The Honest Scrap Blogger Award

Kristen Mchugh at Carnival of the Random has conferred on me something called the Honest Scrap Blogger Award, for which much thanks. Under the terms of the award, though, I have to do two things: first, I have to tell you ten true things about myself which no-one knows, second, I have to confer the award on ten more bloggers to spur them to further acts of embarrassing self-disclosure.

I'm going to interpret the first commandment fairly loosely, as ten things which people reading this blog probably won't know about me. There are probably one or two people irl who'll know these things, but for the most part, I hope, they'll be new for you.

1) It doesn't always show up in photos, but I have two different coloured eyes. This is actually a source of mild irritation to me because, when you have different coloured eyes, people always mention David Bowie to you, and Bowie doesn't have different coloured eyes. I'm a massive Bowie fan, and one of the many teeny bits of trivia which Bowie fans accumulate at the expensive of remembering more useful information like, say, which bit of the periodic table tells you the atomic weight of an element, is that the Dame's eyes appear to be different colours because one of his pupils is larger than the other as a result of having a brick thrown at him as a kid, an accident which also distorted his depth perception permanently. I have normal depth perception and normal-size pupils, so my eyes really are different colours...

2) When I was much younger I saw something one night which at the time I thought of as a ghost, but which I'm now inclined to regard as a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation. At the time I was terrified of seeing ghosts or, more accurately, being seen by them, and decided the best way to deal with this was to stay up all night and keep watch for the feckers. Unsurprisingly, I eventually saw something, in this case, a bearded head floating above the bottom of my bed. After that experience I figured that it was definitely more frightening to see something that shouldn't be there than to be watched by such a thing, so I made sure I always got plenty of sleep thereafter.

3) Despite having enjoyed David Tennant and Patrick Stewart's performance in it yesterday, I actually think Hamlet is a bit of a mess as a play. To me, it lacks the sense of inevitability that characterises Macbeth, the sense that every action the protagonist takes leads inexorably to their doom, and that doom has been set in motion from their first wrong decision.

4) I'm genderqueer rather than trans, so, while I don't entirely conform to the rules for male gender expression I don't devote massive amounts of effort to 'passing' as female. Despite this, on three separate occassions in the past few months I've been casually assumed to be a girl by people with whom I've interacted. Two of these people were women, all of them were cis (i.e. non-trans). I find this interesting because, if someone like me can screw peoples' perceptions so effectively, it suggests that the widely-held idea that there are tell-tale signs which mean you can always tell trans women from cis women is, well, a load of old (untucked) bollocks.

5) I've always regretted the fact that I never kept up the piano lessons I took when I was young. Having an instrument to hide behind when performing would give me a much greater feeling of security than having to stand up in front of people with just a microphone, the poems I've memorised, and my back-up portfolio.

6) While I'm always open and confident in my writing, I'm actually painfully shy in a personal context. At most gigs I tend to spend most of my non-performing time floating around, desperately wishing I had the gumption to talk to people, and constantly thinking that I must look a tool.

7) I have very long toes: the second toe on each of my feet is only slightly shorter than my little finger. As a result of this I'm actually pretty good at picking things up with my feet. A jiu-jitsu instructor once described my toes as 'elegant' and I still class this as one of the ten nicest things anyone's ever said to me.

8) I once saw Ant McPartlin (of Ant 'n' Dec, Geordie TV presenting duo) while out walking around Newcastle, and said 'hello' to him, because I vaguely recognised him as someone I knew. It only occurred to me a few feet later, when I realised who he was, that I only 'knew' him from watching television, and had never met him in real life. I imagine this probably happens to celebrities all the time, and must be one of the more bizarre things about being famous.

9) When I was younger and trying far too hard to be interesting, I used to be something of a hanger-on in the local fetish scene (I never got that heavily into it, I might add, I just liked the clothes - though I did, once, let someone run an electric current through my nipples, to see how it felt. Tingly, since you ask.) and there exists, somewhere, a sketch of me attempting to open a wine bottle with a high-heeled shoe I borrowed from a drag queen because I'd forgot to bring a corkscrew. It's one of my biggest regrets that I never bought this sketch from the guy who did it, because it would make a great illustration if I ever decide to write an autobiography.

10) I share a bathroom at the moment with my parents, and my mum has a skin condition which makes me paranoid to use bath bombs, foam, salts etc when taking a bath because I'm worried their residue might cause her to suffer a reaction. As a consequence of this I have genuinely considered staying the night in a hotel simply because I could marinade myself in a variety of Lush products guilt-free. The fact that I would almost certainly do this if I had the money is one of the few things that makes me think my being poor is a good thing.

Phew! That was hard work. Now, the nominations:

I confer the Honest Scrap Blogger Award upon the following people:

Kevin
Alison
Matt
Lisy Babe
Thomas Moronic
The Redhead
Nikki Dudley
Jessica Johnson
Robbie Hurst
and Kate Fox, why not, eh?

God, that took bloody ages. I hope to god some of you lot I've tagged here do your own answers. Otherwise I'll feel a right tool. Right. Off now.