Five things most people don’t know about me

Simon — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 14:27:01 +0000

I was tagged for this meme a while ago by Meg and have spent the intervening weeks struggling to think of noteworthy quirky facts about myself. There aren’t many. But I tried.

I have a forked uvula
A rather strange trait that my sister and I share is our strange bifid uvula: that is, the dangly bit at the back of our throat splits in two. Apparently it can be associated with submucous cleft palate, but it’s not a big deal and doesn’t mean we’re freaks.
Gabriel Yared once asked me to get naked with him in front of a 50-strong audience
That’s right: he composed the music for Betty Blue, The English Patient and Cold Mountain and then, one day in March 2005, he asked me to join him in disrobing before a group of surprised University students. I should point out that he was using it as an endearing turn of phrase, and what he actually wanted was a nice bit of musical deconstruction, not a spell of piano-top fornication. Just as well – his beard is pretty terrifying.
In 1990, I asked a serious question about diarrhoea in front of 200 people
Poor 7-year-old me. I’d just had my first experience of horrendous fizzy gravy. A week or two later, at a school assembly about fire alarm procedure, I thought it only prudent to ask the headmaster – in front of the entire school and staff – what to do in a fire emergency if you’re stuck on the loo. Minutes of laughter and years of name-calling ensued. And, ironically, a fire. But my bowels were behaving themselves that day. Phew.
I failed my cycling proficiency test
Evil thing. I failed this because I was crap at cycling slowly and couldn’t control my bike without falling off or having to put a foot down. I now have a slightly loathing of cyclists.
Our school band played for the Queen and her hubby
Somehow, Wrexham managed to bag the Queen to open a revamped leisure centre in the middle of the town (with a rather distinctive roof structure). In a slight talent mismatch, they also asked our school wind band to play at the event. Clearly we got rained on and nearly froze to death, and Duke made some innuendo small talk about fingers and clarinet holes. A day to remember. Or not.

And five more people to do this: Vic, Will, Kat, Mary, and Dan.

Four Things

Simon — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 18:02:53 +0000

Before I begin, here’s why the tumbleweed is piling up even higher than usual around here at the moment: we are sans internet at home, despite the lovely shiny piece of copper between our phone socket and the little green box outside. In short:
BT’s new branding should be it’s good to talk ill-informed bollocks, and Bulldog should really think about training their customer service folks so they actually know what telephony is…

Anyway. Because I’ve been tagged and because I’m a dumb sheep, here we go with Four Things:

Four jobs I’ve had:

Till Boy / Shelf-Fill Monkey (Woolworths, Wrexham)
Barman (Bar Med, Guildford) (and by God was that awful)
Software Engineer
Web Developer

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Amï¿½lie
Donnie Darko (I have seen this a scary amount already)
Kill Bill

Four places I’ve liked:

Llangollen
Edinburgh
Ljubljana
Budapest

Four TV shows I love:

Peep Show
Scrubs
The High Life
Black Books

Four places I’ve vacationed:

Malta
Barcelona
Florida
Edinburgh

Four of my favourite dishes:

Red lentil lasagne (bizarrely from our work canteen…)
Thai Green Curry
Pasta-o-Dan (chorizo, paprika, red pepper and red pesto.. yum!)
Yaki Udon

Four sites I visit daily:

Four places I’d rather be right now:

Antarctica (for maybe a day)
Drinking beer at our local
Scarlett Johannsen’s hotel room in Lost In Translation
The snowy beach at Montauk in Eternal Sunshine

Four scamps I’m tagging:

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Five things most people don’t know about me

Four Things