works of Wilkie Collins and Mrs Henry Wood. The two of them comprise everything you really need to read if you want the best writing of that particular era. I don't know if either of them would have wanted to be grouped together like that - Mrs Wood especially, who in her late-1860s editorial reviews in the Argosy magazine was repeatedly rude about Collins and the "sensation" writers he inspired. She certainly didn't consider herself to be one of that breed, and is probably turning in her grave at the way most modern commentators (if they mention her at all) lump her in with those types. And of course, those reviews couldn't have been anything to do with the way her own brief star was in decline at that point, while his was shining ever brighter and brighter. Anyway, one thing I'm going to do one day, maybe, eventually, is a fully detailed analysis and commentary blog dedicated to the Johnny Ludlow stories. Look forward to it, if I ever have the time and energy to write it!
But to return to Wilkie and his Bens, the answers are the scheming Jesuit Father Benwell in "The Black Robe", the horrible (but strangely likeable) vivisectionist Doctor Benjulia in "Heart and Science" and the entirely nice and benevolent Captain Bennydeck in "The Evil Genius", who comes back at the end of the book and marries the wayward girl.
In that respect, Captain Bennydeck is another of Collins's recurring themes. He shares more than just a rank with the unfortunately-named Captain Kirke in "No Name"; they both also share the extremely common plot function of the good man who is absent from the main action of the story (for virtuous, self-denying, heroic reasons, of course), only to return at the climax and sweep the heroine off her feet. Bennydeck, in fact, is at least a presence throughout the book even when he's not around; Kirke makes just a brief token appearance early on, before popping up at the end and providing the happy ending. The whole trend started with Walter Hartright in "The Woman in White", but Collins revisited it over and over again in later years.
The one I find particularly strange, is the good man who doesn't return! There's something a bit strange about the novel "Man and Wife", and I don't mean Wilkie Collins's obsession with marriage laws or the evils of sports (a subplot in the book repeatedly asserts that anyone who participates in athletic events will inevitably die young of complete physical breakdown and also become an evil, immoral villain), it's the disappearance of Mr Kendrew.
To summarise the story briefly, it starts with a prologue - two women, Blanche and Anne, swore eternal friendship as children despite the difference in their social class. Blanche married the baronet Sir Thomas Lundie and had a daughter also called Blanche; Anne married the horrible cad Mr Vanborough and had a daughter also called Anne. The prologue describes an eventful evening's conversation between Vanborough, his friend Mr Kendrew and a lawyer, Mr Delamayn. Delamayn confirms that due to a legal loophole, the Vanboroughs' marriage is invalid. This pleases Vanborough, who wants to forge a parliamentary career for himself and wants a wife with better connections, who'll help him attain his eventual goal of a peerage. He heartlessly discards Anne and their daughter without any compunction, much to the horror of Kendrew, who ends their friendship immediately. How Kendrew, a decent, moral, principled man, became friends with Vanborough in the first place is unnarrated, and just has to go down as one of life's mysteries.
The second part of the prologue then briefly summarises what happens to everyone over the next twelve years. Anne dies, naturally - a broken heart was always a fatal condition in Victorian novels. Blanche (Lady Lundie) takes young Anne into her household as young Blanche's governess and companion. Lady Lundie later dies, leaving Sir Thomas to remarry before dying himself and thus giving the rest of the novel a comic-relief supporting character in the second Lady Lundie. Vanborough marries Lady Jane and enters parliament, but doesn't prosper simply because nobody likes him. Delamayn also enters parliament, prospers wonderfully and eventually is made Lord Holchester. Vanborough eventually commits suicide.
And as for Mr Kendrew, the prologue goes into detail about him too.
"How the husband’s friend marked his sense of the husband’s treachery has been told already. How he felt the death of the deserted wife is still left to tell. Report, which sees the inmost hearts of men, and delights in turning them outward to the public view, had always declared that Mr. Kendrew’s life had its secret, and that the secret was a hopeless passion for the beautiful woman who had married his friend. Not a hint ever dropped to any living soul, not a word ever spoken to the woman herself, could be produced in proof of the assertion while the woman lived. When she died Report started up again more confidently than ever, and appealed to the man’s own conduct as proof against the man himself.
And then we go into the real action of the book. It can be summarised pretty quickly - Geoffrey Delamayn, second son of Lord Holchester, grows up to be a celebrated sportsman and unspeakable cad. He gets young Anne, virtuous governess who just has that one little moral lapse, "in a scrape". She insists that he marry her; he doesn't want to; she threatens to kill herself; he grudgingly agrees to a private marriage. She goes to take a room in an inn nearby, presenting herself as a married woman in order to get a room. Geoffrey is supposed to join her there and make an honest woman of her, but is suddenly called away by news that his father is ill. He sends his friend Arnold (also young Blanche's fiance) to the inn to explain things. A storm forces him to spend the night there, claiming to be Anne's husband. When Geoffrey finds out that this maybe, possibly, means that Arnold and Anne have got married under Scottish law, he's delighted and uses this as a good excuse to abandon her.
