Five Things...

[rhythmaning]

My friend Richard, who runs Filmstalker, recently tagged me for a meme on his blog. This is because we were sitting, having coffee and talking about blogs and stuff. (Actually, he was explaining Bloglines and RSS feeds and things to me. I am not sure I really got it – I can’t work out if it makes life easier or not. I’m working on it.)

Anyhow, his tag – which I kind of feel duty bound to accept – was to write about five things he didn’t know about me. I find this quite hard: I am pretty open, and I have written about lots of the things that interest me before. So I am finding it quite hard to work out what he knows and what he doesn’t; I am not sure if I will get to five things.

1. I was once caught up in a revolution. This was in New Caledonia in 1984; Ronald Reagan had just been re-elected. New Caledonia was – is – a French overseas territory – a colony; but the French being French do things a bit differently. New Caledonia was a bit of France stuck in the Pacific. It sent representatives to the French parliament. It was served by the internal French airline. On the plane we flew out on, there were two of us and about two hundred French troops on a 747. This should have been a bit of a give-away, really.
   
   We stayed in the capital for a few days, and then travelled around the main island; we were out of touch with our contacts (this being before mobile phones, the internet – or personal computers of any kind, really). It was only when we got back after a couple weeks or so that we realised that more or less everywhere we had stayed had been blown up by the Kanak rebels.
   
   I should add this to the (growing) list of things to write about sometime; it is quite an interesting place.



2. I went hill walking in Greenland. I went on a hiking holiday in Greenland – in one little bit of Greenland – and climbed many hills, a few by myself. The solitude was beautiful. It is a very strange feeling to look around and know that you have met every single person in the area you can see – as far as you can see.



3. I was the first man to go to my college. Well, I was the first man to go to my college to study; I am sure a lot of men went there before me for, erm… social reasons. I was part of the first male intake to a college that had previously been women only; and I believe I was the first through the door on the first day of term.



4. I took a photograph of Margaret Thatcher. I was living in York, and I worked on the student newspaper. (It was called Nouse – a play on “news” and Ouse. It is still going – when I was in York in January, I saw a copy.) Thatcher had come to open the newly electrified railway lines; she stood on the platform at York station and cut a ribbon. And I took a photograph.



5. I was an angel. I played the archangel Gabriel in my primary school nativity play. I was angelic. But I forgot my lines, failing to tell the watching multitude that a baby was to be born. Which was kind of the whole point of the thing, really. I think this put me off appearing on stage forever (although I once played Scrooge, and another time a Cossack soldier. But that’s another story).

I think the idea is that I am meant to tag another five people to keep the chain going, but that sounds too much like a disease to me. Still, if you have five things you want to tell me, feel free.

Comments

[psychochicken.livejournal.com]

You may also be interested to know that 'nouse' is also a Scouse word for sense or brains, as in "Yewl be a'rite as long as yiv a birra nouse" or "'e 'asn't the nouse he wiz born wiff". Although I suspect your use of the word rhymes with 'news', the Scouse word is said to rhyme with 'mouse'.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

And of course I knew that too! I just forgot...

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Common enough across pretty much the whole north of England