dry, fortunately2. I choose to believe that if any of you had known about the "Sandpit" monthly games meetings of London's Hide and Seek games festival, the London Games Fringe or Bristol's Interesting Games Lab then you would have told me about them. Yet another reason why I live in the wrong part of the country; Greater London has a similar population to the North East of England combined with Yorkshire and the Humber, and about the only other person I can think of within a hundred miles of here who might be interested is York's Thomas Scott, who is several times as creatively fecund as me. I shall merely have to admire rulesets from afar; I'm particularly taken with Texas Hold Me.
3.
whipartist points to an incredible piece of benign mischief - a two-minute musical apparently spontaneously breaking out in a food court, a bit like a low-budget Flashmob: the Opera. Not really very improv, but still extremely entertaining.4. Excerpting from a longer article that I may or may not eventually get around to writing, I note that university sport has nowhere near the significance in the UK that it does in the US, even noting the traditional Oxford-Cambridge clashes. BUSA, the British Universities Sports Association, is the British counterpart to the USA's noted NCAA, and are holding as many of their national championships as they can this weekend in a single four-day
The championship is dedicated to slightly over twenty old-fashioned sports, rather than delightful modern confections, with the possible exception of "Indoor Super8s". What is this, er, "Super8s"? I don't think it's the super8s.com Super8s, which seems to be devoted to the eighth grade at an unnamed school. Instead, it seems to be a rowing machine championship, which is possibly less fun. (That said, I do like the rowing machine manufacturer's "Stick With It" Challenge, a grown-up sticker chart for you to count up your exercise sessions using their device. Fun!)
I hope the championships are a major success and it looks like the sort of thing at which it would be great fun to volunteer, but in practice I think they will be doing well to get national press coverage, apart from through The Daily Telegraph who sponsor the event, not least hindered by the clash with Sport Relief. If the World Indoor Athletics Championship could only get a daily half-hour TV show, then I fear that TV for this must be some way off. Presumably this is the way that Sheffield can reuse all its Universiade infrastructure. How many UK cities would be capable of hosting this in future years? Possibly as many as six or eight... Perhaps Channel M might broadcast it when the event eventually comes to Manchester one year.