The main characters - Geoffrey, Anne, Blanche, Arnold and Blanche's uncle Sir Patrick Lundie - then fill the required length of a Victorian three-volume novel by running around at cross-purposes for ages and ages, always telling each other everything except the one important piece of information they need to know in order to take a sensible course of action and resolve everything. The novel then redeems itself at the end with an absolutely wonderful climax, real edge-of-your-seat stuff of the type that only Wilkie Collins could produce, following which the good end happily and the bad unhappily, and Sir Patrick marries Anne. Old men marrying young women was a good thing in those days, except in the works of radical moaners like George Eliot.
But where's Mr Kendrew? Surely the prologue is setting things up for him to be the one who comes back to marry poor Anne in the end? He's never mentioned again after that prologue, and instead Sir Patrick (who isn't mentioned at all in the prologue) fills that role. I think Wilkie Collins just made a mess of the prologue somehow, assigning the wrong roles to the wrong men - in the main story, Sir Patrick's legal knowledge and background is an essential part of the plot, while Lord Holchester (the former Mr Delamayn) shows no traces of ever having been a lawyer, being just a grumpy old peer with a scoundrel for a son. I'm convinced that he intended the lawyer of the prologue to go on to be the lawyer of the story, only to realise after the prologue had been published (the novel was serialised in Cassell's Magazine) that he'd somehow turned the lawyer into Geoffrey's father and the layman into the potential future husband of Anne. What an unfortunate cock-up, but never mind. Take another draught of opium, Wilkie, and invent someone new. Sir Patrick.
I know this isn't the kind of writing Wilkie Collins is famous for (indeed, he was widely derided by his fellow authors of the late 19th century for actually knowing how his novels were going to end before he started to write them!), but he was still a Victorian writer, and he wasn't above making it up as he went along if he had to. "Armadale", as John Sutherland explains at length in one of his wonderful essays, was obviously written on the fly without the extensive planning that Collins preferred. "Jezebel's Daughter" is even more glaring - he tries to write it as the personal witness testimony of the narrator, but after half a novel of David being present at every important event and conversation, seeing and hearing everything on both sides of the villain's schemes but telling nobody what he's witnessed, Wilkie seems to realise how stupid the whole thing is and packs David off back to London, saying that the rest of the novel he knows from reading people's diaries in later years. It's not very good, that one - we could even leave it out of my Collins/Wood compilation if we wanted to save a bit of paper. "Man and Wife", though, I recommend to everyone - if you haven't read it, do check it out and see if you agree with me about the strange case of Mr Kendrew...
When it comes to Victorian fiction, I think I'm what the people back then would call "modern" in my tastes - I can do without Charles Dickens, in fact, but if I'm ever exiled to the Desert Island Discs island, I'd have to take some kind of mega-compilation of the entire works of Wilkie Collins and Mrs Henry Wood. The two of them comprise everything you really need to read if you want the best writing of that particular era. I don't know if either of them would have wanted to be grouped together like that - Mrs Wood especially, who in her late-1860s editorial reviews in the Argosy magazine was repeatedly rude about Collins and the "sensation" writers he inspired. She certainly didn't consider herself to be one of that breed, and is probably turning in her grave at the way most modern commentators (if they mention her at all) lump her in with those types. And of course, those reviews couldn't have been anything to do with the way her own brief star was in decline at that point, while his was shining ever brighter and brighter. Anyway, one thing I'm going to do one day, maybe, eventually, is a fully detailed analysis and commentary blog dedicated to the Johnny Ludlow stories. Look forward to it, if I ever have the time and energy to write it!
But to return to Wilkie and his Bens, the answers are the scheming Jesuit Father Benwell in "The Black Robe", the horrible (but strangely likeable) vivisectionist Doctor Benjulia in "Heart and Science" and the entirely nice and benevolent Captain Bennydeck in "The Evil Genius", who comes back at the end of the book and marries the wayward girl.
In that respect, Captain Bennydeck is another of Collins's recurring themes. He shares more than just a rank with the unfortunately-named Captain Kirke in "No Name"; they both also share the extremely common plot function of the good man who is absent from the main action of the story (for virtuous, self-denying, heroic reasons, of course), only to return at the climax and sweep the heroine off her feet. Bennydeck, in fact, is at least a presence throughout the book even when he's not around; Kirke makes just a brief token appearance early on, before popping up at the end and providing the happy ending. The whole trend started with Walter Hartright in "The Woman in White", but Collins revisited it over and over again in later years.
The one I find particularly strange, is the good man who doesn't return! There's something a bit strange about the novel "Man and Wife", and I don't mean Wilkie Collins's obsession with marriage laws or the evils of sports (a subplot in the book repeatedly asserts that anyone who participates in athletic events will inevitably die young of complete physical breakdown and also become an evil, immoral villain), it's the disappearance of Mr Kendrew.
To summarise the story briefly, it starts with a prologue - two women, Blanche and Anne, swore eternal friendship as children despite the difference in their social class. Blanche married the baronet Sir Thomas Lundie and had a daughter also called Blanche; Anne married the horrible cad Mr Vanborough and had a daughter also called Anne. The prologue describes an eventful evening's conversation between Vanborough, his friend Mr Kendrew and a lawyer, Mr Delamayn. Delamayn confirms that due to a legal loophole, the Vanboroughs' marriage is invalid. This pleases Vanborough, who wants to forge a parliamentary career for himself and wants a wife with better connections, who'll help him attain his eventual goal of a peerage. He heartlessly discards Anne and their daughter without any compunction, much to the horror of Kendrew, who ends their friendship immediately. How Kendrew, a decent, moral, principled man, became friends with Vanborough in the first place is unnarrated, and just has to go down as one of life's mysteries.
