Boots accountant, Ben Pridmore says "I forget everything, I walk into a room and forget what I am doing there, open the fridge and wonder why I am looking in there. I am famously bad at being able to remember peoples names and faces. So, what is so remarkable about that you may ask, we all do it. The reason it is so remarkable when Ben Pridmore says it, is because he is the reigning World Memory Champion, having won the title in 2008. It takes him less than 30 seconds to memorise a pack of playing cards. Give him an hour and he can remember a further 26 more packs. Ben's other achievements include remembering 930 binary digits in five minutes and 4,140 binary digits in 30 minutes. Click on the following link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7964153.stm to see Ben in action as he takes a memory challenge against BBC journalist Stephen Robb to see how many playing cards they can each remember. Then click the second video to watch Ben telling Stephen how he does it.
This poem is self-explanatory. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.Blankney FriendshipI miss you now that you are goneThe times we spent togetherYour time on earth was oh so shortYou should have lived foreverI felt the love you gave meI saw it in your eyesYou never tried to hurt meYou never told me liesYour soft and gentle presenceTold me that I mustAlways be around for youIn me you placed your trustI would watch you in the gardenThat was your favourite placeAnd catch in shafts of sunlightYour perfect form and graceNow I look with saddened eyesAt the chair in which you satTo me you were my dearest friendTo others, just a catRodney Garlant
On this day in 1973 the death was announced of one of the world's most controversial painters, the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Born in 1881, the son of an art teacher, Picasso exhibited his first paintings in Barcelona at the age of 12. His lifetime works amount to 20,000 paintings, sculptures and drawings. Pablo Picasso died of a heart attack at his chateau near Cannes on the French Riviera. His wife Jacqueline and son Paolo, was with him when he died. The previous year, to mark his 90th birthday the Louvre Museum in Paris staged a Picasso retrospective - the first time the work of a living artist had been exhibited. Pablo Picasso was buried in the grounds of his chateau in France. He left his art collection including works by Cezanne, Braque and Matisse to the Louvre Museum in Paris. Following his death a long legal battle was fought by members of his family over his estimated $50 million fortune, the outcome was that it was to be shared jointly by his wife, children and grandchildren. Seven years after his death in 1980, more than one million people visited the Museum Of Modern Art in New York to view an exhibition of his work.
