One lovely blog award

A few days ago I received a nomination from fellow Brit Abroad, Bitchin’ the the Kitchen, for the previously unknown-to-me ‘One Lovely Blog Award’. I feel very privileged to have been one of the chosen ones on this occasion, as she has a very street-wise blog, and I would be the first to admit that I have always been somewhat lacking in the ‘coolness’ department. She writes hysterical posts, often about former escapades in the UK, and usually has me gasping in horror, whilst simultaneously trying not to snort with laughter, lest my family be alerted to the fact that I am sneakily reading blogs under the table (only very occasionally, you understand…). Her ‘Cast of Characters’ is so extensive as to be worthy even of the master of the character list himself, the great Charles Dickens. I fully intend to pinch her marvellous idea if ever I find myself with enough characters to merit cataloguing. I only have one complaint to make against her, which is that her explanation of how she named her blog has had me singing Jona Lewie’s ‘You’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties’ in my head on a loop (along with the soundtrack to The Aristocats) for over a fortnight – to the point of irritation. Thanks ever so, Britchy.

“The Rules”

• Thank the person who nominated you for the award;
• Share seven things about yourself;
• Nominate 7 other bloggers and inform them.

Seven Things About Me

1. My acting skills are so terrible that I once played a (non-speaking) male orphan in an all-female orphanage, in the school production of Annie. The costume department had run out of girls’ outfits by the time it was my turn to be dressed. What makes it worse is the fact that I went to a girls’ school, which ought surely to be the last place one would expect to run out of girls’ clothing…
2. Thankfully I am better at singing than I am at acting – I had the privilege of singing the solo first verse of Once in Royal David’s City every year for a decade whilst in my local church choir. It wasn’t so much an honour as a complete lack of any other young person to take on the responsibility – I was the only person there under the age of about forty when I joined (aged nine), and that may be being kind;
3. If I were ever to take part on BBC 2’s Mastermind I believe that my knowledge of Disney’s The Aristocats would surely lead me to victory. I know virtually all the lyrics to all the songs, and most of the dialogue as well, since it is my Chou’s favourite film (it is actually the only film he will watch);
4. I have, within the last couple of years, discovered a love of terracing. Half of our garden lies on a steep slope (which is quite normal when living on a mountain) and, in order to create viable borders, beds and patches we have acknowledged the necessity of terracing a fair chunk of land, in order to make it nice and flat. I find this really therapeutic, especially when adding in a good game of Tetris (to make the borders), with great big chunks of  stone hauled from our rock pile. It is also a fabulous work out for the arms;
5. I once scored a personal best of 15 points on Ken Bruce’s Pop Master on Radio 2 (out of a possible 39). It was a proud day. I usually peak at around 12;
6. For a short while I competed at hurdling for my local athletics club. My hurdling career was extremely short-lived, and understandably so, since (as has previously been mentioned in these pages) I am 5 ft tall;
7. I am our family’s light masonry mason – filling, bodging, creating a fake-but-authentic-looking-arched-wall-recess for housing a pomegranate souvenir…there is no end to the béton requirements in my home. The pomegranate shelter was actually part of a failed plan to kick-start labour. At nine months pregnant I could be founding inserting stones found in our rock heap into our back kitchen wall – I had been reliably informed that my son would arrive early, so by nine months I was beginning to lose patience. In the end the little crapaud arrived 4 1/4 hours late.

 

My nominees:

An Irish Procrastinator

Becca

Confuzzled Bev

Fat Dormouse

Nash Christmas

Seabreeze Corner

VAK (if she fancies doing it whilst skipping the nomination part)

There is never any obligation to take part – I would not be offended in the slightest 🙂

 

Mots du jour:

Béton – concrete crapaud – toad