The second part of the prologue then briefly summarises what happens to everyone over the next twelve years. Anne dies, naturally - a broken heart was always a fatal condition in Victorian novels. Blanche (Lady Lundie) takes young Anne into her household as young Blanche's governess and companion. Lady Lundie later dies, leaving Sir Thomas to remarry before dying himself and thus giving the rest of the novel a comic-relief supporting character in the second Lady Lundie. Vanborough marries Lady Jane and enters parliament, but doesn't prosper simply because nobody likes him. Delamayn also enters parliament, prospers wonderfully and eventually is made Lord Holchester. Vanborough eventually commits suicide.
And as for Mr Kendrew, the prologue goes into detail about him too.
"How the husband’s friend marked his sense of the husband’s treachery has been told already. How he felt the death of the deserted wife is still left to tell. Report, which sees the inmost hearts of men, and delights in turning them outward to the public view, had always declared that Mr. Kendrew’s life had its secret, and that the secret was a hopeless passion for the beautiful woman who had married his friend. Not a hint ever dropped to any living soul, not a word ever spoken to the woman herself, could be produced in proof of the assertion while the woman lived. When she died Report started up again more confidently than ever, and appealed to the man’s own conduct as proof against the man himself.
He attended the funeral—though he was no relation. He took a few blades of grass from the turf with which they covered her grave—when he thought that nobody was looking at him. He disappeared from his club. He travelled. He came back. He admitted that he was weary of England. He applied for, and obtained, an appointment in one of the colonies. To what conclusion did all this point? Was it not plain that his usual course of life had lost its attraction for him, when the object of his infatuation had ceased to exist? It might have been so—guesses less likely have been made at the truth, and have hit the mark. It is, at any rate, certain that he left England, never to return again. Another man lost, Report said. Add to that, a man in ten thousand—and, for once, Report might claim to be right."
And then we go into the real action of the book. It can be summarised pretty quickly - Geoffrey Delamayn, second son of Lord Holchester, grows up to be a celebrated sportsman and unspeakable cad. He gets young Anne, virtuous governess who just has that one little moral lapse, "in a scrape". She insists that he marry her; he doesn't want to; she threatens to kill herself; he grudgingly agrees to a private marriage. She goes to take a room in an inn nearby, presenting herself as a married woman in order to get a room. Geoffrey is supposed to join her there and make an honest woman of her, but is suddenly called away by news that his father is ill. He sends his friend Arnold (also young Blanche's fiance) to the inn to explain things. A storm forces him to spend the night there, claiming to be Anne's husband. When Geoffrey finds out that this maybe, possibly, means that Arnold and Anne have got married under Scottish law, he's delighted and uses this as a good excuse to abandon her.
The main characters - Geoffrey, Anne, Blanche, Arnold and Blanche's uncle Sir Patrick Lundie - then fill the required length of a Victorian three-volume novel by running around at cross-purposes for ages and ages, always telling each other everything except the one important piece of information they need to know in order to take a sensible course of action and resolve everything. The novel then redeems itself at the end with an absolutely wonderful climax, real edge-of-your-seat stuff of the type that only Wilkie Collins could produce, following which the good end happily and the bad unhappily, and Sir Patrick marries Anne. Old men marrying young women was a good thing in those days, except in the works of radical moaners like George Eliot.
But where's Mr Kendrew? Surely the prologue is setting things up for him to be the one who comes back to marry poor Anne in the end? He's never mentioned again after that prologue, and instead Sir Patrick (who isn't mentioned at all in the prologue) fills that role. I think Wilkie Collins just made a mess of the prologue somehow, assigning the wrong roles to the wrong men - in the main story, Sir Patrick's legal knowledge and background is an essential part of the plot, while Lord Holchester (the former Mr Delamayn) shows no traces of ever having been a lawyer, being just a grumpy old peer with a scoundrel for a son. I'm convinced that he intended the lawyer of the prologue to go on to be the lawyer of the story, only to realise after the prologue had been published (the novel was serialised in Cassell's Magazine) that he'd somehow turned the lawyer into Geoffrey's father and the layman into the potential future husband of Anne. What an unfortunate cock-up, but never mind. Take another draught of opium, Wilkie, and invent someone new. Sir Patrick.
I know this isn't the kind of writing Wilkie Collins is famous for (indeed, he was widely derided by his fellow authors of the late 19th century for actually knowing how his novels were going to end before he started to write them!), but he was still a Victorian writer, and he wasn't above making it up as he went along if he had to. "Armadale", as John Sutherland explains at length in one of his wonderful essays, was obviously written on the fly without the extensive planning that Collins preferred. "Jezebel's Daughter" is even more glaring - he tries to write it as the personal witness testimony of the narrator, but after half a novel of David being present at every important event and conversation, seeing and hearing everything on both sides of the villain's schemes but telling nobody what he's witnessed, Wilkie seems to realise how stupid the whole thing is and packs David off back to London, saying that the rest of the novel he knows from reading people's diaries in later years. It's not very good, that one - we could even leave it out of my Collins/Wood compilation if we wanted to save a bit of paper. "Man and Wife", though, I recommend to everyone - if you haven't read it, do check it out and see if you agree with me about the strange case of Mr Kendrew...
