It’s not that I don’t do anything – recently I’ve been doing quite a lot – it’s more that I want something easy, different and uncontroversial to cover.

I have plenty of opinions but they’re not that interesting, they require a lot of energy to commit to ‘paper’, they expose too much about me if I’m not careful, and they just add to the ringing of ill-informed noise that clutters up the internet.

If I had something to catalogue, or a hobby, that would be great. But I’m too lazy, distractable and easily put off to stick at anything.

Which is why this blog is a bit random, and why I instigated Sheep Dip and Tuesday Tips as a way of adding some consistency.

My problems are two-fold: I don’t know what I want, and I never finish anything.

I didn’t go to university because I didn’t know what I wanted to do; and I’ve been in the same job for thirteen years for the same reason. I have some interests but I never stick at them for long, so I have nothing particular to write about with any authority.

I have loads of ideas but they never come to anything because I get discouraged easily, grow to hate them quickly, move onto something else or get paralysed by a fear of completing them. So blog posts are often conceived but rarely see the light of day.

Put those together and you’ve the makings of a crap blogger: someone who doesn’t have any material and wouldn’t get around to writing about it anyway.

Strangely, however, this post is being conceived as I type; I had no idea what I was going to write when I started it. Maybe I should do this more often.

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So here, sort of in response to Ellie’s list, are 18 to add to my previous seven. I am not doing any more though, so if someone comes along with an even higher number they can bog off.

1. Unlike Ellie, I’ve never cracked my head open; but when I was very young I had a number of operations to try and correct a club foot. They worked pretty well, but I have very little movement in my left ankle and I can’t balance on my left leg. Apparently surgery has moved on a lot since the early ’70s.
2. I’m 36. (People keep asking, so it clearly has a place in this list.)
3. I’m a Virgo and I think it says a lot about me. Except it can’t because I don’t believe in horoscopes. Or rather, not the generic nonsense you get in newspapers. I did once reluctantly let someone do my horoscope properly, looking up birth times in a book and everything. It was frighteningly, uncannily accurate: she told me things about my personality that I’d been trying desperately to keep hidden. I refuse to believe in them though, because it would mean accepting that we have no control over our destiny and that our creativity is merely illusion.
4. I’m a perfectionist but not a completer-finisher. In other words I will leave things half-started because I’m terrified of them not being perfect. So I end up creating half-baked rubbish. Oh the irony.
5. I had a pet rabbit when I was a child. It was vicious: we had to wear gloves to feed it. I don’t think it was happy. When we got him he had to travel a few miles to our house, so I named him Gulliver.
6. I’m always falling in love (whatever that means). I never let on though, and seem to have a built-in panic mechanism that means I run away if anyone shows interest. Maybe because friendship is very important and I worry about ruining that.
7. I learned to type at school, on a big, commercial, manual typewriter. Tipp-ex paper was the cool product, and much easier to use than an eraser. But if I was carbon-copying I would usually forget to erase mistakes from the copies, and end up making a bigger mess – by typing over the mistake – than I had to start with. Now I have a ‘delete’ key and seemingly unlimited ‘undo’ and ‘redo’. Magic.
8. I played percussion badly in a South London concert band a few years ago. For two London Marathons I crashed my cymbal through countless Souza numbers, at the side of the road.
9. I, too, like buying books but rarely read them. I’m good at starting them but bad at finishing them. I read Crime and Punishment until a few pages before the end, then never picked it up again. I’ve since seen it on telly so I know the ending now.
10. I too was a member of the Young Ornithologists’ Club: yay! I still don’t know anything about birds though. But I do remember a trip to Regents Park and seeing Canada Geese for the first time. Now they’re bloody everywhere.
11. I’m very indecisive. But I suspect you know that already.
12. I love people but I’m terrified of them. My default presumption is that they think I’m an idiot, and it takes an awfully long time to persuade me otherwise. Which is possibly partly why I sometimes come across as arrogant (I don’t mean to), because I presume people have already decided they don’t like me and so I have nothing to lose. I’m going to regret writing this I think.
13. I was brought up as a Quaker. I’m lapsed now (if it’s even possible for a Quaker to lapse).
14. I’m married, technically. We’ve been separated for over three years and just haven’t got round to ending it officially. It took a surprisingly long time to come to terms with.
15. Social media terrifies me. Yet I evangelise it, and here I am telling personal things to anyone who’ll listen. I really am an idiot.
16. I’ve worked for my current employer for 13 years.
17. I love rice cakes. I’ll eat them dry if I have to.
18. I didn’t go to university. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life (I still have no idea, and it keeps me awake at night). Going to university for the sake of it (which is what a lot of people appeared to do) seemed pointless and a waste of time and money, and I knew full well that I wouldn’t do any work even if I did go. A couple of years ago I came very close to applying for an MA course in graphic communication, but I chickened out.

End of meme. Don’t even think of asking me to write more.

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  1. Seven things you may not know about me
  2. Since using Twitter…

I’m not as brave as he is so I’m going to revert to the original premise of this ‘chain letter’ rather than follow his example. Bruce wrote about seven things you didn’t want to know about him: all you’re getting from me is seven things you may not have known before.

1. I built a Punch & Judy booth and I know how to use it (sort of).
2. I play the guitar a bit. I spent a lot of evenings in the mid-90s accompanying Irish music in London pubs. I wouldn’t mind joining with some other semi-musicians but I’m too afraid to ask (except publicly, here, of however many random people might be passing).
3. I once made a tie out of paper and wore it to a small evening do with the likes of Cherie Booth, His Honour Justice Hooper, Lesley Macdonagh and Sue Cook. Maybe not my finest hour but I think I got away with it. And definitely no regrets.
4. One of my favourite places is the Round Room in the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, although I know precious little about art. The place is never deserted but is pleasant and generally peaceful, and has interesting things to look at.
5. I have two nieces. One of the best bits of Christmas was discovering the younger one under a layer of yoghurt.
6. I too can have a temper: it tends to be used in outrage at others’ injustices and internally on myself; I can also get argumentative and pedantic (but most people reading this will already know that).
7. I love reading out loud. Give me an attentive child and a book and I’m happy; so long as I can give at least one of them back afterwards.

And that’s it. All that’s left is for me to link to seven other people who are expected to do the same (ie list seven things about themselves that others may not know).

And the lucky winners are: Pete Ashton, Nicky Getgood, Nick Booth, Jon Bounds, Shona McQuillan, Clare White and Laura Whitehead. (I’m not sure what happens if these people have already been got to, but that’s not my problem!)

Update

Since I wrote this, Ellie Lovell has gone and tagged me with a chain letter that requires twenty five items. So I’ve added Eighteen more things you didn’t know about me. That’s it though. If anyone comes along with a request for even more they can bog right off.

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  1. Eighteen more things you didn’t know about me