Here are the rules:
- Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
- At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
- Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
- Despite my hybrid RP – Australian accent, I was born in Melbourne. My father's side of the family arrived in Australia in 1801 (and not as convicts). My mother's side was born and bred around the Brecon Beacons in southern Wales. My parents met in Tasmania, when my mother came out for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics (as a spectator), spent all her money and had to get a job to pay for her passage back. She worked as a nurse in Tassie and Victoria. (And she didn't get to see the Olympics after all.)
- I haven't read anything by Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling. (This is not a comment on the quality of their work, just a statement of fact.)
- I was a few doors down from the Russell Street police HQ when the bomb exploded. Although I worked at the Museum of Victoria (which was diagonally opposite the building), I was having lunch with a colleague at an Indian restaurant across the road when the bomb went up. We thought that the boiler had exploded or something equally mundane. But things started clattering on the roof, so my colleague and I offered to go outside and investigate. We saw the blackened, mangled wreckage of a car outside police HQ, the shredded awning above our heads and material still raining down around us. So we returned to the restaurant and announced (perhaps a little too calmly) that it was a car bomb. Of course, no one believed us, so they all rushed to the door and then back again when they realised that we weren't making it up. The police told us to stay put, which was no problem, because we still had to finish lunch. Then they ushered us out of the back door. As we left, the restaurant owner handed out Minties. I'm not sure that the author of the sales slogan 'At moments like this you need Minties' really had this situation in mind.
- I learnt French at primary school and German and Russian in secondary school. My ability to speak other languages has declined over the intervening years. I'm not even sure about English any more.
- I have been known to offer advice to fictional characters (and their non-fictional television screen writers). For instance, in last night's episode of Dr Who, the good Doctor was faced with having to save humankind from an overloaded MRI in a hospital translocated to the moon. (No, really.) 'Pull out the plug,' I said. 'And hurry up about it.' He did and the earth was saved. On the other hand, I was roundly ignored by Robin Hood and his Merry Morons who, although rather well known for their skills with bows and arrows, decided to take on four sword-wielding assassins at close quarters. There's only so much disbelief I'm willing to suspend.
- I am an appalling shot with a rifle but am appreciably better with a pistol. (This might be inherited from my mother, who shot my father in the foot.)
- I collect field guides to animals from places I will probably never visit. I adore the plates. I am fascinated by the variations on a theme produced by evolution.
- I love road trips. Give me a car, some CDs and the open road and I'm happy.
And here are the next round of tagees. (Apologies if you've been tagged already and I missed it.)
Snail's Tales, Brush and Baren, Blogaway, Books and Writing, Speculating about Fiction, David Nelson's Photo Blog, 10,000 Birds and Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted).