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Saturdays like they used to be
What do you think I've been doing all day today? Well, I'll tell you, we won't make it a guessing game (because you'd probably guess no end of appalling things, I know what you're like). I've spent all day doing practice runs of each and every discipline from the upcoming Canadian Open! Yes, all ten of them! I shudder to think how long it's been since I did a full national-standard memory competition in one day. It's the kind of thing that doesn't happen much nowadays; people tend to split the real events over two days, unless they're very cool people like the organiser of my Friendly Championships.
But in days gone by, I used to happily spend an entire Saturday doing memory training. It would more usually be the hour disciplines, but let's take things one step at a time. My scores were pretty terrible, and by the time I'd got to the spoken numbers my brain was absolutely good for nothing, despite which I'm happy about today. I haven't actually done any paper-based memorising since the French competition last year, not even in training. In fact, looking at my handwriting in the words discipline, it occurred to me that I never write with a pen any more! Paperless offices, emails, phones, they take away your ability to write. I need to practice my penmanship a little before I get to Canada, just to make sure my words are halfway legible.
Once I get to Canada, incidentally, I need to find a way to get from Edmonton to Westlock. It's 45 miles, apparently, but Westlock doesn't seem to welcome visitors who use public transport - the internet suggests the best thing to do is get a bus to a middle-of-nowhere place nearby and then a taxi the rest of the way. I'll see if I can hitch a lift with a competitor or passing lorry-driver. I don't really want to go to the trouble of hiring a car and having to remember what side of the road they drive on in Canada.
But in days gone by, I used to happily spend an entire Saturday doing memory training. It would more usually be the hour disciplines, but let's take things one step at a time. My scores were pretty terrible, and by the time I'd got to the spoken numbers my brain was absolutely good for nothing, despite which I'm happy about today. I haven't actually done any paper-based memorising since the French competition last year, not even in training. In fact, looking at my handwriting in the words discipline, it occurred to me that I never write with a pen any more! Paperless offices, emails, phones, they take away your ability to write. I need to practice my penmanship a little before I get to Canada, just to make sure my words are halfway legible.
Once I get to Canada, incidentally, I need to find a way to get from Edmonton to Westlock. It's 45 miles, apparently, but Westlock doesn't seem to welcome visitors who use public transport - the internet suggests the best thing to do is get a bus to a middle-of-nowhere place nearby and then a taxi the rest of the way. I'll see if I can hitch a lift with a competitor or passing lorry-driver. I don't really want to go to the trouble of hiring a car and having to remember what side of the road they drive on in Canada.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Back to school again
I don't mention nearly enough that I went to school with Robert Webb. It's an important claim to fame, you know. Nobody's heard of any of the things I've done, but everyone knows the one from Peep Show who isn't David Mitchell. But the point is, I've just been binge-watching "Back", starring Mitchell and Webb, on 4OD, having discovered at the weekend that the series exists (I don't watch telly nowadays, you know), and I absolutely love it! It's absolutely hilarious, and I urge anyone who hasn't yet heard of it (ignorant fools though they obviously are) to go and check it out!
I went to school with that one there, you know.
I went to school with that one there, you know.
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Meltdown!
As well as splashing out on plane tickets this month, I treated myself to something I really should have bought long before now - the collected edition of "Meltdown Man", the under-appreciated series that appeared in 2000AD in 1980-81. It came up in conversation with my brother recently, and I just had to get it to remind myself how cool it was. It's a real classic - tough SAS sergeant Nick Stone (remember the SAS-worship of the early eighties? Comics were jam-packed with tough SAS sergeants!) is caught in a nuclear explosion and finds himself flung into another world, where humans rule with eugenically-enhanced animals as their slaves. He gets straight to work setting things to rights.
For fifty consecutive issues, writer Alan Hebden handled the difficult task of fitting a weekly adventure into just four pages of comic (you have to get a lot of action into each page to do that!), aided by the downright awesome artwork of the type that only Massimo Belardinelli could produce. Two hundred pages of this kind of thing, all under one cover!
Honestly, it's that good, you can stare for hours at the artwork, even after getting through the epic storyline (complete with extremely weird and unsatisfying ending) - just look at the effort that's gone into that bottom panel!
Splundig Vur Thrigg!
Wednesday, March 07, 2018
Whither Canada?
As I've mentioned once or twice before, Alpha Flight is an all-time favourite comic of mine. And the localities the superheroes visit in the course of their adventures have always been on my "I must go there some day..." list.
So when there's a memory competition announced in Westlock, Alberta (not too far away from Edmonton), I can't help jumping at the opportunity to go there and meet the rapidly-growing Canadian memory community! The championship is on April 7th, I'm going to fly out there a few days before and see the sights of Edmonton, it'll be great! It's been quite a while since I did this kind of thing with the competitions in New York, not to mention quite a while since I went anywhere exotic and expensive, but my paying-off-my-debts campaign really has reduced them to minimal levels by now, so I don't mind splurging this once and taking another month to get totally financially stable.
