Here we go with Part 2 of my 25 Interesting Things list, for which you all have Chev to blame. Boy, it's hard work. Part 1 went like this, in case you missed it. Not sure how I'm going to manage the next eleven...
8. My dad doesn't like wearing seatbelts. A long time ago he was in an accident where he had to be cut out of his car and the firemen told him, "it's a good job you weren't wearing a seatbelt, mate - or we'd never have been able to get you out in time". This was before I was born, so if he had been wearing a seatbelt... I probably wouldn't be here.
9. I once went to a fancy dress party as The Joker. This was back in the Sixth Form, around the time of the first Tim Burton Batman film. I did the full whiteface / red lipstick / green hair dye job but regretted it after about ten minutes as the make-up began to run, my eyes began to sting, and spots began popping up like molehills. Never again. (If only I'd gone as Doc Ock.)
10. Back in the early 90's I used to co-present a Saturday morning show on local radio. We used to run stupid competitions (basically an excuse for me to take the piss out of listeners) and write/produce sketches... many of which I'm sure would be cringeworthily awful were I to hear them again now. My favourite sketch involved a House of Commons debate between John Major and Neil Kinnock about who was the biggest fan of Scooby Doo. For a while there, we had the best audience figures of any show on the station. Eventually though, we got a new boss who didn't understand my sense of humour (or anybody else's) and I packed in my DJ ambitions before he had a chance to do it for me.
11. I failed my Art 'A' Level. Well, I got an E. It was my third choice subject - after English Language and Literature - and I'll admit that I took it because I thought it'd be a bit of a doss (allowing me to concentrate more on my preferred subjects). However, the art teachers didn't see it that way. If you're doing art, art comes first. The other reason I failed? I just wasn't very good.
12. I believed in Father Christmas until I was eleven years old. I ignored all the kids who told me otherwise, until I heard my mum and dad wrapping presents in their room on Christmas Eve... otherwise I might still be a believer.
13. I have two visible scars, only one of them isn't very visible at all any more. The one on my left wrist is from when I cut myself on a piece of broken pot as a five year-old and had to have a number of stitches. I used to let people believe it was from a bungled suicide attempt, which I guess is kind of sick... so I stopped doing it. The other (the hardly visible one) is on my forehead, from when I swam into the side of the pool at full speed during school swimming lessons and managed to cut my head open. Only a butterfly stitch was needed on that, but I did dye the water red.
14. My favourite place in the world is Deer Hill and Marsden Moor (where, as I've mentioned before, they filmed the exterior of the local shop scenes in League Of Gentlemen - and yes, I am local). I've seen many places that are far more picturesque, but I have a strange affinity with this particular location. I've walked there many times, just me and my thoughts (and my walkman / mp3 player), and doing so has helped me through all kinds of strange times. There's a sentimental part of me thinks I'd like them to scatter my ashes there one day... but who knows, maybe it'll be a parking lot by then, or a mall... or a radioactive crater.
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10 rants and reactions:
Re: no. 10. There aren't any recordings of this knocking about are there?
P.S. I have no intentions of blackmailing you at all.
That is a beautiful part of the world!
I request pictures of the Joker costume.
Thank you ;o)
Penelope - if such photos existed, I would post them. Unfortunately, we didn't have cameras back then.
Steve - if such recordings existed, I would post them. Unfortunately, we didn't have recording devices back then - even in radio.
I read THE most fabulous book by Kim Newman once, which was a kind of grown-up version of those "Slay the dragon? Go to page 3. Run away? Go to page 4" books (it was called "Life's Lottery" and is now out of print but blimey I recommend it, try amazon)- AAAAnyway the point of all that was that in reference to your no.8 - there's a point in the book where you can do up seatbelt and go to page 32, where you die horribly trapped in the car, or NOT do up seatbelt and go to page 43, where you are miraculously thrown clear of the wreckage. Just further proof that nothing in life is predictable.
Sorry, too much coffee.
Oh yeah and - I have exactly the same kind of scar, from trying to be Uri Geller and bend a spoon (which predictably snapped), which I also used to pretend was a self-inflicted wound of Pain and Suffering (with extra Anomie). How sad teenagers are...
That was a bloody sharp spoon.
You are *that* old?? Wow!
PS My captcha is "sphoopop" which amused me greatly.
It's funny re the seatbelt thing but my grandfather wouldn't wear one either as he had read something similar to what happened to your father. He even went to the trouble at one point of affixing a piece of seatbelt type stuff to his shoulder so that if police (or my mother) saw him driving they thought he had one on. The problem was he'd forget to unaffix it and walk around with a piece of strange strapping on his shoulder all day.
I have a scar on my forehead where my mother dropped me onto a sideboard as a baby. Explains a lot, doesn't it?
Those photos . . . my turn to be jealous now. Sheep and snow and blue skis and hills - perfection.
I'd swap them from the Aussie sun right now, RB... but not forever.
Ah but it blows a howling gale here too - a warm one - but on the beach you get your skin blasted off with the sand. I shall be mere bones by the time I return home. A novel form of weightloss and rather painful!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the word Kraken - it is one of my favourite words in the whole world. Don't know why - but it rates alongside frock in my book.
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