I was looking through the blog posts of a friend of mine when I saw one called “25 Things (Slight Return)“. This was based upon one of these annoying social media trends where you have to complete a list and then get x people to do the same. This one was to list out 25 (TWENTY FIVE!!!) interesting facts about yourself that others might not know.
Like Dirk I tend to ignore these things but at the end of the post he had put “I’m not going to ask anyone else to do this. But if you want to…” so I thought I would. Turns out it is harder than it looks.
Here’s my 25.
- I am tee-total and always have been. I don’t have anything against alcohol but I just don’t like the taste. It has been tedious over the years telling people this so at one point I used to say that doctors said if I drank again it would kill my liver. I also don’t smoke – see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o41A91X5pns.
- I am an atheist. No matter how you frame it I cannot believe that there is some thing guiding us through life.
- I recorded a single with the local football club Grove Challengers which had a first line of “Grove Challengers are the boys and we have put away our toys”. Sadly I don’t have a copy.
- I was interviewed with a couple of other boys from Grove Challengers on Timmy Mallet’s BBC Radio Oxford show regarding said record.
- I took penalties against then Oxford United goal keeper Roy Burton. History has not recorded how well I did.
- I was in Grove Challengers for about six months!
- When I was young (under ten) I wanted to be a Harrier Jump Jet pilot until I realised I was afraid of heights.
- I was both a cub and a scout and I loved it.
- My whole working life has been based around the use of computers. I was incredibly lucky that the school I attended had a link with a research establishment who had provided the school with a Teletype link to their main frame. This would have been about 1977.
- Computer science apart I hated school and was bullied which I wasn’t that keen on either.
- I failed all bar one of my ‘O’ Levels at school with the only one I passed being… Computer Science of course.
- Failing my ‘O’ Levels was one of the best things to happen to me as firstly it shook me up a bit and secondly I left school and went to collage where I was treated like a grown up. I had some great teachers but my English teacher there was amazing and I don’t think I would have passed without her.
- As a weekend job while at college I worked in Selfridges in Oxford in the sound and vision department. I had been brought in to provide some expertise for those looking to buy a ZX Spectrum. I was on commission and made a killing.
- I went to have my ear pierced with my Mum who had hers done at the same time.
- While at university I spent 15 months on placement working at IBM Havant. At the end of my course I applied for a job with IBM and was turned down. Six months after I had started working elsewhere IBM Havant got in touch to offer me a job – too late.
- I have parachuted precisely once. I spent a couple of weekends training at Netheravon, the home of The Army Parachute Association, before doing a fixed line ‘jump’. I was told I could go again if I packed my own parachute – I declined.
- I was once woken up by the sound of an elephant outside the window. Not necessarily surprising except that this was in the centre of Reading, UK. There was a circus pitched on the car park opposite my flat.
- My big sporting passion is the Williams F1 team and I have been running a fan website since May 1996 long before the team itself ever had an online presence. The site is still active today at https://williamsdb.com
- I spent seven months commuting every week back and forwards to The Netherlands where I was project managing a development project out there.
- Friends and possibly family too thought I was mad to quit my job and co-found a mobile app start up in 2003 when almost nobody had a mobile. It lasted five stressful years and was sold to a competitor for £5 when we ran out of cash.
- I gave away all my vinyl records in the mid-nineties as we ran out of space at home with all the stuff for two small boys. I am now spending many hours in charity shops and online buying it all back again.
- I have seen Crowded House, or members thereof, in concert 22 times . More than any other band by quite some margin.
- I was at Live Aid. My then girlfriend and I were driving through Portsmouth one night and saw a queue outside the Guildhall. We stopped and asked what they were queuing for and were told it was for Live Aid tickets which went on sale in the morning so we camped outside overnight to get tickets.
- I have been blogging every day of my holidays since April 2009. Originally a way for my wife to keep me occupied now something that I feel I cannot not do when we go away.
- One of my favourite authors is HE Bates and his book I love the most is The Purple Plain simply because my Dad introduced it to me.
Turns out 25 is an incredibly high number when you’re not that interesting!