I can't believe I've never been to Canada before. I've been all over the place, you'd think I would have found a reason to visit before now.
So when there's a memory competition announced in Westlock, Alberta (not too far away from Edmonton), I can't help jumping at the opportunity to go there and meet the rapidly-growing Canadian memory community! The championship is on April 7th, I'm going to fly out there a few days before and see the sights of Edmonton, it'll be great! It's been quite a while since I did this kind of thing with the competitions in New York, not to mention quite a while since I went anywhere exotic and expensive, but my paying-off-my-debts campaign really has reduced them to minimal levels by now, so I don't mind splurging this once and taking another month to get totally financially stable.
I can't believe I've never been to Canada before. I've been all over the place, you'd think I would have found a reason to visit before now.
Friday, March 02, 2018
The path the others wish to go has been obscured by drifting snow
Wow, twice in one winter we've had huge deep snow! It's the kind of thing that gives me a good excuse to say "when I were a lad", because when I were a lad you could count on getting days like this once a year, and in really exceptional years it would stick around for weeks. Nowadays, it's much more exceptional.
I don't mind snow so much when it's thick and soft underfoot like this - the problem is when it's packed solid and icy, so you can't walk anywhere without falling down. On my way home from work on Wednesday night, before it had really started coming down thickly, I was walking down the hill and pushing my bike rather than trying it the faster but more lethal way, and slipped on the ice and fell down in a heap. But my knees, which I can usually rely on to do horrible things any time I move them unexpectedly, were perfectly okay with it, so maybe I should be a bit less careful of falling down in future.
I've been working from home the last two days, anyway, which is a very boring way to spend your time, especially if you're trapped in the house with no snack foods. I've got plenty of real food, but if I haven't got a bag of sweets in the place, I feel well and truly starved. So I've been out to the corner shop tonight to stock up, and it's a real wade-through-the-snowdrifts kind of a walk.
Still, the BBC weather solemnly promise me that by Monday it'll be 5°C and not a snowflake in sight, so maybe I'll be able to go to work in the morning without too much ice and mayhem.
I don't mind snow so much when it's thick and soft underfoot like this - the problem is when it's packed solid and icy, so you can't walk anywhere without falling down. On my way home from work on Wednesday night, before it had really started coming down thickly, I was walking down the hill and pushing my bike rather than trying it the faster but more lethal way, and slipped on the ice and fell down in a heap. But my knees, which I can usually rely on to do horrible things any time I move them unexpectedly, were perfectly okay with it, so maybe I should be a bit less careful of falling down in future.
I've been working from home the last two days, anyway, which is a very boring way to spend your time, especially if you're trapped in the house with no snack foods. I've got plenty of real food, but if I haven't got a bag of sweets in the place, I feel well and truly starved. So I've been out to the corner shop tonight to stock up, and it's a real wade-through-the-snowdrifts kind of a walk.
Still, the BBC weather solemnly promise me that by Monday it'll be 5°C and not a snowflake in sight, so maybe I'll be able to go to work in the morning without too much ice and mayhem.
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Internationals
Another reason I need to play more othello, which I forgot to mention in my blog yesterday (to be fair, I wrote it after coming back from the traditional Saturday night Indian meal, which I also forgot to mention, but was very nice and came with booze) is that talking with Emmanuel and Matthias over lunch, we established that they've been to more countries for othello reasons than I've been to for memory-related things.
I think my total is 14, including the UK - Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Turkey, USA, Brazil, China, Japan, Malaysia, Bahrain. Are there any others I've forgotten? I bet there are. So I should definitely try to play the other EGP tournaments and add places like Poland and the Netherlands to my mind-sports passport-stamp collection.
In any case, today wasn't very spectacular for me, although it started out okay with a very fun and complicated game against Benkt which I was probably losing all the way through but felt like it could have gone either way and ended up 33-31 to him. I then beat Remi Tastet, son of Marc, and lost not too heavily to Tom, leaving me on five points and hopeful of getting to six and beating the 50% target I always aim for at these things. But then I made a complete pig's ear of my final game against Bruce, and was completely slaughtered, to finish on only five, and well below the half-way mark.
I think my total is 14, including the UK - Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Turkey, USA, Brazil, China, Japan, Malaysia, Bahrain. Are there any others I've forgotten? I bet there are. So I should definitely try to play the other EGP tournaments and add places like Poland and the Netherlands to my mind-sports passport-stamp collection.
In any case, today wasn't very spectacular for me, although it started out okay with a very fun and complicated game against Benkt which I was probably losing all the way through but felt like it could have gone either way and ended up 33-31 to him. I then beat Remi Tastet, son of Marc, and lost not too heavily to Tom, leaving me on five points and hopeful of getting to six and beating the 50% target I always aim for at these things. But then I made a complete pig's ear of my final game against Bruce, and was completely slaughtered, to finish on only five, and well below the half-way mark.
