Months ago, even before the World Cup, I was tagged by the incomparable Lelly to write "Six weird facts/habits about yourself".
The Rules: "Post six weird facts/habits about yourself. These cannot be used against you later on! At the end of the post name the six people you will tag next. Leave them a comment to let them know they've been tagged and to read your blog."
Well, I've broken the rules in several places. I'm not tagging anyone (unless they ask me), and because this post was getting too long for an HNT, I'm going to save the heavy-duty weirdness about sex, chocolate etc. for another post.
Children. I have no kids of my own. There have been times when I have enjoyed looking after friends' kids, but I've never wanted to own one. I have a huge admiration for parents, but I agree with Jimmy Savile, who said "Kids? I love them, but I couldn't eat a whole one."
Like my father before me, my skills lie in raising dogs, not humans. Of course, if my father had stuck to breeding spaniels I wouldn't exist now. So I shouldn't complain.
My parents before I was born
(click to see how my arrival changed their lives)
Yes, my father's dog-training skills were useful with children too. He brought up me and my brother using commands like "sit!" and "stay!" and "don't move!"
Conception. A one-night stand, decades ago, resulted in a daughter whom I have never seen, and even if I wanted to track her down, what would be the point? Let sleeping dogs lie.
Therapeutic inappropriate behaviour. I would love to have been a clown. I like to use shock tactics to make people feel good. With adults, I delight in inappropriate remarks and stories. At funerals and weddings, I specialise in the sort of tactless remark that leads to horrified laughter or sometimes stunned silence.
Or I'll brutally ask friends about their bodily functions, as if we were discussing the weather. I think I learned this approach when I trained and practised as a counsellor - you make people gasp, and some of their repressed feelings come spilling out.
With kids, a good way to loosen them up is to pretend to get things wrong. I'll sing them a well-known song with deliberately wrong words. For example, Madonna's song becomes: When you call my name, I'm like a football player, I'm down on my knees, I'll take the kick from there. Kids go mental when you get the words wrong.
Or if I'm looking after 2 children, I make sure I mix their names up. Or I might swear blind that Zinadine Zidane played for Zimbabwe. Kids love being able to tell adults off. This usually works well, though occasionally a kid reacts by clubbing the stupid adult over the head.
Housework. I find housework easy. At age 6 or so, I used to do the vacuuming in our house. My mother brainwashed me to believe that it was a big treat, and I'm glad she did.
But I don't like to do unnecessary work, so I try to streamline things whenever I can. For example, after cooking porridge for breakfast, cleaning the saucepan is a real pain. And then you're only going to dirty it again tomorrow morning. So why bother cleaning it? Instead, simply stick the porridgey pan in the fridge to prevent the stuck-on stuff from festering. Then tomorrow, just re-use it, and the heat will re-sterilise it. With this system, you only need to wash the porridge pan once a year, at the end of winter. Result - you get back several extra hours of your life, to spend doing other stuff. Like blogging about the time you've saved.
If you missed previous HNTs, you can access all the old half baked thursday posts here.
