More cross-posted memage
Thursday, November 21st, 2013 04:26 pmSo, with this meme going around on FarceBørk I rashly made a comment on ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokingboot’s contribution, so now I have to find eight facts about me.
Hmm. I’m not sure that I can think of eight – or at least eight interesting ones, but let’s see where we end up.
I have four (4) French O-Levels (remember them?). All at Grade C. I took one a year early, one when I was 16, a re-sit later that year and fluffed my A-Level, but not badly enough to fail out right. So: 4 French O-Levels.
I once got 5% in a maths exam at college. That was 4% for the maths answers and 1% for the little gravestone I drew in the margin, with ‘RIP Maths’ written on it. I am one of a select few who has a mathematical mark for artistic interpretation.
I once got so hideously drunk (Harvey Jones and Iain Murray were there, as was someone who looked scarily like Beau Brummell) that I threw up so hard and for so long that a button mushroom exited via my left nostril (Neither Harv nor Iain were present for that bit).
I am possibly one of those idiots because of whom the original Route Master London bus was withdrawn. I was some years younger than I am now, and rather more capable of running and jumping. I ran and jumped for a bus that promptly moved off, causing me to splat with consummate lack of grace on the road behind it. My pride was horribly injured.
I was once banned from sitting in on ministerial briefings for some years after my rather louder than intended stage whisper was overheard by the wrong ears. I simply suggested that the minister’s suggestion amounted to “I kicked the dog last year and it didn’t bite me. Let’s kick it again this year”. I stand by the observation. I am now allowed back in the presence of our elected masters, by the way.
I am almost certain that I have managed to sleep for an entire circuit of the Circle Line. Either that or it was the most intense case of déjà vu I have ever had, as I have two consecutive memories of pulling into South Kensington Tube station on the same journey. Alcohol may have been a factor. You can’t do it now, sleep the entire circuit that is. You can still do the alcohol.
One night in my early 20s, I left a party only to find that I had no money left for my bus fare. I walked the six miles home on what was reportedly the coldest night in living memory, when the temperature fell to a record -27C only a few miles from where I was, in Shropshire. The warmest item of clothing I was wearing was my old school blazer that I knocked around in for a couple of years after I’d finished college. I was stopped by a police panda car at about 2.30am and the driver wryly observed that I looked cold, before driving off. It took three days and five hot showers before I felt anything approaching a normal temperature again.
One summer during my college years, I had a labouring job at Glynwed Foundries in Telford. During the half hour lunch break, the guys would huddle around the Sun newspaper and sweat over the intricacies of the crossword. One of the apprentices, a nice but not especially bright bloke read the clue, “withstand”, thought for a while and then posited “birdcage” as a possible answer. I can’t remember his name, but I shall always remember that remarkable piece of lateral thought.
smokingboot’s contribution, so now I have to find eight facts about me.Hmm. I’m not sure that I can think of eight – or at least eight interesting ones, but let’s see where we end up.
I have four (4) French O-Levels (remember them?). All at Grade C. I took one a year early, one when I was 16, a re-sit later that year and fluffed my A-Level, but not badly enough to fail out right. So: 4 French O-Levels.
I once got 5% in a maths exam at college. That was 4% for the maths answers and 1% for the little gravestone I drew in the margin, with ‘RIP Maths’ written on it. I am one of a select few who has a mathematical mark for artistic interpretation.
I once got so hideously drunk (Harvey Jones and Iain Murray were there, as was someone who looked scarily like Beau Brummell) that I threw up so hard and for so long that a button mushroom exited via my left nostril (Neither Harv nor Iain were present for that bit).
I am possibly one of those idiots because of whom the original Route Master London bus was withdrawn. I was some years younger than I am now, and rather more capable of running and jumping. I ran and jumped for a bus that promptly moved off, causing me to splat with consummate lack of grace on the road behind it. My pride was horribly injured.
I was once banned from sitting in on ministerial briefings for some years after my rather louder than intended stage whisper was overheard by the wrong ears. I simply suggested that the minister’s suggestion amounted to “I kicked the dog last year and it didn’t bite me. Let’s kick it again this year”. I stand by the observation. I am now allowed back in the presence of our elected masters, by the way.
I am almost certain that I have managed to sleep for an entire circuit of the Circle Line. Either that or it was the most intense case of déjà vu I have ever had, as I have two consecutive memories of pulling into South Kensington Tube station on the same journey. Alcohol may have been a factor. You can’t do it now, sleep the entire circuit that is. You can still do the alcohol.
One night in my early 20s, I left a party only to find that I had no money left for my bus fare. I walked the six miles home on what was reportedly the coldest night in living memory, when the temperature fell to a record -27C only a few miles from where I was, in Shropshire. The warmest item of clothing I was wearing was my old school blazer that I knocked around in for a couple of years after I’d finished college. I was stopped by a police panda car at about 2.30am and the driver wryly observed that I looked cold, before driving off. It took three days and five hot showers before I felt anything approaching a normal temperature again.
One summer during my college years, I had a labouring job at Glynwed Foundries in Telford. During the half hour lunch break, the guys would huddle around the Sun newspaper and sweat over the intricacies of the crossword. One of the apprentices, a nice but not especially bright bloke read the clue, “withstand”, thought for a while and then posited “birdcage” as a possible answer. I can’t remember his name, but I shall always remember that remarkable piece of lateral thought.