1: 10. pts [903] TASTET Marc (2) {FRA}
2: 8. pts [911] BERG Matthias (5301) {DEU}
[855] WETTERGREN Niklas (150009) {SWE}
[831] LEADER Imre (79) {GBR}
5: 7.5 pts [840] KORTENDIJK Albert (5012) {NLD}
6: 7. pts [874] EKLUND Oskar (150016) {SWE}
[840] SCHOTTE Tom (2795) {BEL}
[825] PLOWMAN Guy (320) {GBR}
[814] LAZARD Emmanuel (11) {FRA}
10: 6.5 pts [862] KASHIWABARA Takuji (839) {FRA}
[727] FREIBURGHAUS Kim (150060) {SWE}
12: 6. pts [838] LEVY-ABEGNOLI Thierry (3598) {FRA}
[805] PRASEPTYO Linda (5159) {NLD}
[792] ROSSLER Daniel (70002) {DEU}
[762] KYTE Bruce (2078) {GBR}
[759] STEENTOFT Benkt (1301) {SWE}
[751] SNEEK Marcel (5083) {NLD}
[680] MURAWSKI Stefan (5324) {DEU}
19: 5.5 pts [818] DE GRAAF Jan C. (4012) {NLD}
20: 5. pts [734] JOHANSSON Erik (1493) {SWE}
[729] PRIDMORE Ben (4019) {GBR}
[669] TASTET Remi (50053) {FRA}
[661] BRAND Richard (2341) {GBR}
[646] WIDMAN Linnea (150055) {SWE}
[642] PLOWMAN Luke (2069) {GBR}
[610] PLOWMAN Mark (100027) {GBR}
27: 4. pts [682] -JORDAN Yvette (2093) {GBR}
[599] KLATTEN Linda (120116) {NLD}
[586] TASTET Sophie (50081) {FRA}
[559] BRAND Sophie (100026) {GBR}
[547] PLOWMAN Jessie (100029) {GBR}
32: 3. pts [539] BRAND Henry (100023) {GBR}
33: 2. pts [500] -JORDAN David (100040) {GBR}
[483] -PLOWMAN Anya (100037) {GBR}
35: 1. pt [466] BRAND Lucy (100025) {GBR}
That gave us a final between Marc and Matthias, a third-place playoff between Niklas and Imre, and a children's final (new innovation!) between Remi and Mark (Luke doesn't count as a child any more; I forget what the age limit is but he's all grown up nowadays). I'm sure these games have happened by now, but I had to leave to get the train (and rail-replacement-bus between Leicester and Nuneaton) back here.
But there'll be more othello to come this year! It's my latest resolution!
Saturday, February 17, 2018
The old combination
"You don't remember me?" said Matthias Berg, who is a) someone I've met multiple times before now, and b) a really big deal in the world of international othello tournaments. "Of course I do," I lied unconvincingly, "I'm just making sure to ask everyone's name, because you know what my memory's like..."
Yes, it's the delights of the Cambridge International, the awesomest othello competition on these shores every year, attended by a whole host of Europe's finest players! And after the slight awkwardness of me having to get everybody's entry fees and pretend that I know who they are, it's a whole lot of fun! 35 players in all (you can see them all listed below if you want to keep up with the gossip), and other people hanging around but not playing included Adelaide, David Beck, Akke-Lien and assorted other Plowmen and Brend (that's the plural of Brand), making it a crowded gathering in the Old Combination Room at Trinity College.
We've got stylish new trophies, thanks to the generosity of the manufacturer, as well as the perpetual trophy, which needs a tiny bit of updating (the winner of each year is inscribed on a little shield - the winners from 2001-2008 are on temporary paper shields, after that they're not on it at all) but is still extremely groovy!
I was drawn against Erik Johansson, who I genuinely hadn't met before, in the first round, and managed a 40-24 win even though I hadn't played for so long. Then I was comprehensively beaten by Daniel Rößler and Matthias before lunch at the usual really nice university cafeteria. But in the afternoon, I won three out of four; beating Jan de Graaf, Linnea Widman and Marcel Sneek, with the only fly in the ointment being a tremendous thrashing by Takuji Kashiwabara in round 5.
At one point I had a proud 100% win record against Takuji, having beaten him in 2003 and then never getting drawn to play against him again. I don't remember if it was still going until today, but it's definitely gone now.
But that leaves me on four wins out of seven, with another four rounds of swiss to play tomorrow, and I'm just slightly above the half-way point on the leaderboard!
Yes, it's the delights of the Cambridge International, the awesomest othello competition on these shores every year, attended by a whole host of Europe's finest players! And after the slight awkwardness of me having to get everybody's entry fees and pretend that I know who they are, it's a whole lot of fun! 35 players in all (you can see them all listed below if you want to keep up with the gossip), and other people hanging around but not playing included Adelaide, David Beck, Akke-Lien and assorted other Plowmen and Brend (that's the plural of Brand), making it a crowded gathering in the Old Combination Room at Trinity College.
We've got stylish new trophies, thanks to the generosity of the manufacturer, as well as the perpetual trophy, which needs a tiny bit of updating (the winner of each year is inscribed on a little shield - the winners from 2001-2008 are on temporary paper shields, after that they're not on it at all) but is still extremely groovy!
I was drawn against Erik Johansson, who I genuinely hadn't met before, in the first round, and managed a 40-24 win even though I hadn't played for so long. Then I was comprehensively beaten by Daniel Rößler and Matthias before lunch at the usual really nice university cafeteria. But in the afternoon, I won three out of four; beating Jan de Graaf, Linnea Widman and Marcel Sneek, with the only fly in the ointment being a tremendous thrashing by Takuji Kashiwabara in round 5.
