Ten Things You (probably) Didn’t Know About Me
Blog: 20 October 2018
It’s been a month since being challenged by emma poe AND Julia Kantic (sorry Julia I did tag your 10 Things to read, but I only just read it. My bad?) to tell everyone Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Me. So, you like to find out stuff about people? I think we all do, even more so someone who hides behind the image of a Furry Green Ant. It’s taken until now because I couldn’t think of ten things, interesting enough, but, I racked my brain and reminded myself of some of my distant past and here they are.
1 Serial Collector
I collect or do something for a while then I lose interest and move onto something else. As a school kid I was fascinated by valves, the glowy things inside old radios and TV’s. This was a time when the tinny sound of battery operated transistor radios was new and novel. All homes had “radiograms.” I used to obtain radio chassis, take out the valves and discard the rest. These valves lived in a shoe-box under my bed and came out periodically to be inspected and compared, then put away until the next time.
This later developed into an interest in electronics or perhaps I should say electronic components. I used to order these by the pound weight, mail order. When these packages arrived they were sorted, identified and the smaller items catalogued and tagged in clear plastic bags. The intention was to build a succession of electronic projects from one of the monthly magazines, but I never got around to completing any. (I also collected electronics magazines)
Some of the other collections I spent time, effort and money on were, matchbox cars, drawing, art and art appreciation (collecting artists materials and books), carpentry (collecting tools and bits of wood). I have always collected (bought) books, usually fiction, and sometimes I even read them.
I tried bus number collecting once. I was ten, and me and my friend decided to try it out, so we went to the bottom of our road, a busy intersection in North London. My friend got the numbers and I stood and wrote them down, so it must have been me that decided to try this hobby. After a while we kept getting the same numbers and enthusiasm waned, so we gave up and wondered what it was other kids found so interesting.
It wasn’t until years later I realised we were collecting the wrong numbers. Each London bus has a unique number starting RM (Routemaster) and we were collecting the route numbers, 29 and 253 spring to mind on that road. The bus (left) is route 12 — RML2551. Easy mistake for a ten year old? This was my shortest length hobby.
2 Not a Typical Writer
My latest hobby is writing. In June 2017 I discovered Scribophile (an online writing workshop and writer’s community) and started to formally develop an interest in stories. It was a revelation to find out what a “proper” story should contain. How could I go through the British education system and miss this? I quickly found Microfiction which fits my short attention span and speed of reading.
I created my own publication on Medium mostly to be able to control the display order and separate fiction from non-fiction. I blog but only when I have something interesting to say. Artistic licence creeps into my blogs which, perhaps, should be more correctly called creative non-fiction. One always exaggerates a little, to keep it interesting, as everyday life is common and therefore boring.
3 Slow Reader
One reason I like Microfiction is because of it’s obvious shortness. It doesn’t take long to read. Some movies have a prolog to read to set the scene, like in Starwars:
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…
most viewers have read it and getting restless at the slow pacing. I’m only half way through as the words fade and I’ve missed some important plot point. Thank goodness for the pause button.
I don’t much like on-screen reading which is strange for an IT person -I used to print text out and read the printed page. I also used to read a lot of Science Fiction magazines and anthologies, and always read the shortest stories first, whilst the longer ones were usually left. I’m still amazed and jealous at all you readers only taking a day or two to read a novel. Starting a novel is a major undertaking for me.
4 I’m a Cockney
I was born in London within the sound of Bow Bells so by definition I’m a Cockney. Thank goodness I don’t have a Cockney accent, though I am often told I sound like “someone from London.”
5 Bit of an Athlete (lapsed)
I’m a bit of a swimmer. At eleven I got my Ten Yards Certificate and decided I can swim now so not much point in improving (there were 25 yards and 100 yards certificates).
At school I wasn’t interested in football (soccer) but whenever I did play in the schoolyard I was in goal, because no one else wanted to be. I used to play volleyball and do athletics. My best showing is discus, coming sixth in London for my age group.
At College I used to drink a pint of beer in five or six seconds, and managed a yard of ale a couple of times. I practised a lot.
6 Loads of Jobs
My career job, and the one I enjoyed the most is Computer Programmer where I started to develop some writing skill, albeit on software usage instructions that no one ever reads, but I enjoyed creating user friendly instructions.
Before that I had a fair few number of jobs. The shortest length job I ever had was Road Sweeper. I lasted one day and made a conscious decision not to go back for a second because of sunburn on the back of my hands. I don’t count the couple of jobs that lasted zero days because I overslept (Scrap Metal Worker and office work).
This was a time that the last thing you did before going to sleep at night was to wind the clock up. Remember clockwork clocks? If you forgot to set the alarm, or set it wrong, you just didn’t wake up in time. I also had the added problem that the noise of ticking clocks kept me awake, and made it even more likely I would oversleep. Thank goodness for electronics.
7 Growing my hair long
This is a sort of kick-back to my late teens when I had shoulder length (all the fashion then). One thing I don’t like about long hair is the difficulty combing it -it takes so long. I asked a couple of women how they manage? It seems I was using too-small a toothed comb, and also need to get a brush. It’s currently half way down my back.
A good break-the-ice chat-up line I heard is a bloke with long hair asking a couple of girls if they had a brush he could use!
8 Live in Peterborough (UK)
I live within walking distance of the town centre which contains a huge indoor mall, outside market and other shops, two theatres, the central library, museum and Peterborough Cathedral. I take the convenience and culture for granted, and don’t use as much as I should.
9 Addicted to Game Playing
The current addiction is online Seaport, run by Pixel Federation.
This is a single-player strategy/build ’em up type game where you schedule ships to trade. The more profit you make the bigger the ships you can own, the more you transport etc etc. I’ve also played TrainStation -same thing with trains, and others. This is a huge time-sink, but better than watching TV.
10 Own An Abandoned Website
Website Single Man Again was supposed to be all about activities that the “single man” could do, researched and commented upon by yours truly. After doing articles on home-cooking, bingo, poker, greyhound racing was next, I lost interest. It’s been some ten years since it was last updated and has became an abandoned (ghost) website. My main interest was technical, the programming side of web creation, which I mastered and forgot. I even wrote a couple of stories for this site which are still there (Usual Sunday), so maybe I was interested in “writing stories” all along.
I’ve enjoyed writing for this challenge immensely and it’s the first thing written for a couple of months (apart from Twitter stories) so, emma poe AND Julia Kantic thank you, hope you enjoyed reading.
Link to other author’s Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Me