At one point I had a proud 100% win record against Takuji, having beaten him in 2003 and then never getting drawn to play against him again. I don't remember if it was still going until today, but it's definitely gone now.
But that leaves me on four wins out of seven, with another four rounds of swiss to play tomorrow, and I'm just slightly above the half-way point on the leaderboard!
1: 6. pts [497] EKLUND Oskar (150016) {SWE}
[449] TASTET Marc (2) {FRA}
3: 5. pts [501] BERG Matthias (5301) {DEU}
[459] SCHOTTE Tom (2795) {BEL}
[458] WETTERGREN Niklas (150009) {SWE}
[449] LEVY-ABEGNOLI Thierry (3598) {FRA}
[432] LAZARD Emmanuel (11) {FRA}
[424] LEADER Imre (79) {GBR}
9: 4.5 pts [475] DE GRAAF Jan C. (4012) {NLD}
[391] FREIBURGHAUS Kim (150060) {SWE}
11: 4. pts [433] PRASEPTYO Linda (5159) {NLD}
[418] PLOWMAN Guy (320) {GBR}
[409] ROSSLER Daniel (70002) {DEU}
[398] KYTE Bruce (2078) {GBR}
[383] STEENTOFT Benkt (1301) {SWE}
[371] PRIDMORE Ben (4019) {GBR}
[351] TASTET Remi (50053) {FRA}
18: 3.5 pts [441] KASHIWABARA Takuji (839) {FRA}
[387] KORTENDIJK Albert (5012) {NLD}
20: 3. pts [390] JOHANSSON Erik (1493) {SWE}
SNEEK Marcel (5083) {NLD}
[353] KLATTEN Linda (120116) {NLD}
[344] WIDMAN Linnea (150055) {SWE}
[325] TASTET Sophie (50081) {FRA}
[321] BRAND Richard (2341) {GBR}
MURAWSKI Stefan (5324) {DEU}
[317] PLOWMAN Mark (100027) {GBR}
[311] PLOWMAN Luke (2069) {GBR}
[291] BRAND Sophie (100026) {GBR}
30: 2. pts [336] JORDAN Yvette (2093) {GBR}
[285] BRAND Henry (100023) {GBR}
[269] PLOWMAN Jessie (100029) {GBR}
[253] PLOWMAN Anya (100037) {GBR}
34: 1. pt [252] JORDAN David (100040) {GBR}
[248] BRAND Lucy (100025) {GBR}
I really need to play more othello. I think I might make this my new project - applying memory techniques to the game, and seeing how much I can memorise! We'll see how it goes...
Friday, February 16, 2018
Last minute dot com
Having found out I don't have to do something else this weekend (it's a something else I might hopefully be able to tell you all about, some time), I'm on my way to Cambridge for the othello EGP tournament! Barring unforeseen delays and things that stop me getting there, anyway. But it's good to be back in the othello world - maybe I'll make a proper effort to play more, and go to all the regionals this year!
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
A very memorable person
Rest in peace, Grandma. It was a very nice funeral, exactly what she would have wanted - thanks to Pam for arranging everything.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
The League
You've probably heard me mention it once or twice before, but the place to be right now (if you're at all interesting in competitive memorising) is the Memory League.
It's a place for fast-paced head-to-head memory contests where the aim is to remember cards, names, numbers, images or words faster and more accurately than your opponent. The super-cool thing about it is that you can watch what's happening in people's games live, as they flick from one thing to another in the memory time, and fill in the gaps in the recall. And chat live with other watchers and players too! Seriously, there's no cooler memory thing in the world at the moment.
There is also, naturally, a league championship. It's divided into divisions, with the usual promotion/relegation from one season to another, so whatever your level, you get regular matches against people of the same kind of ability. Each player chooses their three favourite disciplines, and have a six-discipline match (with the option of playing a seventh if it finishes 3-3 and both players can agree on a final decider discipline). It's great fun for everyone! Let's have a look at how division 2 is shaping up lately:
After some wrangling and debate before the start of the season, it was agreed that you can't go straight into division 1 if you didn't play in the season before, even if you're among the best players in the world. So we had four new people who are amazingly good joining division 2 from the four corners of the world (if you arrange the map in a really weird way so that the four corners are all in Asia or eastern Europe), and they're dominating things right now. The top two get automatically promoted, the next two play off against division 1 players, and it's anyone's guess which of Yanjaa, Alex, SC and YeBo will make it into the top two.
Below them, there's a right old ding-dong among the remaining twelve of us - there have been some epic matches! I'm playing Clay tomorrow, and really want to get a win, to pull me away from the relegation battle. Come along and watch, 4pm GMT!
Saturday, February 03, 2018
The need for speed
Among the many people I admire in this world are the ones who do cool things with old video games. Here's a wonderful YouTube video chronicling in minute detail the things people have done to shave a fraction of a second off their time in a Super Mario Bros speedrun. It's awesome.
Incidentally, although Sonic the Hedgehog is better than Mario in every way, Mario's more fun to do speedrun things with. But the point is, this is exactly the kind of thing people do with the speed cards memory record, except it's all happening in our heads instead of on a TV screen for everyone to see. We definitely need to invent some sort of mind-projecting device if we're ever going to make memory competitions as cool and popular among the nerds of the world as it deserves to be!
Incidentally, although Sonic the Hedgehog is better than Mario in every way, Mario's more fun to do speedrun things with. But the point is, this is exactly the kind of thing people do with the speed cards memory record, except it's all happening in our heads instead of on a TV screen for everyone to see. We definitely need to invent some sort of mind-projecting device if we're ever going to make memory competitions as cool and popular among the nerds of the world as it deserves to be!
Monday, January 15, 2018
The Magic Sphere
According to Blogger's stats page, I've had absolutely oodles of pageviews in the last day or so, directed at the Hourman-themed post from last November. It makes me nervous when people read my blog like that. I don't really write these things in any kind of expectation that people will read them. What if it's a horde of American lawyers? Lots of people write that kind of thing about comics on the internet, and they often bandy about phrases like "brief excerpts for review purposes", which apparently makes everything okay, but I still worry. I'll just convince myself it's an invading horde of robots. Nobody's scared of robots.
Friday, January 12, 2018
It feels like a long time since the first one
I don't think I could calculate how long it's been, in fact. But the Mental Calculation World Cup is still going strong! Here's the invitation to compete, if you want to test your brains!
Mental calculators from all over the world are invited to the 8th Mental
Calculation World Cup 2018!
The Mental Calculation World Cup 2018 will be held in Wolfsburg, Germany
========================================================================
Venue: Science Centre Phaeno (http://www.phaeno.de)
Date: 28-30 September 2018
Contest Details:
Calculators will have to solve tasks in different categories (addition,
multiplication, extracting roots, day-of-the-week calculations) and
various surprise tasks.
Only strict mental calculation (no tools, no writing down of
intermediate results) is allowed.
Prizes:
There will be several titles and trophies for the best participants.
In particular, the MEMORIAD Association will sponsor free flights to the
MEMORIAD 2020 competition (planned to be held in Dubai, USA)
(http://www.memoriad.com) for the winners in the categories addition,
multiplication, square roots and calendar calculation as well for the
winner of the combination.
(does not apply for participants who are not allowed to enter MEMORIAD
contests according to decisions of the MEMORIAD Association).
Registration:
The registration form can be found on the MCWC web site
Calculators who already took part at a previous MCWC event are welcome
to send the application form by e-mail to info@recordholders.org.
First-time participants please download the entry form on the MCWC web
site. Please send it by airmail together with the documentation that is
necessary for qualification to the address given in the form.
Please note that we have a tough qualification (with usually far more
than 40 people registering). Calculators who took part in one of the
previous years may want to send additional documentation about their
recent results in the same way as the first-timers (by airmail with all
the paperwork) in order to have better chances in the qualification.
Deadline for Registrations: 1 June 2018
You can help us with the organization if you register soon.
Qualification:
The number of participants is limited to 40. If more people register for
the event, the organizer will select the participants who qualify. For
this purpose, information about previous results at mental calculation
events (achieved in the past ten years), other mental sports contests
and verified achievements with the Memoriad software
(http://memoriad.com/memoriadsoftware.asp) are taken into consideration.
The results achieved should be documented (category, number of correct
answers, time) and sent together with the application form. These
results must be confirmed by a witness with some background in mental
calculation (for example a maths teacher or a university researcher who
works in a field close to mathematics).
Organizational stuff:
There is no entry fee, but participants have to pay their travel
expenses. We will publish hotel recommendations soon enough on the MCWC
web site.
Please contact us soon enough if you need a formal invitation letter for
visa purposes. Keep in mind that in some countries visa formalities can
take a long time!
More information can be found on the web site:
Contacts:
If you have any questions on the MCWC, please contact me at
I am looking forward to meet the world's best calculators in Wolfsburg!
Ralf Laue
Sunday, January 07, 2018
I should get some kind of prize
I was just about to go to bed for an early night, when I remembered I hadn't written a blog entry, and if I did that, then I'd break all kinds of world records for keeping new year's resolutions. So now I've accomplished a whole week of daily uninspired short paragraphs, I can rest easy and not write anything more for whole months at a time if I feel like it.
Saturday, January 06, 2018
This looks like a job for...
There's a news story doing the rounds that someone involved with one of Stan Lee's charities has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from The Man himself by means of forged cheques, and really, I don't think they've thought it through. Everyone knows that Stan Lee created all the cool superheroes, but of course Spider-Man and all his amazing friends are basically nice people, and just have bad guys locked up in jail - what people forget is how many cool superVILLAINS there are out there who owe Stan Lee a favour for bringing them into existence! You don't want to steal money from a guy who can just phone up Doctor Octopus and say "Hi, Otto, it's Stan. Remember how I created you and gave you those cool mechanical tentacles and all? I need someone to teach a thief a little lesson..."
There's some people you just don't want to mess with.
There's some people you just don't want to mess with.
Friday, January 05, 2018
Lucky numbers
I'm happy to report I'm now through to the last 65,536 in the Fantasy Premier League Cup (I know you were all fascinated when I mentioned it last). This is a lucky number for elderly users of Excel spreadsheets, and I'm sure that just saying "65536" gives all the old-fashioned number-crunchers out there a happy nostalgic glow. The rest of you will be left in the dark, but don't worry, you're not missing much.
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